Grief has many faces, takes numerous shapes and speaks in a variety of voices. Grief can be welcome, yet it can rob one of sleep. Grief can saturate your mind, or set you free. Grief can paralyze, or bring personal growth.

“And no one ever told me about the laziness of grief.” (C.S. Lewis). Grief is hard work. It can tire a person totally. If all one wants to do is sleep, it could be because he or she has worked so hard during their waking hours that they’re brain-dead, muscle-weary and silence-stricken. And if you look around, probably a good percentage of these people are bending their mind trying to gain some kind of understanding, seeking, searching, looking up and down, inside and round about, looking for peace of mind.

I can cause myself grief thinking about areas of life I can do nothing about. I think about orphans in war torn countries. Scenes flash through my mind of tragedies where children are left without family and put in the hands of strangers. I consider those caught in fires, tornadoes and earth quakes.

At a local author’s day, I recently had opportunity to listen to people’s stories. Wonderful redeeming situations that have lifted them from despair. Telling painful memories allows them to stretch beyond the facts. It’s helpful if we can share someone’s burden. We don’t have to solve it. We don’t have to offer options. It doesn’t cost us money.  Just knowing that grief walks in our midst gives us opportunity to share another’s burden. In doing that, we often find we’ve lifted our own . . . just a little.

After you’ve read these few paragraphs, perhaps some thoughts come to mind to jot down in your journal. Writing them today, leaving them for a while, and then returning to them often encourages one to add a few more lines.