Can You Find “Good” in Your Grief?

I recently spoke with an old friend of mine about grief and how different people respond to losing someone they love. It was an email conversation, following up after she sent me several articles about the subject. Along the way, the topic of Father’s Day came up, so I asked her about her own grieving process after losing her dad.

She said something in response that I was not expecting to hear. She talked about the interesting experience she had going through her grieving process; one where she saw something good come out of her loss. The “good” she said, was a big part of what helped her to get over the grief. I asked her to explain what she meant. So she shared her story with me.

I was 17 years old before I suffered the loss of a close relative. My dad passed away on March 24, 1985 of a massive heart attack. I had just returned from a weekend trip with my high school FBLA club (Future Business Leaders of America) and learned that he died only an hour prior to my arrival.   

His death dramatically changed my life in two completely different ways. At the time, it was the worst thing imaginable and my life felt like I was in a tailspin. Dad was self-employed and provided the primary source of income for our family. My mom, who at the time was only working part-time, was fortunate to have a boss who was able to move her to full-time, but there were so many other things that dad didn’t take care of when he was here, which had a huge financial impact on our lives. 

I grieved his death, but in some ways, perhaps, resented it as well. My dad had refused to get life insurance, and had depleted their savings account years earlier, so the financial burden of his passing was left on my mom. The money from her job just wasn’t enough to make ends meet, and as a result, we almost lost our house two times.

Although I grew up attending church with my mom, my dad did not go to church with us. It was actually a battle every time mom had something to do outside of Sunday service. I knew dad was not a Christian. He was a good man, but he was not a godly one. He was a man who lived a life of prejudice. He was also not an educated man, dropping out of school in the eight grade. He didn’t see value in nor encourage his children to pursue higher education. Maybe it was watching his indifference to God and how he chose to live his life that negatively impacted mine.

I spent the next few years following his passing on my own self-destructive journey. I started drinking and hanging out with people outside my core group. By my sophomore year in college, I was staying up late, getting into the partying lifestyle, and stopped making school a priority, to the point that I almost flunked out.

But years after dad’s death, and my own spiral, I would find the “good” in my grief.

When I was a junior, I started attending a local church with an active college ministry that I got involved in. It was there that I reached the point of understanding that I needed to do more than just attend church, or be baptized (which I’d done at an earlier age). I accepted Christ and started following His teachings. 

As I began to turn my life around, I started to realize that God allowed me to experience such a loss in the death of my dad in order to bring me into a relationship with Him. I loved my dad dearly, but he had several bad traits and was not a man of God; something I know would have kept me from seeking my own relationship with Christ.

The hole that the loss of my dad created in me was one only God could fill — not the drinking, not the partying, not the other things I was doing. I realized what had been a traumatic experience to go through, losing a parent, was one that also lead me to a freedom to live a joyful life through the relationship in Christ that I found. I found joy in the fact that I could freely love friends of all races and all backgrounds. I found joy in experiencing things and places that I never dreamed possible. I found joy in the path that led me to meeting my husband, a man with whom I have built a wonderful life, with two kids who we are bringing up to know the Lord.

I often reflect on how my life changed after losing my dad. Although there were many ups and downs throughout the years, I can see God’s hand weaving and fulling his promise to bless me. It sometimes makes me sad to know that dad never got to experience the Joy that comes with knowing Christ. But I’ve also come to understand that it is not my cross to bear. I am thankful to where God has lead me, and what He’s been able to do through the life I live now.

“And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.”  2 Corinthians 9:8