Grieving stinks. Any way you look at it, mourning the loss of dreams and trust and the faithfulness of your husband and whatever else you have lost, is not fun… we talked about the need to grieve in order to heal. If you have committed yourself to the grieving process and are not medicating your pain in order to escape dealing with it, then there are some givens you can expect to feel and experience along the way. Today, I want to look at the grieving process itself. Let me start by describing my own experience.
In my own journey, the grieving process I experienced was like a roller coaster ride of emotional ups and downs. Initially I was numb. Troy’s sexual sin had resulted in his termination and my resignation from a ministry position overseas. I was pregnant and was unable to travel back to the States with Troy until I had the baby. Emotionally I went into survival mode. I felt great pain and cried a lot, mostly at night when I was alone. There were many losses and tremendous sorrow, but it was only after I was in a safe place a couple of months later that I really began to feel angry. Make that furious. I would have days that I couldn’t even look at my husband without feeling a deep fury to the core of my being. Journaling kept me sane—although I never want anyone to read some of the stuff I wrote in those dark days! Alternating with the anger were days of deep despair. My limbs seemed heavy, and all I wanted to do was sleep. I cried all the time. Anything could trigger a memory, and I would find myself overwhelmed with pain in the middle of a conversation with someone or at the check-out counter at the grocery store. It was exhausting. I remember crying out to God and asking Him to comfort me. And I remember the first morning I woke up and “it” wasn’t the first thing I thought about. That was the beginning of the end of those very dark days.
–Melissa Haas, The Journey: Book One