Grief is the price we pay for love

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" John 3:16

There they sat. Two boxes. One on the floor and one on the couch.  I had just finished re-attaching the mirror on the car I drive when I saw it. As I looked closely at the contents of the box my wife was so diligently going through I felt this emotional lump in my throat.  It's been 5 years since our 10 year old daughter passed from this life suddenly without any warning, but shouldn't I in the words of the advice of friends "just get over it?"  


Occasionally, I looked at the box she was going through and noticed that she was discarding papers that seemingly had no relevance to keep.  Things like forms announcing a 4th grade field trip, her final grand parents day from the 4th grade, etc, etc. I felt another emotional lump going down my throat. I remembered grand parents day. Only Maria's grandfather was available to come because not to long before her 'Nana' had slipped away from us from the complications of her stroke. Another emotional lump.


I remembered asking why are we throwing out Maria's grade school papers?  Immediately, I felt the absurdity of such a question knowing that our daughter was no longer with us.  Still, I wanted to hang onto her things thinking if we threw them out our memories would be lost permanently. My wife calmly said she was throwing out the papers that we really didn't need to keep. Then I heard her say, " and we still have two more boxes of her papers still in her closet".  Another emotional lump just went down.


Fortunately, I was able to withhold my comments knowing that my wife was right about going through those papers and attempting to make sense of the clutter of her 'earthly' things.  Maria was having the time of her life in heaven in a place where there is no more sorrow, but for those of us who have lost a recent loved one we are still trying to make sense out of our loss and the things our loved one accumulated  during his or her earthly existence.


As I felt one emotional lump after another it came to me.  In the form of a bumper sticker the words, ' grief is the price we pay for love' came to my mind.  Then the words from John 3:16 came to me. "For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son, that  whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.'  


Grief will likely be our companions through all of our days on earth as we say goodbye to people we loved. Grief is the price we pay for the companionship we had with them. Their departure to " a better place" still leaves us with the aftermath of sorrow and emotional lumps.  We do not just get over it as the world tells us, but we recover just one emotional lump at a time and in our case one seemingly needless paper at a time.


Contrary to the things we tell ourselves as a justification to avoid going through the things of our loved one we will never lose those memories we had of that person while they were with us. The emotional lumps we feel when we see something once belonging to them won't allow us to forget.  I remember another saying which went like this: " It is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved.". Those emotional lumps we feel are what makes us human.  The relationships we form while on earth are what makes life worth living and when you grieve for that loved one those emotional lumps you feel at the mere recitation of their name becomes a badge of honor knowing that you took the time to form that relationship.


Just as the words from John 3;16 came back to me I was reminded that 'even God understood this this concept.