Teach me to grieve (for myself and others)
Oh, Lord,
You are the God of comfort.
Teach me to grieve.
It makes me uncomfortable, but it’s so necessary for healing and perspective.
Help me to trust your love and care enough to lean into pain and trauma and
the wild uncertainty of hard times,
of personal and collective crisis.
You are a God of compassion.
Teach me to grieve for others.
give me perspective and empathy and sincerity that other people’s experiences are different
and just as traumatic and difficult than my own.
Maybe even more!
I want to be kind and willing to sit with them in their pain without passing judgment,
assuming I have the answers,
or teaching them how to feel or act in their pain.
You are a God of forgiveness.
Teach me to be forgiving when I feel that someone has wronged me, misunderstood me,
or hurt me.
You give us chances, over and over–
a thousand million chances to change,
to repent,
to revive,
to follow.
Help me repent of my own sin and refuse to be the judge and jury for everyone else.
I don’t want to compare my grief, my pain, my discomfort, my journey
to anyone else’s
unless it’s to say, “I understand” or “I can’t imagine what you’re going through.”
Help me to be Jesus in every situation.
Give me another chance–a thousand other chances–
to do this better,
to forgive better.
In Jesus’ holy and loving name,
Amen.
“Answer me when I call to you, O my righteous God.
Give me relief from my distress;
be merciful to me and hear my prayer.”
For blogs about personal and collective grief, check out these sites below:
https://www.sueschlesman.com/category/grief/
https://hbr.org/2020/03/that-discomfort-youre-feeling-is-grief
https://www.griefrecoveryhouston.com/what-is-collective-grief/
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/16/us/coronavirus-pandemic-national-mourning/index.html
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/collections/201607/our-collective-grief
