Grief is Like...
Last night, I had an amazing time with the grief support group at Resurrection. The group normally work through the GriefShare curriculum, and is great community. I was invited to lead the group for one evening.
The Holy Spirit was really at work as the ideas for the evening came together that afternoon and really took form as we were in the gathering together. I talked about Jesus stories of the Kingdom of Heaven is like... and asked them to consider how to finish the sentence: Grief is like... and wrote the ideas on the whiteboard in the room. I gave the first four examples and told stories about them and then they broke up into small groups and came up with the rest of the ideas.
Grief is like:
Christmas Eve
a scar
holding your breath underwater
an unfinished building
a teenage break up
riding a wave / tsunami
a roller coaster
being an amputee
death or loss of a part of you
your family is no longer your family
losing your identity
There were stories that went with each of these examples / similes / parables. We reflected on John 16:16-24 and then I asked them to consider a change in the concepts which we had come up with together. I erased the word grief and in its wrote the word "hope" Hope is like... all the things above. The group helped me through transitioning all of the above concepts to how it might be like grief to how it might be like hope. The closing challenge was to finish that sentence - "Hope is like..." in our every day life. Maybe hope is like a dishwasher, your favorite shirt or a cup of coffee. Look for hope in every day life.
I could feel God's presence among the group - particularly at the moment of transition from grief to hope. God is good!
What do you think grief is like? What do you think hope is like?