I suspect that that is the reason that so many people today don't want to admit to being in the midst of suffering and grieving. Who wants to admit to having a life that is out of control? Who wants to admit to having feelings that are out of control? Yet suffering and grieving are part of our common humanity. Grieving together is the reason for wakes and funerals. Suffering and Grieving together is the purpose of all sorts of support groups, for people suffering with and grieving about all sorts of illnesses, about divorce, and for Bereavement Support Groups.
Our culture supports and idealizes excessive individualism; but the reality of grief is that one cannot and should not go through this process alone. Grieving together bonds us, rejuvenates us, reminds us that we all grieve because we all love life, we all love people. What could be healthier and saner than crying together out of shared love? The crying together leads to talking and sharing about the person who died, or the person who is ill, or about our own illness, or our divorce, and all kinds of important truths and relationships surface that might have gone unsaid and been unknown if people hadn't grieved together.
And, eventually, with faith, prayer, the support of others, consciousness raising, we all walk out of the storm of grief. Either we begin recovering, or we deepen in acceptance of a chronic problem. If we have truly, consciously walked through the storm, experiencing our grief whole-heartedly, we are transfigured.
We have survived the worst that life can throw at us. We are gentler people - gentler because we know how fragile and fleeting life is, how everyone and everything in life must be handled with care. We are more open people, because our facade was stripped away when we suffered and grieved and we don't want to put it back on and pretend that we are Iron Man.
We are transfigured because our hearts were pierced and now there is an opening there that welcomes everyone in. Because we felt displaced in the world, we understand the displaced and the misfit. Because we clutched another's hand for dear life, our hand stays extended to the ones who are emotionally drowning. We know that other storms will come but we are optimists because we know that they also end and/or we can survive them - as can everyone else, if they have the support they need. And this optimism is the greatest gift we can give others who are suffering and grieving.
This optimism, this discovery of human resiliency, especially human resiliency buoyed by faith and the support of others and prayer, is a gift of wisdom to share with others, over and over. Yes, your marriage can be saved if you work together, communicate, pray, love, sacrifice. Yes, you can walk through this terrible storm of addiction. Yes, you can walk through the terrible grief of loss and dance again. Yes, you can love yourself and be proud of yourself even if your family rejects you. Yes and yes and yes. If our life is a life of yes to the world, we truly have been transfigured by the storm of suffering and grief.
Which is why, although God did not bring suffering and death into the world, God allowed the storm to engulf us in the first place. "God did not make death, nor does He rejoice in the destruction of the living....For God formed man to be imperishable; the image of His own nature he made him." (Wisdom 1). God did not bring suffering and death into the world - sin did. God formed us in His own image, to be imperishable. But God knows well enough that the scourge of suffering allows His Image to brighten in us, to be fully revealed to us. Suffering prepares us for our own imperishable future.
We do not know the people we are until we walk through the storm of suffering and grief and emerge wounded but triumphant on the other side. We have learned about love to the depths of our being. We have learned how to express and share love and grief. We have learned that we are not independent but interdependent, linked to every other human being in the story of love and loss, shedding tears, and screaming at the heavens. God's Image shines more brightly in us than ever before because now we walk through life as optimistic wounded healers.
That's what the storm is all about.
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