How to Recover from Loss, Grief, and Exile
How to recover from the grief of loss is a lot like returning from exile.
What comes to mind when you hear the word exile? You might think of someone booted from their country, like the Dali Lama. He was exiled from Tibet and now he is a man without a country. Or think of all the people who have been forced from their country due to war or violence.
In the Bible, Israel was often in exile…forced out of their land to live in Egypt, Assyria, or Babylon.
Grief and Loss in Exile
Biblical stories about exile involve people leaving their country and walking through a desert to a place of imprisonment in another country. It’s a physical experience where the desert symbolizes the barrenness of soul that takes place when people suffer loss. Exile is a place of loss where you feel displaced, disconnected, confused, and often depressed.
But living in exile isn’t just about leaving your country. Exile can also happen on an emotional level when life throws you a curve and you end up in a place you never planned on being. Emotional exiles can happen even when you don’t move a block away from home.
Emotional Exile
When you suffer an emotional loss there are “deserts” that you walk through where the sense of isolation and disillusionment is just as strong. Like physical exiles, emotional exiles often involve being cut off from people. You may not hunger and thirst like desert people do, but there is a hunger and thirst for things like; peace, love, belonging, health, stability, purpose, or comfort.
Exile is a place where fear and sadness can flood your mind unexpectedly. Just when you think it’s gone it comes back with a vengeance. You feel trapped and you may even fear that God has left you.
The Seven Exiles of Grief and Loss
We all experience exile at different times in our lives. Following are seven types of exile/loss with a few examples of each.
Emotional exile: depression, PTSD, anxiety disorders, panic attacks, bipolar disorder, etc.
Spiritual exile: bad church experiences or just feeling disconnected from God
Relational exile: a bad marriage, divorce, estrangement from children/parents, death of a loved one, etc.
Financial exile: debt, loss of job, loss of savings, etc.
Career exile: bad fit. 70% of people feel like they aren’t in the right job.
Health exile: the inability to have children, chronic pain, a terminal disease.
Season of life exile: the life stage between college and marriage and/or career, managing old age.
All of these represent a type of exile… a season of loss that needs to be recognized and dealt with. If you fail to recognize your situation you may remain in exile for years, your condition only worsening.
How to Recover from Grief and Loss
Here are five things to consider in regard to how to recover from your grief and loss:
Name your loss.
Sometimes it's helpful to simply name the problem. Like going to the doctor: they can't always solve your problem but they can diagnose it. Somehow, just having a name for it helps. So point to the pain in your life and call it what it is: a loss.
Grieve your loss.
Grief is something we often skip over. Put simply, grief involves a few things:
acknowledging the impact of the loss on your life
giving yourself permission to express your emotions about the loss
allowing God to redefine your new life as a result of the loss
Learn from your loss.
In the book of Lamentations (in the Bible), Jeremiah learned that even though Jerusalem had been destroyed, God was still faithful...his mercies are new every day (Lamentations 3:20-25). God spoke to his people in their moment of darkness. He will speak to you in the midst of your darkness as well.
Reframe your loss.
To recover from loss it’s important to see things from God's perspective, not a human perspective. You need to see things from an abundance mentality, not a scarcity mentality, in other words, trusting that God can do great things in your life rather than expecting the sky to fall.
Expect to return from your loss.
There’s no formula for how to return from exile or how to recover from loss. Neither is there a timetable. I can’t promise you when it will happen. But the record shows that God always brings his people out of exile and he brings them out better than when they entered. God spoke to his people in exile by saying...
They will know that I am the LORD their God because I made them go into exile among the nations, and then gathered them again to their own land ; and I will leave none of them there any longer. Ezekiel 39:28
Returning from the Exile of Grief and Loss
You may be in exile today. The good news is: God knows that and he has a plan for you to return from exile. His faithfulness is great and his mercies are new every morning. Let me pray for you here:
Father, in the middle of heartache Jeremiah was able to say: Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassion never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness… Father, be with my reader in exile today. Fill them with hope and thanksgiving. Reveal yourself to them. Show them the path out of exile and how to recover from loss. Amen.
To learn more about how to recover from grief and loss you might be interested in my book Return From Exile… overcoming loss, failure, and personal setbacks.
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