Grief: Can There Be a Hidden Blessing? (Henri Nouwen)

Grief: Can There Be a Hidden Blessing?

Wisdom from Henri Nouwen

Too often people misunderstand grief. Grief is a process, not a place.

“Mourning is not a place to live but a process to move through to a place where life is good again. ”

What I mean is that many people experience a tragic loss that takes them to a place called Grief but they never return. They don’t know how to break free from the pain of their loss. And so, not only do they experience a tragic loss but their life becomes a tragic loss as they remain in their grief.

Henri Nouwen on Grief and Loss

Henri Nouwen has shed much light on grief and loss in his many writings. Let me share something he wrote in Spiritual Formation with a few comments of my own.

What to do with our losses? . . . We must mourn our losses. We cannot talk or act them away, but we can shed tears over them and allow ourselves to grieve deeply.

Few people understand mourning. It sounds dreadful. Who wants to mourn? But Nouwen is blunt… we MUST mourn if we want to move on from our losses. Mourning is not a place to live but a process to move through to a place where life is good again.

Rather than ignoring our loss we embrace it… we feel it fully… and acknowledge the impact the loss has on our lives.

Grief Reveals Our Brokenness

To grieve is to allow our losses to tear apart feelings of security and safety and lead us to the painful truth of our brokenness. Our grief makes us experience the abyss of our own life in which nothing is settled, clear, or obvious, but everything is constantly shifting and changing. . . .

When life treats us well we too often live under the delusion that we are in control and loss can’t touch us. But when loss strikes reality comes crashing in and reveals that we are more fragile than we realized. We don’t have everything tied down and labeled as neatly as we had assumed. Grief puts us in touch with this reality.

When Mourning Turns to Joy

But in the midst of all this pain, there is a strange, shocking, yet very surprising voice. It is the voice of the One who says: “Blessed are those who mourn; they shall be comforted.” That’s the unexpected news: there is a blessing hidden in our grief. Not those who comfort are blessed, but those who mourn! Somehow, in the midst of our tears, a gift is hidden. Somehow, in the midst of our mourning, the first steps of the dance take place. Somehow, the cries that well up from our losses belong to our songs of gratitude.

Jesus is the one who told us that God blesses those who mourn. It’s a shocking truth that requires an altered view of life to understand and accept. Rather than resorting to denial to block the pain of loss, Jesus said that if we mourn our losses then God will bring healing to our hearts. That’s the gift. We are free to move on with our lives.

But beyond our healing there is another gift, and that is the empathy that you gain for other people. You become a wounded healer to offer comfort to others.

If you are hurting from a deep loss today I hope you find wisdom in Nouwen’s words to help you move through your grief to a better place.

Related Post: Grief, Loss, and Letting Go… letting God rewrite your story

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