How do we find hope in our grief?
Exploring the gifts of creativity and community in seasons of grief.
(pictured: a close up photo of a Rabbit Room mug, with a blurry view—of a nature, music, and grief inspired mural that I painted, around real musical instruments, adorning my living room wall—in the background.)
How do we find hope in our grief?
A handful of summers have now come and gone, since I first saw the question asked.
It was part of a call for a creative online-community project—exploring the idea of finding hope, through creativity, in the midst of grief—that had been shared among an ever-encouraging and inspiring group of kindred Rabbit Room folks, called: artists&, whom I had recently joined.
While I was grateful to have found this kind and generous community, and was eager to connect with other artists, and kindred folk alike, after more than a handful of deeply challenging years navigating chronic illness—with little to no community support of my own—the question itself also resonated deep within me because I’ve been asking myself this same question for as long as I can remember.
Although I’ve been met with hope many times in my own grief, I hesitated to commit to the project for fear of what others might think of my own vulnerable response—that I was just beginning to paint, across my living room walls—as if grief could be weighed or experience judged.
With that fear, I was quickly reminded just how self-isolating the mere memory of grief could be, even amongst a thoughtful and gentle community such as this, and I wondered if perhaps I’m not so alone, in my vulnerability, after all.
While it’s true that no two people’s grief is ever the same, and no two souls experience sorrow quite the same way, each of us still has an authentic story to tell.
And it’s often through the very sharing of our stories, and in listening to other folks’ stories as well—when we’re reminded that we’re not alone, but rather we’re all part of a much bigger story—that we learn to cultivate empathy and generosity for others.
As image-bearers of the Maker-of-all-things we are in turn called to be co-makers, sharing our simple gifts and the work of our hands—our art, our songs, our stories, and the very communities we choose to help cultivate, and dwell among, with others.
When I think about my own darkest times of grief, even amongst all the pain and sorrow, I still can’t help but remember the beauty, too. Not a great big, obvious—everything’s going to be okay—kind of beauty. But rather the tiny flecks of hope floating in a sunbeam kind of beauty.
It’s the beauty in the details.
A quiet glimpse of a painting so lovely words cannot begin to describe.
A song that reminds us of goodness and joy.
Or the made-up and yet somehow-still-true kind of stories that help us to feel brave, and the people who’ve shown us kindness, despite our brokenness, along the way.
It’s with these things that I’m reminded that—no matter how deep our darkness and how hollow our grief—the sun always rises and there’s still hope yet to come. Even if we can’t see it for ourselves.
And so I pick up my pen, and load my paintbrush, and share my story with you…
As people of faith—encouraged to think on whatever is good and true and beautiful—it’s often easy to draw from a deep well of hope when we can still see the light of day. But in the midst of our grief—when the light of day is nowhere to be seen—when dawn forever seems just beyond the horizon, ever out of reach, what then?
When that massive, old spruce tree has fallen hard, and our dream home is crushed beneath. When we pull our weeping children from beneath the rubble, holding them fast in the eye of the storm, and despite all our prayers—and counting of blessings—it takes years to pluck the last of the splintered wood and broken glass from our hearts and hopes and dreams alike, what then?
When the nights are as long as winter itself and our little ones ache with illness—for which we have no answers—and our prayerful hearts and weary souls are left longing for deeper healing and deeper meaning, what then?
When our loved ones take their final breath, and our last glimmer of hope has gone with them, and we’re left in a dark hollow place—no things can ever fill—while the world moves on around us, what then?
In a broken, weary world the question has never been: “Will we ever know grief?”
The question is: “What will we do when grief finds us, grips us, and holds us fast?”
When the storms just keep coming, and each question we ask leads to a dozen more, and there are no justifiable answers to come, what then?
It’s then that I wonder…
What if it isn’t: “How do we navigate this dark, hollow place with no light to see by?”
But rather, “What’s being cultivated in this darkness, while we dwell here among it?”
And if that’s the case, then perhaps the question isn’t:
“Will we ever find the light again?”
The question becomes: “Can something beautiful ever be shaped in this darkness?”
Then I wonder, if perhaps the question is no longer:
“How do we find hope in our grief?”
But rather: “How does Hope find us in our grief?
And when it does, will the beauty it brings with it remain?”
Perhaps it can, and perhaps it does... You see, in order for the natural beauty of an agate, or a geode to be formed there must first be a hollow place.
Often that hollow place comes from violent acts of nature, by way of unstoppable volcanic flows, charring everything in their path, trapping both air and darkness together within a newly formed space.
Now all that’s left is a hard blackened shell around the hope that once was, and in order for beauty to come, that lonesome hollow must be filled again, even though the light and air that once occupied that place, will never be the same.
Storms come, and with them the aches of time. Erosion destroys and patterns begin to form. Wind and rain batter. Sun and heat melt ice and snow, slowly wearing down that blackened shell-of-a-rock. Season after season, year after year.
Inside, darkness remains, but perhaps there is room for hope here as well. For as the outer shell is heated and cooled, time and time again, it ever-so-slowly becomes porous.
Now water begins seeping in, through the frailest of cracks in its surface. And with that water tiny minerals begin to deposit, lining the once hollow place with a slowly forming treasure, but held fast in the darkness, its immeasurable beauty remains unseen.
But this isn’t the end…
In fact, perhaps, it’s just the beginning.
For one day that, once hollow, shell-of-a-rock is picked up and lovingly carried by the One who knows all its secrets—and the potential it holds tightly within—and loves it just the same. Then they carry it home, clean it up, and ever-so-intentionally open it up to reveal it is no longer empty.
For the water that once carried rich minerals deep within has, in fact, shaped intricate rings—that can only ever be made once—forever telling the story of their very own making in the process.
And now that ages old rock-of-a-story is carefully sliced thin and held up to the sunlight, revealing brilliantly-illuminated, colorful rings that formed—as they did in the darkness—not despite the many storms that once raged outside its shell, but rather because of them.
Author, and poet, Wendell Berry says, “There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places”.
And in his song, ‘Always Good’ singer/songwriter Andrew Peterson sings:
“Somehow this sorrow is shaping my heart as it should. You’re always good. Always good… This heartache is bringing me closer than joy ever could. You’re always good. Always good.”
And I wonder, if desecrated places really can be made holy again,
And if beauty so true can be shaped in the darkness,
Then perhaps Hope really can find us in our grief.
And if Hope really dwells, where the Maker meets us—in the darkest hollows of our pain and sorrow—then perhaps with the Maker’s timeless flow of living-water also come that which is good and true and beautiful.
Slowly filling up our most hollow places and spaces, one tiny fleck of hope at a time, all the while, richly depositing the ever-present beauty of art and song, story and community, forever within.
And I wonder: What might it look like if the Maker held up a sliver of my own unique story of-a-rock (or yours!) for the light to shine through, like nature’s-stained-glass made anew?
If we picked up our brushes and painted our stories—of both Hope and grief—on the very walls of our hearts and homes?
Or if we wrote them into poems and songs—and sang them, for those we love to pass along—for generations to come?
Perhaps it’s then that we’ll remember:
Hope really can find us in our grief,
And beauty really can be shaped in the darkness,
But it takes the light for us to see.