Faithful Paradox

A piece of grief I have often heard but did not understand is that grief changes a person. Early on our journey with Ezra, I read that grief will make you better or it will make you bitter, but it will not leave you unchanged.

A piece of walking with those who are walking or have walked through significant loss and suffering is understanding that they come out of the experience as changed people. There are some who will be withdrawn, maybe bitter or angry – hopefully for only a season. They may walk out of their suffering feeling confused and broken, wondering if they will ever feel whole again. Simply because the event of suffering is over, the effects of the suffering are far reaching and long lasting.

This was very much mine and Vince’s experience. We spent 10 of the 14 months that Ezra was sick apart. We were like ships passing in the night as we traded places at the hospital. I spent Wednesday through Sunday at the hospital. Vince would come Sunday night and stay until I arrived Wednesday morning. On the good weeks, we had an hour or two as we traded places to grab coffee or lunch. On the bad weeks, we simply walked to the car together as one brought their bags up and the other started their shift.

As we watched our son suffer and suffered ourselves, as we lived separately, as we buckled under the pressure of the weight we carried, as we watched our other sons suffer as they watched Ezra slip away, as we grieved the loss of life as we knew it, as we ached to be present with our other boys and could not be, as our marriage suffered, as we rode the painful rollercoaster of hope mixed with devastation, we were changed. A piece we did not understand or realize was that we changed as we were apart. Things that were dormant in our persons, pieces of us that may have been present but never really understood became prominent parts of our personalities. There were parts of us that were dominant pieces of our personalities that shifted and changed to become almost unnoticeable. There were rough edges softened by the grinding work of suffering. There were sharp pieces of our personalities that were dulled. Vince and I both came out of our experience with Ezra as different people.

A piece of grief we did not anticipate was that when we came back together after losing Ezra, we were different people. Vince was softer, more sensitive, more emotional. I was stronger, less dependent and more broken. We engaged the world differently. We engaged one another differently. The marriage we enjoyed for 22 years felt foreign. The relationship we had was different. We missed one another often in communication. I understood that grief and suffering had changed me. Vince understood that grief and suffering had changed him. And we had to learn together how grief and suffering changed our marriage, our family and the way we interacted with one another. 

At first, this felt like another loss. I longed for something that felt familiar and safe. As things were spinning out of control and the world felt chaotic and cruel, I longed for the familiar and the safety of a marriage and family system that I understood. I longed to engage with my husband and my children in a way that felt familiar. And yet much of it was gone. There are statistics about marriages that fall apart after losing a child and I can’t help but wonder if a major piece of it is that without realizing it, when someone steps back into their marriage after loss, the relationship is different because the people in the relationship are different people.

It took months of learning who Vince was now and of him learning who I was and how we had both changed before our marriage began to feel familiar once again. It took months of learning how to communicate all over again. It’s taken countless hours of counseling, many long arguments, lots of tears and hurt (both intentional and unintentional), lots of patience and forgiveness and God’s unending grace and mercy to learn to love the new people we find in our marriage and family.

As you walk with someone who is going through suffering, understand that they are going to become a different person. In many ways, there are good and beautiful things that come out if they are willing to allow the work of sanctification to take place in the midst of the pain. But they will be changed, for good or for bad.

A way you can walk with someone is acknowledging and helping them see the things that have changed. Commend them for the good things you see changing in them. Have they grown in humility? Have they grown in compassion? Have they become softer? Have they let go of old patterns of engaging the world that were unhealthy? Maybe they have become less cynical. Maybe you’ve seen them grow in hope. Maybe their faith has grown and their insistence that God do things their own way has diminished in the midst of their pain. Maybe they are learning to engage emotions in ways they never have before. Maybe God has given them an eye to see the suffering around them that they had previously missed. Maybe God has used their suffering to help you grow in your own faith. Look for those things. It is easy, in the midst of pain and suffering, to believe that the grief has destroyed you. It’s hard to see any good at all. It’s helpful to have an outsider express how it has changed you in some beautiful ways.

It’s also important to understand that when someone is changed by grief and trauma, they may no longer engage with you in the same way. It may be that the ways in which grief changes a person causes them need to engage differently with you. Take time to learn how your loved one, your friend, the one you care so much about, has changed and seek to meet them in the midst of that change. They are different people. There are parts of their personality that have changed and will never be the same. Much of this can be good. Some of the changes will need to be grieved. But learning to love the sufferer in the space and place they find themselves is another way you can walk with someone who is grieving and facing loss.