Grief

Grief can come like a gradual creeping shadow. It can freeze your heart and condense it. It shoves you among the thorns, suddenly, and no matter how you move, you are cut and scraped. It clenches your mind and will not let go. Even in that moment, the moment where grief captures you, stunned in an unfathomable darkness, God is with you. He is watching your face, waiting to catch you. He holds you, even as you fall. He longs to comfort you. God wants you to trust in Him...not because He will just PLUCK you out of the sorrow and completely make it washed away...no. He will be there to love you through it. He will keep track of every one of your tears. He will be there to break you open so you can see who you really are. He will use the cuts and scrapes to pull out the true you. He wants to show you the amazing person He has made you, and like it or not, you are made whole ONLY by being broken open.

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Psalm 10:14 "But you, God, see the trouble of the afflicted; you consider their grief and take it in hand. The victims commit themselves to you; you are the helper of the fatherless."

Psalm 31:9,10, 12, 14, 16 "Be merciful to me, LORD, for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and body with grief. My life is consumed by anguish and my years by groaning; my strength fails because of my affliction, and my bones grow weak...I am forgotten as though I were dead; I have become like broken pottery. ...But I trust in you, LORD; I say, 'You are my God.; Let your face shine on your servant; save me in your unfailing love.

Psalm 56:8 "Record my misery; list my tears on your scroll--are the not in your record?"

Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8 "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and A TIME TO DIE, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, A TIME TO WEEP and a time to laugh, A TIME TO MOURN and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace."