Will You Be Bitter or Better

There is no denying that walking through grief is one of the most complex roads we will ever travel. Dealing with loss and figuring out how to manage through the myriad of emotions can take down the strongest men and women. Due to your loss, at some point, there comes a time when we have a choice to make – will you be bitter or better?

Grief doesn’t simply go away. It’s not like enduring an ominous thunder and lightning storm when you wake up the following day to blue, sunny skies, and all is forgotten. If only that were the case. To heal, there comes a time when we need to make a decision to deal with all that comes with the loss of our loved ones.

I once read a story about a woman who lost her infant child hours after her birth. She didn’t think her life would ever mean anything again, but she eventually began to look at things differently. She viewed her child as a rose and her death as a thorn. As time progressed, she learned to bless the thorns in her life. You see, we can’t have a beautiful rose without having a thorn. Since one cannot exist without the other, we can only enjoy the rose when we embrace the thorn.

As a griever, you may have heard the expression, “grief work.” As I’ve shared, healing is not an instantaneous occurrence, and it’s not time that heals all wounds. It’s hard work, and hard work takes time.

Choosing to heal is another thing that takes hard work and is hard to do. When tragedy comes knocking on your door, you have a decision to make that will impact the rest of your life. So, you must ask yourself, will you be bitter or better? The answer to this question is what will determine your future happiness. It seems like this would be an easy answer, but when you suffer child loss, it’s a loss like no other. Our children are our future, and when they die, the future we imagined we would have died with them. 

In this case, choosing to be better means choosing to move beyond our sorrow. It does not mean we are leaving our children behind or, even worse, acting as if they never existed. Our children’s lives will always mean something. As I’ve learned, God can take one of the worst things to happen and make it into something good for His glory. 

I once read something that said joy is an individual experience. When a friend is joyful, we can be happy for them, but we don’t necessarily feel enlightened by their happiness. However, if you let me see your sorrow, I feel an affinity with you. It is our shared suffering – our thorns – that makes empathy possible. 

Knowing God and keeping Jesus as the cornerstone of my life, these words by Lauren Daigle are what spur me on to be better instead of bitter: 

You’re my safe placeMy hideawayYou’re my anchorMy saving graceYou’re my constantMy steadinessYou’re my shelterMy oxygenI don’t know who I’d be if I didn’t know YouThank God, I do