Rejoicing with Others When Grieving Your Own Loss
Learning to celebrate others while grieving teaches us to surrender envy and trust God with our unmet expectations.
“Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.”
Romans 12:15 (ESV)
Scrolling through my media feed, I paused at a picture of a group of friends. It was our couples group. Most of us had met in high school, becoming friends through youth retreats and day trips to the beach. We kept up in college, adding in evenings of Bible study, pre-game tailgates, and impromptu weekend jaunts.
Spouses had been added to the group as we walked through dating, engagements, and marriages. Over the years, our time together grew more infrequent but our friendship survived the addition of children, demanding careers, and even long-distance moves.
Now here they were, smiling over dinner while on a trip together.
That should be us, I moaned silently, as a familiar ache rose up. My husband and I had been at the very center and start of this friend group. But I was now a widow and single mom, in a different place altogether from the smiling faces in this picture.
It wasn’t only grief I was battling. It was envy.
Envy had surprised me in my early grief when I saw couples celebrating another anniversary, in-tact families in their “This Is Us” photo frame, or fathers handing recital bouquets to their little girls.
How to Celebrate Others When We’re Sorrowing
I’ve learned from friends walking through other losses that they too have experienced envy in sorrow. Seeing the pregnancy announcement when you’re longing for one of your own, or the high school cap and gown photos as you mourn for the child who never made it stirs a deep yearning in us. Envy can rise as you watch other children running and playing while your child is confined to a wheelchair or see a friend celebrating her mom while yours is no longer here.
It’s a normal emotion in any loss, but envy is not one we can let linger. Envy is rooted in disappointment for what we wanted or expected. When our heart says, “that should have been me…” we know we’re dealing with envy.
Even godly wants and expectations must be surrendered to God. What we don’t surrender will become fuel for envy. And that envy, left unrepented and unattended, will become bitterness.
The answer isn’t to stuff our pain or fake that we’re fine. It’s to surrender our wants and expectations, our sorrow and circumstances to God, trusting that he is not a God who withholds good from us. (Psalm 84:11)
When envy now occasionally bubbles to the top, I know there’s more to chisel out of my heart and I need to lay my expectations and longings down once again. As we surrender over and over—trusting God for what we have and don’t have—our sorrow will soften and we’ll be able to honestly celebrate those who have what we hoped for.
We can genuinely say, “I’m happy for you. Truly. I rejoice with you,” while our heart quietly acknowledges, “I’m also sad for me.”
We’re called to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. (Romans 12:15)
It’s not one or the other. It’s both. And sometimes, our heart will hold both at the same time.
In His Word
1 Corinthians 13:4, “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast…” (ESV)
Psalm 23:1-3, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.” (ESV)
In Your Life
In grieving your own losses or longings, has envy surprised you? What does it reveal to you about what needs to be surrendered or entrusted to God?
We Recommend
If you’re navigating grief and life after loss, find help to take steps forward and real hope through the raw pain in Lisa’s book Life Can Be Good Again: Putting Your World Back Together After It All Falls Apart.
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