Feeling Abandoned in Grief? God is Still There
By: Laura Bennett
Aubrey Sampson knows grief.
Having lost her best friend to cancer, her father to an unexpected heart attack and a cousin to a climbing accident, the emotions of loss – and subsequent questions to God – are one she’s well acquainted with.
Aubrey’s father and best friend Jen passed away in quick succession and it was while processing the loss she wrote What We Find in the Dark, a book examining the anger, confusion and hope that swirl around grief.
As a pastor, Aubrey knows Christians can want to “look on the bright side” or superficially suggest it’s OK because “God’s got this”, but she doesn’t think that deals with “the real pain of loss”.
“We’re allowed to meet God at that real place,” Aubrey said.
“I’m never going to be OK with the fact that my best friend Jen is gone.
“I’ll have some healing, I’ll find some peace, time will move forward but I’m never going to be OK with that, and I’m going to keep talking to God about [it].
“I do believe God is sovereign, but I don’t think that deals with the real pain of loss.”
When you go through such traumatic grief, Aubrey says we can be thrust into a “dark night of the soul”, a term coined by the 16th-century Spanish mystic and Catholic poet St. John of the Cross who spoke of feeling like God had abandoned him.
“It’s the sense that God has removed His presence,” Aubrey said.
“Scripture declares that God never leaves us nor forsakes us – and we know as people of faith that God’s always with us – but sometimes in the life of a believer God seems to remove the ‘felt sense’ of His presence.
“You cannot tell what God is doing – the road is obscure, the path is obscure, the reason is obscure – [but] part of the mystery is that God is actually drawing you close to Him.”
What Aubrey’s learned is that leaning into the truth of our emotions and allowing ourselves to be honest with God is key to moving forward.
The spiritual discipline of lament – passionately expressing our sorrow, disappointment or regrets about something toward God – is a gift we forget we have available.
“Read the Psalms, [look at] Job” Aubrey said.
“It’s not all ‘lollipops and rainbows’ .
“[In lament] we cry out to God with anger, we don’t hold back, we say everything we need to say.
“The beautiful thing about who God is, is that God would rather [we] trust that He can handle [our honesty] knowing right now [He’s] going to hold me in my anger, and in time [He’s] going to meet me with [His] presence and peace.”
Lamenting might be scary, but “God is not going to let me go so far that I won’t come back”.
“My good friends are not going to let me go so low that they won’t be able to pull me back out,” Aubrey said.
Aubrey Sampson’s book What We Find in the Dark is out now.
Resources for support through grief are available via Grief Australia.
Article supplied with thanks to Hope Media.
Feature image: Publicity Images Used with Permission
