Grieving people usually don’t ask directly: Why does it hurt so much? But I see that it hurts; I hurt like that.

It hurts because you loved. You were connected to another human being heart to heart. It hurts. Death hurts a lot when we love like this. This hurt causes an incredible amount of suffering that hopefully this article may help you with.

Recently, watching the suffering of a mother losing her child, a sister losing her brother, and a father losing his son, I was moved to think deeply about human suffering. I prayed about it; in my prayer, I said to God, Please show me what you need me to understand about suffering. Then I waited, and paid attention.

Over the course of the next week, beauty began to show itself to me in different ways. I thought of that family, keeping them in the forefront of what I was trying to understand. I started to become acutely aware of beauty showing itself to me; my senses seemed heightened to the beauty in everyday life, I saw beauty deeper, I was feeling it, beauty became more vivid, colors richer, warmth enveloping my body, wind wrapping itself around me.  I appreciated beauty more it seemed after that prayer.

Then I received the word “Grace”.

You can look at this in a biblical sense if you like, but this article is for all, whatever you believe in. The way I felt this grace is explained in the dictionary as “favor shown in granting a delay or temporary immunity,” or think of it as a “grace  period.”  A period of Grace.

What I felt I was being shown were moments of Grace, glimpses of peace and beauty. Suffering in our grief is inevitable and it hurts; you feel like your heart may stop beating or that you could actually die from the sadness. You know that you won’t but in your heart and mind it feels like it. I know, I have experienced it too. But, we receive grace periods and temporary immunity from the suffering through our openness into grace.

Wherever you’re at in your grief today, go outside, because even though you don’t think so, your senses are heightened when you are grieving. Yes, you are VERY sad but there is Grace, if you can open to that Grace. BECAUSE of your suffering, you will start to see, hear and feel things like never before. You’re different, and Grace did that. I wish you peace.