No one is ever really ready to lose a loved one. Usually it happens in the blink of an eye or suddenly and the shock factor alone is enough to make someone dealing with it go through trauma.
One minute they are there, the next they are gone. Your whole world changes. Everything feels upside down. If you have a question, who will you turn to? They are not there to ask. It’s a really tough and traumatic thing to deal with.
It’s something that we hope never happens to us, but sometimes it does and you’re left feeling confused, lost, and alone.
While there is no easy way to get through the grieving process, there are certain things that can help make it a little bit easier. 💖
If you’re struggling with grief of losing a loved one, you’re not alone! It’s something that everyone goes through at some point in their life. I’ve been through it several different times and it’s never fun but it IS something you can get through!
Here are some tips to help you cope, along with Bible verses of to help guide you through losing a loved one.
Ways to Cope with Grief of Losing A Loved One
Grief is a natural response to loss. It is the process of adjusting to a significant change in your life. Though it is a normal and necessary emotion, grief can be difficult to deal with. There are many different ways to deal with grief, and what works for one person may not work for another.
Some common coping strategies include…
- Talking about your feelings
- Writing about your experience
- Spending time with friends and family
- Reading the Bible and praying a lot about your grief, bringing it to His feet
- Participating in activities that you enjoy
- Reaching out to a support group
- Finding something like a TV show, friend, or other source that is dealing (or has dealt) with what you’re going through
Everyone grieves in their own way, so it is important to find what works best for you. Grief can be a difficult and painful emotion, but it is also a sign of love and healing. You CAN get past this!!! It takes time, but you’ll get through it! 🥰
If you’re struggling to cope with the loss of a loved one, know that you are not alone. Grief is a natural and necessary process, but it can be difficult to go through. Remember to find what works best for you in terms of coping strategies, and know that God is with you every step of the way.
Some people prefer to keep busy, while others need time to reflect and process their emotions. There is no right or wrong way to grieve, but there are some healthy coping mechanisms that can help you through the process. Here are six of them that can help:
Acknowledge your feelings
It’s important to acknowledge how you’re feeling and not bottle everything up.
Bottling up everything inside is THE worst thing you can do because then it never really goes away. I remember one time my ex-husband broke his finger. Instead of going to the doctor or even putting it in a splint, he let it heal on its own.
As you can imagine, it never healed right. He still, to this day, cannot straighten that finger. It’s curled. It’s always curled, at best.
He didn’t heal it right. He healed it however he could to get through it, the quick and easy, fast way, and it’ll never go straight again, unless he goes to the doctor, they REbreak his finger and then heal it proper. True story!
See, we can’t GET OUT OF healing the right way. We can put it off. We can cover it. We can bury it or push it to the side, but we can never really heal unless we do it the RIGHT way. And bottling something up or burying how you feel, is like trying to heal your broken finger on your own. It will be broken the rest of your life if not healed properly.
Grief can be overwhelming, but it’s okay to feel sad, angry, or scared. Don’t try to push your feelings away. Allow yourself to experience them and express them in a healthy way. This is the only way to truly get past your hurts!
Talk about your loved one
Some people may try to avoid talking about the person they lost, but this can actually make things worse. You have feelings, whether good or bad, and you need to get them out. After my ex-husband abandoned us, I didn’t really talk a whole lot about what happened. I mean, I did on this blog to my email list at the time, and it was really helpful, but not in-depth like I needed.
I didn’t realize how MUCH I needed to just talk everything through until I found someone I could confide in. We would talk—about everything: the good stuff, the bad stuff, the messy stuff. Being able to connect with someone on that deep level of sharing your most inner thoughts, dreams, fears, and feelings is really important. And it’s HARD to find someone like that. It truly is.
Even in church settings, people often don’t have the time to really help you work through what you’re dealing with, and if they do, they often don’t know what to say. Finding someone who’s more than willing to listen, who ENJOYS listening to you and genuinely wants to help you heal, can be transformative.
Looking back, the only reason I’ve been able to completely heal from the mess I’ve been through is because of that kind of relationship. Yes, I have God. Yes, I have friends. But having someone who’s willing to really listen and walk with you through the process of healing has been essential. We have to get out everything we feel in a safe place.
Lean on your support system
We are called, as Christians, to edify others, to build them up, and to help carry their burdens (Galatians 6:2). It’s important that we ourselves, are doing just that. We cannot be so self-absorbed in our own lives as to completely ignore our duties to our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. We need to support them. Can we help everyone? No. But we are called to help as many as we can (while balancing rest for ourselves of course) and to be there for as many people as we can.
One of the biggest ways to do this is to create a blog. I created my blog because I wanted to reach more people. I was getting a lot of questions in person about how I was able to save money so well, so I thought to myself, “You know, instead of writing all this down over and over and over in emails, I could make one blog post, send them all the link and not have to keep writing it over and over for each individual person. It would save me time and I could help more people.”
THAT is exactly how this blog was formed! 😊
Maybe you can’t start a blog, okay…maybe you can create an online forum group. Maybe there’s a group at church you can be a part of. Maybe you can write blog posts FOR blogs like mine. You don’t have to run a blog, but still serving and edifying and helping others get through something, much like a post like this.
Listen, we can ALL do something. We are called to do more. We are called to run the race with endurance for Jesus Christ and so often times, so many of us are just shirking those responsibilities and it’s not okay.
We must be seeking out the lost, the hungry, the marginalized, the downtrodden, to help them. To show them the love of Christ. To minister to them. We can’t do it all, by ourselves, but collectively, as Christians, we CAN make a huge impact on the world around us.
If you are going through grieving, GET that help. Let people in. LET THEM support you. Let them rally around you. Allow them into that relationship so that they CAN help. Even if it’s just a listening ear, let them be that listening ear to help you cope. 💖
Now is the time to lean on your family and friends for support. These are the people who will be there for you through thick and thin. Let them help you with practical things like cooking or childcare even. Don’t feel bad about asking for help. Maybe people want to help also, they just don’t know how. Share with them how they can help meet your needs. Ask. 😊
Serve others
This may sound completely backwards and crazy to you, but you will find that the more you SERVE OTHERS, the less you worry about your own problems. Yes, heal and deal with everything you have going on. I’m not saying don’t. But I AM saying that the more we are serving others, the less we worry about our stuff and it helps us.
If you’re dealing with something and you see someone else dealing with something similar, you don’t feel alone. Or maybe you see THEIR problem is a lot bigger than your problem and so your problem seems to fade away more and you realize that you don’t have it as bad as you thought you did.
Serving others really is a fascinating thing. I’m obsessed with serving others, for so many reasons, and it really did START when I was grieving the loss of my ex-husband, who abandoned us.
As I was serving others, I realized that there were a LOT of hurting people out there and it made me not feel alone. If I could help someone go through THEIR pain, it could help me go through mine as well. If I could PREVENT someone from going through what I went through, I could turn MY pain into something that could be used by God. We’re all at different stages in the healing process but look where He’s taken me! Just amazing! And all this, this blog, everything I do, my life, it was all BORN out of great suffering!!!!!!
You truly can make beauty out of ashes, friend. 💖💎💯
Take care of yourself
Grief can be exhausting, both emotionally and physically. You need time to rest, a respite. You need to have time to drink the living water and be so close to God and rooted in Him in your daily life. Be sure to take care of yourself during this difficult time. Get plenty of rest, eat healthy foods, and exercise regularly. This will help you physically and mentally cope with your loss.
So often, women are running marathons every single day and that’s not God’s intention for us. Be busy, do not be lazy, yes, but not running our guts out for no reason. We run for Christ, for His name, not for merit, money, fame, or prestige. But the running that we do is not all wild and haphazard. It’s consistently running for Him. Consistently resting, consistently laboring for Him. We CAN rest. One of the things God has convicted MY heart to do is to take the Sabbath day off from working.
I gotta admit, it’s really difficult to rest for me. I’m a single mom, I’m constantly doing something. But even while doing GOOD things for Him, He wants us to rest. The Sabbath for me is a day that I focus on Him all the more and rest my emotions, my physical body, and my mind. We need to have that balance of resting and working, and that’s what it all comes down to. If someone is being lazy, they need to work. If someone is working constantly, they need to rest. We need to balance it.
During different seasons of our lives, we will need different things too. I can write two blog posts a day right now and be fine. I’m in a different season than I was a year ago when I was resting more and barely doing 3 blog posts a week. Don’t feel bad because you’re in a different season or feel like you have to do a bunch of things. When you’re in grief, you need to take care of yourself. Take the time that you need and don’t feel a lick of guilt about it! If that’s what you need, take it. God knows your heart. He knows what you need. 💖
Be patient with yourself
Grief is a journey, not a destination. Allow yourself time to heal at your own pace. Grieving of a lost child or spouse are two of the most horrific types of trauma to go through, right underneath war trauma. It is said that those types of grief take someone anywhere from 1 year to 3 years to get over.
I remember, being at the one year mark after my ex-husband abandoned me and thinking, “Okay, good, I’m at a year. I’ll be okay now.” But I wasn’t. I took three years. I took the full amount of time. It was horrible. Each day I got better and better and better, until I was doing okay, but the pain lasted a long time and it’s okay. With griefs that are that deeply rooted, they will take longer. Be patient with yourself. Don’t try to speed things up or get over them too quickly. You need to heal!
Remember that there is no timeline for grief, and you will eventually get to a place of acceptance, whenever the time is right for YOU.
Five Bible Quotes On Losing A Loved One
When you lose a loved one, it is natural to feel grief and sadness. These Scriptures about losing a loved one can help comfort you during this difficult time.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” -Matthew 5:4
When we mourn, God is evermore closer to us. You can find healing and comfort knowing that He is nearer to us during this time in your life!
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” -Revelation 21:4
We can look forward to Heaven, knowing that there is no pain, no suffering, no injustice in the world. Heaven is perfect and we will be with God every second. What a beautiful thing to look forward to!
“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” -Psalm 23:4
There are, of course, difficult times in our lives, but God is with us through it all. He leads us as a Shepherd, moment by moment, day by day, tendering caring for His flock.
“The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” -Psalm 34:18
The Lord your God is near to you when you are hurting. Find your peace and trust in Him and Him alone. 💖
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” -2 Corinthians 1:3-4
This goes back to what I was talking about earlier about serving. He uses our trials and pain to help and comfort others who are now going through those same trials. We can be used to help others because we’ve gone through something. Our pain is not just wasted. It can be used for others! 💖
These Bible verses on losing a loved one can help you during this difficult time. May they bring you comfort and peace as you meditate on them.
Grieving isn’t easy. It’s a long and often arduous process that takes time, patience, and support from loved ones and sometimes professionals. There is no right or wrong way to grieve; everyone experiences it differently. But there are some things you can do to make the process a little bit easier and it really does get better each and every day. If you’re struggling with grief, please reach out for help to someone in your life that can help –it’s okay to not be okay. 💖
