Little Wren Writes

I wish I could tell you I’d figured grief out.

That somewhere along the way I’d finally learned how to carry it well. That it had become smaller. Quieter. More predictable.

But that wouldn’t be true.

Grief still catches me off guard.
It appears in the supermarket because I walk past someone wearing a certain perfume.
It arrives with a song I wasn’t expecting to hear.
It hides inside birthdays. Anniversaries. Family photos. Ordinary Tuesdays.

Sometimes grief comes because I miss someone who has died. Sometimes it comes because I miss someone who is still alive but no longer part of my life – sometimes I’m grieving a person.

Sometimes I’m grieving a future.
The marriage I thought would last. The children I imagined I’d one day hold. The version of myself I thought I would become. The role I thought I’d always have. The life I quietly assumed was waiting for me.

I’ve realised grief is much bigger than death. It’s almost like love suddenly has nowhere familiar to land. Whenever hope loses the future it had imagined. Whenever something beautiful comes to an end before we’re ready…

Perhaps that’s why grief feels so disorienting. It isn’t simply about losing what was. It’s also about losing what could have been.

And if I’m totally honest?

I don’t always respond particularly well. In fact I can easily become consumed by it. Some days I notice God’s kindness almost instinctively. Other days gratitude feels impossibly far away. Some days I can look back and see gifts everywhere. Other days all I can see is what I’ve lost. Sometimes I cling tightly to God’s faithfulness. Sometimes I have to fight to believe it’s still there.

Perhaps that’s why I need to write this as much as anyone needs to read it. Because I’m still learning that gratitude isn’t something that replaces grief. It’s something I have to keep choosing to look for, often with tears still in my eyes.

For a long time, I thought grief and gratitude couldn’t exist in the same room – surely one had to make way for the other right?

If I was grateful, perhaps I wasn’t grieving enough.
If I was grieving, perhaps I wasn’t grateful enough.

It felt like a choice. Smile or cry. Remember or move on. Celebrate or mourn.

But grief refuses tidy categories.

The heart, it turns out, is far more spacious than I imagined. It can hold extraordinary joy and profound sorrow at exactly the same time.

I think I have to stop asking,
“Why am I grieving again?” (though it isn’t a bad question in itself.)

And instead start asking,
“What love is this grief reminding me of today?”

Because every wave of grief points back to something beautiful. Someone mattered. Something precious existed. A dream was worth dreaming. Love was real.

Grief doesn’t diminish love. It reveals it – flaws and all.

One of the particular parts of grief I have been wrestling with is that not every grief has a funeral.

Some griefs are invisible. They are the quiet mourning of futures that never happened. Children never born. A marriage that ended long before you thought it would. A career that changed direction. Friendships that slowly faded. Health that never returned. A home that no longer feels like home. The version of yourself you thought you were becoming but didn’t.

No one really ever sends flowers for those losses. No one generally stands beside a graveside for the end of a marriage. No one organises a meal roster when your whole identity shifts or you have to say goodbye to a role you’d dreamed of since you were a little girl. And that’s not because people are unkind. I have, quite possibly, one of the greatest villages in the world – filled with beautiful, kind and compassionate people who have carried me SO generously over the last 18 months. But many of the invisible griefs are just too hard to explain or for others to understand.

And yet they are real. They deserve to be named. They deserve kindness – from yourself, and from trusted and safe people.

Jesus never seemed embarrassed by grief. He never hurried people through it. He stood outside the tomb of His friend Lazarus. He knew resurrection was literally only moments away. He knew death would not have the final word.

And still…He wept.

I’ve always found that extraordinary! If anyone had permission to say, “Don’t worry. It’ll all work out.” – it was Jesus!

Instead, He cried.

Jesus mourned the reality of this world; the pain of suffering and of death. But his tears were not evidence that faith is weak – they were evidence that love is real.

As I’ve wrestled with different ‘layers’ of grief over the last year or so, I’ve also discovered something a little unexpected. I think that gratitude has become one of grief’s closest companions.

Not because gratitude makes grief smaller. It doesn’t. But because gratitude reminds me that grief only exists where love once flourished.

I don’t grieve strangers the way I grieve people who shaped my life, and I don’t mourn futures that I never wanted or dreamed of.

The ache itself tells me something:
It tells me this mattered.
It tells me there was beauty here.
It tells me I loved.

I’ve wondered lately if gratitude is simply love looking backwards? It notices the gifts that have already been given. It remembers. It treasures. It refuses to let beautiful things disappear simply because they have ended. I will probably keep pondering on that for a while.

But perhaps that’s one of the reasons why God told His people to remember so often. When Israel crossed the Jordan River, He didn’t simply tell them to keep walking; He told them to gather stones, build a memorial, tell the story again…

Not because God needed reminding – because they would.

Again and again Scripture echoes the same invitation.
“Remember the Lord your God.”
“Remember that you were slaves in Egypt.”
“Do this in remembrance of me.”

Memory is one of God’s gifts. Not so we can live in the past. But so we don’t forget His faithfulness.

Perhaps gratitude begins there. Not by pretending everything is okay. Not by ignoring the empty places. But by remembering that even here – even in this chapter – God has not stopped being kind.

I’m slowly learning how to no longer ask gratitude to compete with grief. Instead, I let them walk together. Some days grief takes the lead. Some days gratitude does. Most days they simply walk side by side.

Grief reminds me how deeply I have loved.
Gratitude reminds me how deeply I have been loved.

And both, somehow, lead me back to Jesus.
The One who entered our grief.
The One who wept.
The One who carried sorrow.
The One who walked out of an empty tomb, not to erase our grief, but to promise that one day it will not have the final word.

Until that day, I suspect I will keep grieving; big things and little things. The loss of people, the loss of dreams or direction. And maybe even the loss of lego pieces! But I hope and pray that amongst it all, I will keep giving thanks, seeking out the big things and the small everyday things to be grateful for. Not because one cancels out the other. But because both are evidence that love is still alive. And that our great God is still so very faithful and generous.

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort.“
2 Corinthians 1:3–4