What's Here Now?Chikamu

Yesterday, we talked about how rehashing the past tries to control something that already happened. Two more ways we try to rehash the past are through unprocessed grief and bitterness. Grief is deep sorrow from a loss that changes the present.

Anyone that has walked through change has walked through loss, and all loss changes us. There are, of course, different levels of grief. And no loss is the exact same, but all loss is worthy of being grieved. I remember distinctly when my kids moved away from asking for help for everything to saying, “I do it.” They were becoming more independent, and it was a change in the season of my parenting. If I had held on too tightly to a changing season, I couldn’t be available for all that was awaiting me in the next season. I needed to grieve the change. Grieving that loss was much different from grieving my dad’s sudden death and then, years later, my younger brother when they suddenly passed away. Those losses were undoing in my life, and I wondered how I would ever get through the shock, sorrow, and pain.

There are all different kinds of losses in our lives. I’ve walked with friends through the loss of a spouse, the loss of a marriage, the loss of a dream, to the loss of a child. The loss of income and even the loss of hope. There are, of course, the smaller losses in life, and then there are the ones that take our breath away and cause us to cry out, “God, where are you?” When grief enters our life, we always have a choice to give in to the grief or go into the grief.

Giving in to grief keeps us in the past and leaves us powerless to every painful wave of loss that laps on the shores of our souls. But going into grief is the deep and arduous work of processing grief in the present. Grief is hard. No one ever goes looking for more grief in their life. And while we may feel powerless as we process our grief, we are not meant to stay in our past losses; we are meant to grow through and even bear fruit through our losses. We cannot grieve what we cannot leave, and walking through loss always requires a leaving we did not choose on our own.

Bitterness is another way we rehash the past, keeping us from the present moment. Bitterness is a grudge that has a hold on your heart, aka unforgiveness. Bitterness is all about letting go and guess what’s really hard. Letting go. Never once have I liked it. Never once was I like, “God, thank you for leading me through this beautiful spiritually transforming process of letting go. Can I do that again?”

This is especially true with bitterness. Because the longer you hold a grudge, the longer the grudge has a hold on you. When unforgiveness grips you, you will never have freedom in your life. Bitterness is desperate for you to keep the past alive as resentment attacks your very life force, silently hurting YOU from the inside out. Hoarding past hurts are tricking yourself into stockpiling all the past words and actions into an oversized debt that can never be paid.

Unforgiveness blocks us from vision. It locks us out of the present and keeps us from having hope about the future. Letting go of past pain is not a suggestion to just lay aside important boundaries or to excuse injustice, inequality, or inequity. When we let go, we don’t forget the damage done or say it doesn’t matter. But we release the power that the past bitterness brings into the present moment.