Grieving in God’s Presence – the Secret to Healing

What does it mean to grieve in God’s presence, and why is this the secret to healing?

Grief has many faces and forms, and it changes everything. It changes our prayers, too. We can still show up to God even when we’re sad and tired, even when we’re angry, even when all we’ve got is, “Help.” We need God’s presence and our honest presence with Him.

Some of us treat grief like a spiritual failure, but grief is the human response to love and loss. We need to remember that God isn’t confused by our tears and He is close to the brokenhearted.

Grieving in God’s Presence

Part of our grief journey is to learn to grieve in healthy ways. The healthiest way to grieve is to do it in God’s presence. This means we grieve with the awareness of God’s presence in us and around us. We are not only aware of the existence of His presence, but we are also aware of the love, unconditional acceptance, and comfort of His presence.

However, the presence of God is not the same as feeling better. We may feel alone and abandoned because feelings are loud and often unreliable. But being alone is far from the truth.

We may feel numb, angry, exhausted, and confused, but this doesn’t mean God has left us. It means our nervous system is overloaded trying to process the loss. Let’s remember that God’s presence isn’t a painkiller, but a companionship. Sometimes it’s quiet companionship, the kind that doesn’t announce itself.

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Learning to Lament as a Pathway to Healing

Often when struggling with intensive painful feelings, we don’t have words to pray. But God doesn’t want polished prayers; He wants honest prayers. He meets us where we are: in the middle of sadness, anger, regret, and sorrow.

When we don’t have words to pray, we can pray the Psalms as a borrowed voice, especially the psalms of lament, which are one-third of all psalms. Examples of such psalms are Psalm 13, Psalm 22, Psalm 88, and many more.

The most important thing about these psalms is the honest expression of painful feelings with a strong awareness and acknowledgment of God’s presence. These psalms speak of anguish, but they also proclaim hope in God. The authors of the psalms grieve in the presence of God and pour out their painful emotions in the safety of a loving relationship with Him.

And this makes all the difference. This makes grieving with hope possible. The hope for healing, restoration, protection, strength, and comfort is present.

A Practical Three-line Prayer When We Grieve

Here is a practical three-line prayer when a grief wave hits us.

• Lord, here’s what I’m feeling.
• Lord, here’s what I’m afraid of.
• Lord, here’s what I need today.

We can keep it ugly and honest and tell the Lord what is on our hearts, expecting Him to hear and provide for us.  

And when we don’t want to use words, let silence count as prayer. Sometimes we sit on the edge of the bed and just breathe. That counts. If we’ve ever been with someone in a hospital room, we know the power of presence without speeches. God does that with us.

Giving God Access to Our Pain

There are pains that are not only difficult to express but are too strong to be felt, so we numb and suppress them. However, to heal, we need not only to express the pain; we need to give the Lord access to these most painful and often hidden wounds.

Let’s not forget that the Lord is the ultimate Healer, and His touch can heal the most heavy or incurable soul wounds. The loss of a loved one, for example, can break our hearts into pieces, and we may think we will never heal. But if we name and hand our pain to the Lord, He is truly able and willing to bring healing and restoration.

When we keep showing up again and again in God’s presence, we are on the way to healing. This healing rarely happens dramatically, such as with a big breakthrough or a spiritual revelation. Rather, it is a series of many small, invisible moments and steps, like a cup of coffee, a whispered prayer, moments of joy throughout the day, or just the fact that we didn’t quit.

What Healing Actually Looks Like, and What It Doesn’t

Often, people tell grieving hearts to “move on.” It can sound like we’re supposed to erase love, but that’s not the goal.

Healing usually looks like this: the loss stays true and real, and our capacity grows around it. We learn to experience joy again, to laugh again, and ride the waves of grief that will keep coming, often completely unpredictably. We make a plan, then cancel it. We feel fine at 10 a.m. and wrecked at 10 p.m. That’s normal.

Those “waves” are real. In classic bereavement research, acute grief reactions often peak early and tend to lessen in intensity over time for many people, with anniversaries and reminders causing temporary spikes. We don’t fail because an anniversary hits hard. That’s grief being grief.

We Can Draw Near to God in Our Grief

If you want to learn more about how God used my losses, grief, and other painful experiences to transform and bless me, my book,“Draw Near: How Painful Experiences Become the Birthplace of Blessings,” is for you. Let me take you on a journey through 13 painful experiences, showing losses and the precious blessings in each of them.

More Encouragement for You

If you need more resources, encouragement, and comfort when you go through pain, grief, and despair, I can highly recommend these books. Check them out.

Trusting God in All the Things: 90 Devotions for Finding Peace in Your Every Day by Karen Ehman and Ruth Schwenk

The Night Is Normal by Dr. Alicia Britt Chole

Make Up Your Mind: Unlock Your Thoughts, Transform Your Life by Denise Dubois Pass and Michelle Nietert

Life Can Be Good Again by Lisa Appelo

It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way by Lisa Terkeurst

Hope When Life Unravels: Finding God When It Hurts by Adam Dooley

Restoration Year – a 365 Days Devotional by John Eldredge

All Things New by John Eldredge

Hope for the Hard Days by Sarah Geringer

Lean into Grace by Stacey Pardoe

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Your Turn

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