One of the struggles I have carried while growing up, and one I have never frankly spoken about, is loss. Whenever someone passes away, whether I knew them personally or merely became conscious of their death, something within me becomes deeply unsettled, and I have often wondered whether this reaction is connected to an unaddressed wound, something my heart learnt to carry quietly without ever properly understanding it. At times, the sadness becomes incredibly profound, I become heartbroken, anxious, and overwhelmed with thoughts to the point where sleep becomes difficult because my mind simply refuses to rest. The truth is, I genuinely love seeing people alive, I love life and I love people, even though human beings can sometimes be incredibly cruel. Yet, somewhere along the journey of growing up, I became acutely conscious of how fragile life is, you can argue with someone today, become irritated with them, hold something against them, and suddenly tomorrow they are no longer here. There is no opportunity to revisit the conversation, no chance to apologise, laugh about it, make peace, or simply say, “I still love you.” Perhaps that awareness has made me reluctant to carry resentment for too long because, somehow, I am always conscious that tomorrow is never owed to any of us.
Recently, I was at a gathering where someone tragically lost their life. I did not know this person personally, yet the news affected me as though I had lost someone within my own family, and once again that familiar question arose within me, why does death affect me this deeply, why do I carry the weight of a loss that is not even personally mine? Job once expressed something that resonates deeply with me when he said, “For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me” (Job 3:25). Certain experiences leave impressions upon the heart that remain there much longer than we realise, and although life continues, something within us remembers. I have realised that I can endure an extraordinary amount of pain physically, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and psychologically, I can be deeply wounded and still appear completely fine. I have mastered the ability to camouflage pain, not necessarily because I am pretending, but because I dislike attracting unnecessary attention, sympathy, or affection, I would rather process things quietly than become an emotional burden to anyone. Yet, there is also a danger in becoming so accustomed to carrying pain quietly that people eventually assume nothing hurts you, sometimes strength becomes such a convincing garment that nobody thinks to ask what is happening underneath it.
Scripture says something striking about Jesus, “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). That expression, acquainted with grief, comforts me because it reminds me that Christ does not observe grief from a distance, He understands its language intimately, and there are emotions I may struggle to articulate before people that require absolutely no explanation before Him.
Ecclesiastes 7:2 also says, “It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart.” Some hearts simply lay these things to heart more deeply than others, death confronts us with the brevity of life, the value of people and the urgency of loving while we still have the opportunity. Still, I do not want my awareness of mortality to become captivity, I do not want compassion to become torment, nor sensitivity to become fear, I want to value life profoundly without constantly fearing its loss. There is another beautiful and overlooked Scripture in Psalm 94:19, “In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight my soul.” I love this verse because it does not dismiss the multitude of thoughts, the mind may be crowded, questions may remain unanswered, yet somehow, right there amongst the noise, God introduces His comfort. So perhaps my prayer in this season is not merely, “Lord, why am I like this?” but also, “Lord, show me what lies beneath this, show me where this fear began, separate genuine compassion from unresolved pain, and teach my heart how to love deeply without living afraid.”
I know God heals, and I know He restores places within us that we sometimes do not even realise are wounded. Hosea 6:1 says, “He hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up.” There are places only God knows how to reach because they existed long before we got the vocabulary to explain them. Death has haunted my thoughts for longer than I care to admit, even when the person who has passed is not closely connected to me. I cannot fully explain why yet, but perhaps healing does not always begin with having every answer, sometimes it begins with finally bringing the question into the light and allowing God access to what has still been hidden for far too long. And this is where I choose to rest, I refuse to allow the reality of death to rob me of the beauty of being alive. If anything, let it teach me to love people properly while they are here, to forgive more quickly, to honour more intentionally, to speak kindness while ears can still hear it, to celebrate people while their hearts can still receive it, and to never become so familiar with someone’s presence that I forget what a privilege it is to still have them here.
One day, death itself will lose the final word. Isaiah 25:8 declares, “He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces.” Until that glorious day, I will continue asking God to heal whatever needs healing within me, to quiet the places where fear has taken residence and to transform this sensitivity into something beautiful rather than burdensome. Perhaps I do not need to become less tender, perhaps I simply need to become free, free to love without constantly fearing loss, free to grieve without being consumed by grief, free to acknowledge pain without always disguising it as strength, and free to trust the God who holds both life and eternity far more securely than my anxious heart ever could.
“Lord, teach my heart that loving deeply does not mean I must live afraid of losing, where grief has quietly made its dwelling within me, meet me there, heal me there and lead me gently into freedom.”
By MPDK