The Power of Blessing Your Grief: Finding Grief Support in Harlingen, Texas

Many people hear the word “grief” and wonder how they can avoid it, get past it quickly, or shrug it off if someone else they know is struggling. They don’t mean to be insensitive, and often, these are well-meaning, compassionate, contributing members of the community.

But grief is a word that has heavy connotations. In some cultures, however, grief is a rite of passage, a vehicle to display honor or respect, and even a powerful force of good in a person’s life. Western cultures, where life is fast-paced and centered on individualistic ideals, tend to struggle with the power grief can play in a person’s life.

Walking Toward Grief

So why is walking toward grief a good thing? How can welcoming grief be a gateway toward hope and joy?

First, if you are going through sorrow or loss, grief can be a powerhouse for allowing you to feel emotions. Depending on the kind of childhood you experienced, you might have learned to stuff your emotional well-being into a tiny part of yourself, only to come out occasionally and never in front of or with others. Hiding our negative emotions, even from ourselves, is not healthy.

Grief can be the passport you need to go from “everything is fine” to “I’m not okay.” Just as many support groups advise, admitting that something isn’t right is the first key to a breakthrough.

Blessing

Second, the idea of a blessing is usually misunderstood from what it was intended to be. In ancient Hebrew, the term barak means to “kneel” and its cousin, baraka, is a “gift” or a “present.” Many understand the word “blessing” to be one where we get material or physical gain. While these are forms of blessing, they do not adequately illustrate its meaning. To bless someone or something, according to ancient Hebrew, is to kneel or honor as a gift.

When you look at grief as a gift and you welcome it, the growth you undertake is monumental. It takes time, intention, and a willingness to learn. But grief can bring intangible gifts of honor that, without it, you would not have had.

An example is the gift of being honored to serve someone else in their pain. When you’re going through the intensity of grieving, it’s probably not going to mean much to you that you can someday use your path through pain to comfort others.

There are other honoring gifts that grief brings. For example, understanding how your brain recovers from the stress of grieving is another connection that can help you in the long term.

Because our brains are wired with neuroplasticity, we can welcome grief not because we want it but because we recognize that we must walk through it, and it will impact our lives in a way that changes us. Our brains are re-wired after we go through something that causes grief because our brains learn to build new pathways. Some of these pathways lead to new joy, new depth, new compassion, and new hope.

No one would ever ask for something to happen that marks their life with grief. Whether the death of a spouse, the loss of a child, or grief related to a deferred dream or chronic illness, grief hurts. There isn’t any way around it.

But recognizing its power to transform and our brains’ ability to create new circuits reminds us that God made us with a huge capacity to recover from hardship in a way that brings Him honor and allows us growth.

The Positive on the Other Side of Grief

Third, when a person welcomes grief and recognizes avoiding it isn’t going to help, he or she admits that there must be a positive on the other side. Dr. Lisa M. Shulman said that going through the grieving process is designed to protect us. The power of blessing your grief is likened to the power of blessing a car engine light that reminds you to change the oil in your car.

When the “check oil” light comes on in your car, it reminds you that if you don’t take this necessary step in the maintenance of your vehicle, it will burn out and malfunction.

Grief, too, is a warning signal that you must go through this step of the process to continue in the new realm of life. Whether moving on after a divorce or recovering from losing a loved one, going forward in life can’t take place without the grief process.

Dr. Shulman said, “If we don’t work through the traumatic experiences that we have, they will continue to be an obstacle in our lives.”

You may have met someone who hasn’t forgiven a spouse, and they’ve struggled to form deep connections with their new spouse, or they’ve become cynical toward romance, young love, or affection.

This is how we welcome grief. We let ourselves feel, recognize the hardship of it, and do not try to pretend it away. Going through it will protect us from causing our emotional and personal growth to be stunted.

Fourth, you can bless grief and gain power in it because it brings up other areas of ignorance in your own heart. One of the treatments for grief is a combination of therapies. These might include cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness exercises such as journaling, and physical exercise.

Grief Therapy in Harlingen, Texas

To move through grief healthily is to learn positive coping skills that you may have neglected in the past.

Talking regularly to a Christian grief counselor in Harlingen, Texas who uses CBT as a tool in grief counseling is a compassionate rhythm to allow yourself as you heal. CBT helps people recognize negative thought patterns and change their mindset, forming those new brain-wiring pathways that neuroplasticity helps us build.

Other positive types of therapy for grieving include Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Complicated Grief Therapy. Both are tools that a counselor in Harlingen may use to help you welcome or bless the grieving process, even if it is long, takes place in stages, and ebbs and flows.

Additional areas where you may have lived under a cloud of unawareness are physical health and self-care. When we go through a traumatic or painful loss, it often highlights the areas we haven’t been focused on – often because the pace of our lives is too fast and too full.

To embrace grief as part of your healing is also to embrace positive lifestyle changes. They can include physical exercise, adequate nutrition, or developing healthy relational patterns, such as joining a friend for coffee every week. Some research suggests that friendship among seniors is a strengthening force as they face grief in relational losses that come with aging.

Finally, to bless your grief is to invite yourself to be where you are right now. It’s to hold expectations of yourself lightly and to be kind to yourself the way you would be to a friend who is hurting.

The Bible gives Christians an example of grief in a host of people. David prayed for blessings over himself and others in Psalm 144.

He said, “Blessed are the people whose God is the Lord” (Psalm 144:15, ESV) after asking for blessings of all kinds. These “blessing” prayers took place after he had been through nearly every hardship, as had the people he led.

His prayers of blessing didn’t just extend to himself, though. They were “our” prayers because he understood the power of walking with others through our hardships and the circumstances of loss that we all suffer in small and big ways.

Even though his friends didn’t always have the best response, Job’s friends did what was right when he first lost everything. They came and sat with him and didn’t try to make him feel better. They listened, they cried, and they waited. (Job 2:12-13)

As you face grief or you’re helping a friend go through his grief, it’s helpful to invite others on the journey toward healing. At Texas Christian Counseling, Harlingen, we have trained counselors who know how to help with grieving. They know how to do what Job’s friends should have continued doing: listen, wait, and sit with you while you grieve.

Reach out to us today at Texas Christian Counseling in Harlingen, and we can make an appointment for you with a Christian counselor in Harlingen, Texas or a grief support group.