At first, grief is a tsunami. It comes in fast and hard—suffocating, merciless, all-encompassing. It roars across the landscape of your life and leaves nothing untouched. In time, even with the most devastating losses, the waves that feel as though they will never end finally retreat. But they do not reveal the former bright shore with its gentle surf and familiar horizon. They leave behind a new coastline, foreign and rearranged. Your friends are still living on their tropical islands, and you watch them in wonder, almost like an angel peering in, trying to understand humanity. Your island is forever altered … and a little more empty.
The tsunamis cease, and in their place come intermittent storms. They still strike with force. Waves rise and crash, threatening to pull you under again. They arrive without warning: a holiday, a milestone, or an ordinary Tuesday that suddenly refuses to stay ordinary.
The pictures on social media of your friends’ intact families and marriages feel less like shared celebration and more like a paper cut. You “like” their posts. You cheer their accomplishments. You are a good friend. Yet there is a sting in the love. Is it envy? Why did my life turn upside down while yours remained standing? Why did fate knock on my door and pass yours by?
I think it’s envy. Yes, it’s envy. And envy is a cruel master. It steals your joy. It pits friends against friends. It hardens hearts and blinds us to mercy. Envy keeps our eyes fixed on what is missing and shadows what remains. It whispers, incorrectly, that God has been kinder to someone else.
Gratitude is the radical rebellion.
The hurt does not disappear, but like a storm, the pain moves on. Gratitude anchors us when the wind rises. The blessings we carry—even when life has unfolded differently than we’d dreamed—cry out to be noticed. Clean water to a person in a village without a well is an unimaginable luxury, and yet I have let that crystal clear liquid flow from my faucets with barely an acknowledgement.
Gratitude lifts our spirits. It draws us out of the small, airless room of self-pity and into the wide, warm embrace of grace. It teaches us to give thanks for a warm bed, a full refrigerator, a paid electric bill—daily bread provided again and again. Gratitude reminds us that though this is not the life we would have chosen, it is still a life held in the faithful hands of the One who chooses us.
Grief is a hard beast. It is right to feel it, to voice it, to weep beneath its weight. Scripture never asks us to pretend the valley is not dark. But we are not commanded to build our homes there. The same God who sends the rain also brings the bloom. And so, even with tear-stained faces, we lift our eyes and whisper thanks for the spring rain that nourishes bright flowers.