How to Wait on God During Grief and Sorrow
Learning how to wait on God is hard, especially during grief and sorrow. If you are grieving, may you find hope and inspiration in Cecille’s story.
I needed to get home fast! I visited this place often, but it still felt foreign. I looked for landmarks and remembered a theater nearby where cabs were accessible.
I tried to find it, but it was nowhere in sight. As I aimlessly wandered around, I ended up in a dark, narrow alley.
Frantic, I fumbled with my phone and dialed my dad’s number. I asked him to pick me up. He said I was too far but said he would come.
After I hung up, I realized I had given him the city but not my exact location.
Though the moon and streetlights barely lit the area, I recognized cop cars parked on the other side of the road, but I didn’t approach them.
A guy selling merchandise and probably sensing I was lost kindly offered me a ride home. He said I could trust him. According to him, he had a code and uttered some numbers.
Confused by what he said, my guard went up and I skedaddled away. Frustrated and desperate, I kept walking and found myself in the middle of a rugged, windy road in a mountainous area.
Suddenly, I was jolted awake. The pounding on my chest woke me up. I realized I had a nightmare.
How to Wait on God During Grief
The emotions I felt in that bizarre dream echoed the feelings I had after the death of my dad, the loss of our two fur babies, and the passing of two close friends within three months.
Bewildered. Disoriented. Disconnected. Frustrated. Lost. Off kilter.
Losing my dad was tough enough, but losing several people and pets at such close intervals compounded my grief.
Grief took me through that barely lit, narrow alley causing a tightness in my chest that squeezed the air from my lungs. Darkness surrounded me and I looked for means to get out and back into the light, back home, back to my safety and peace.
Two weeks after we buried my dad and said goodbye to our dogs, I bought a ten-gallon aquarium and signed up for a multilevel marketing company to start a business I knew nothing about.
When my husband came home from work and I told him about it, he asked me “Why?”
My daughter posed the same question.
I had no answers.
The tremendous stress grief brings tends to cause us to make rash decisions.
As the days went by, I realized this was my way of distracting myself from my grief, of looking for landmarks—of finding the sense of responsibility and purpose, I had when I served my dad as his full-time caregiver but lost when he died.
I wanted to get back into a routine and the rhythm of life. Though caring for him was difficult, everything was in sync after a few years. I had it dialed in, and I found joy, peace, contentment, and productivity in my service, my writing, my ministry, and my time.
Grief also caused me to add undue pressure upon myself to heal and overcome my sorrow, without realizing the impact it had on me. I wanted to get out of this unfamiliar, and uncomfortable place fast.
Grief affected the management and use of my time. Although I had more time on my hands, I accomplished little. I longed for that place where I was before my present reality, where though my schedule was filled with things to do, I completed most if not all of them and at the end of the day felt satisfied.
But grief caused me to confront emotions and things I was not acquainted with.
Forgetfulness. Confusion. Aimlessness.
My counselor told me this was to be expected. He explained that grief causes us to lose focus and motivation. I needed to give myself time and space to process and heal.
Grief indeed was a nightmare to me. I’ve had similar nightmares before, but I always awoke with a sense of peace. Why did I wake up from this last one feeling shaken? Was I not learning how to wait on God during my grief?
Responding to Grief
To answer this question, I tried recalling the earlier literal nightmares I had and remembered that midway through them, I called on Jesus to rescue me and He did.
I woke up feeling peace, not panic. This was the obvious difference. In my most recent nightmare, I did not call on Him.
Sometimes when we are caught in situations that overwhelm us, and throw us off-balance, we tend to seek old ways that comfortably cocooned us, ways we were accustomed to that gave us equilibrium and peace—the familiar routines that kept our boats from being buffeted by the winds and kept them steadily adrift, floating in serenity.
We desperately look to be back to “The Way We Were” as Barbara Streisand’s song goes.
I adamantly pointed this out to my bereavement counselor on one of my visits with him. I loved and delighted in the way God talked to me early in the morning during my meditation times spent delving into His Word, underlining, encircling, listening, and then hearing from Him.
These were the times when I felt His peace, His love, His joy. But suddenly, though I tried to go back to that old routine and do what I used to do, I couldn’t do it.
I was too unsettled deep inside; I was sinking deep into the waters of my circumstances, and I didn’t call on Him for help. I was not learning how to wait on God.
I listened to my counselor’s calm, supportive, empathetic, and compassionate response, “God can speak to you in different ways, Cecille, maybe He is speaking to you differently in this new season of your life.”
I heard his words and agreed with him, but my brain still tightly held on to how I envisioned things to go—my stubbornness desperately wanted control that was out of my reach.
Reflecting on his words after my visit evoked images of the story of Jesus walking on water that one stormy night and Peter asking Him to walk on the water with Him.
Jesus told him to do so, and Peter did perfectly until he looked at the wind and began to sink (Matthew 14:22-33). Jesus was with the disciples amid that wild, windy, stormy night. He was with Peter. But it was Peter who took his eyes off Jesus.
As I processed my counselor’s words and Peter’s story over time, the Holy Spirit nudged me to the truth that Jesus was with me in this wild, stormy season I was in.
He knew what I was going through, and He was in control. I needed to keep my eyes on Him and not on the howling wind or the whooshing waves of my circumstances. I needed to call on Him as Peter did.
And finally, I called Jesus for help. And He spoke to me. During my quiet times, He opened my eyes to the word He repeatedly highlighted for me, “Wait.”
“Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD.” Psalm 27:14.
Psalm 39:7, “And now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in You.”
“I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in His Word I hope.” Psalm 130:5
Isaiah 40:31 tells us, “But they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”
The Strongs’ definition of the Hebrew word for wait is “to bind together, to expect, to tarry.”
Jesus was not in the business of rushing to do things. He waited. He took the time to pray and commune with His Father.
In the familiar story of Jesus resurrecting Lazarus from the dead, we find Jesus waiting for two days before He went after word was sent that Lazarus was gravely ill (John 11:1-16).
In the wait, Lazarus died. Jesus then told His disciples that Lazarus was asleep and that He was going to wake him up.
Misunderstanding what Jesus meant, the disciples told Him that since Lazarus was asleep, he would wake up and recover and He didn’t need to go.
They cautioned Him from going to Judea where His and His disciples’ lives would be in danger.
Jesus waited for the perfect time and circumstance so that their faith may grow and they may see His glory.
The Purpose of Waiting on God
Indeed, there is a purpose in waiting on God. Accepting and understanding how to wait on God helps us heal.
2 Ways to Find Purpose
1)Waiting on God gives Us time:
- To process through our circumstances and our sorrow.
- To grieve.
- To let our body, mind, and spirit acclimatize to our current realities.
- To see His purpose in our trial.
2)Waiting on God gives God time:
- To do His work in us.
- To prepare us and open the eyes of our hearts and souls to see God in action.
- To recognize God is in control.
- To allow His glory to shine as He shows His faithfulness and power.
Friend, if you have lost someone, I know you’ve felt those emotions I felt, too.
There is no right or wrong way to grieve. The healing process unfolds differently for everyone and it’s essential to honor one’s journey.
How to Wait on God in Prayer
As you reflect on your grief, and embrace how to wait on God I invite you to bind yourself to the Lord with me in your journey through this nightmare of grief.
Call on Him.
Cling to Him.
Keep your eyes on Him.
Give yourself time to be still and know He is God (Psalm 46:10).
Grief might look like darkness and a nightmare to us, but there is no darkness God’s light can’t illuminate, no storm He could not calm down.
Psalm 139:11-12 tells us, “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,’ even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.”
Although waiting can be difficult as we grieve, let’s allow God to carry the weight of our sorrow as we lean on Him and wait for Him to heal us and restore our peace.
When we wait on Him and relinquish our desire for control over to Him, He can do what He wants to do the way He sees fit. Then when the time is ripe, we will see His glory unfold before our eyes.
My prayer for you and me as we learn how to wait on God during grief:
Make me know Your ways, O LORD; Teach me Your paths. Lead me in Your truth and teach me. For You are the God of my salvation; For You, I wait all the day.
Psalm 24: 4-5 ESV
Author
Cecille Valoria
Cecille desires to be a woman after God’s own heart. She finds expression of her passion in discipling and encouraging others through her devotional writing, blog, Facebook groups, newsletters, and her podcast, Digging Deep for Treasures with Cecille Valoria. Cecille published her memoir/self-help book, Slaying your Fear Giants in November 2019 and collaborated on the devotional Life Changing Stories.
