I’m sure you’ve experienced that burning sensation in your lungs, the tears stuck burning in your eyes, and the realization that your body cannot move. If you were to move, you would be brought back to face the reality that they are no longer here, and that nothing can fix it. Your mind looks for a reason for it to not be true, but there is no morphine to numb the pain. There is no magic spell to bring them back, and your God is far away, nowhere to be found.

Within three years, five people who had a great impact on my life passed away. Meanwhile, close friends of mine—who had experienced great losses of their own in that time frame—were expecting a baby. I thought “Finally, God is giving us some life after all this death. About time.” I felt God owed us—that He owed my friends and me joy and life. I was wrong. God owes us nothing. He can take nothing from us because we have nothing to offer Him except that which He has given to us. God took back my friends’ precious baby, and all I felt was anger. I was angry with God because of my losses, and I felt extreme guilt. How could I be angry with my Creator? I thought my anger was a lack of faith—until I realized that I was angry because I did have faith. I know my God can do all things, and if it were His will, the situation would be different. I was angry that His will was not my will, and that my will was not His. My anger was my unsurrendered will, but my anger was also my faith.

If we continue to look at the world and our situation, we will never be satisfied, and we will only focus on our own misery. In his letter to the Colossians, Paul says, “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things” (3:1-2, NIV). Yes, our miseries are real and painful, and—on this side of heaven—will always be present; however, we are not the only ones suffering, nor are we suffering alone. There is peace when we look to God and the friends and family who mourn with us. Peace is made present in little things that remind us of our beloved. Peace is carried to us through the power of the Holy Spirit. It does not fix the pain, or make us stop feeling sad. Rather, it gives us hope in the permanence of not going back; hope to finish the race, where our loved ones and our God are waiting at the finish line.

With loss, sometimes we feel we lose parts of ourselves or that there is less of ourselves without the person we loved. My grandmother was one of the loved ones I lost within the last three years. When she died, I thought I lost so much of who I was: The reason I became a musician, teacher, and Christian. However, although she may have inspired me and challenged me in those areas, she was not the reason for them. Those parts of my identity are not gone because my Nana is gone—they are gifts from God that He used to connect us. My identity is in Christ. He gave me my identity, and I have chosen to give it back to Him. He is the one who makes us whole. I am not trying to minimize the size of loss, but rather emphasize how big God is in the midst of it. Even in the midst of such hurt, it is important to be clear: If we let the loss of our loved one become our identity, we have made them an idol. Do not hide idolatry behind grief. There is a balance of feeling and living through our grief while continuing to submit it to the Father. It is not a linear process, so do not lose hope or patience.

Christians might let death sting them—for a moment. But then we remember Paul quoting Hosea: “O death where is your victory. O death where is your sting?” For those who hope in Christ, He gives us victory and takes away the sting, despair, and death itself. He weeps with us and over us, because our Redeemer came to be one of us. The Bible gives us an account of Christ’s own grief for a reason—Jesus wept over the death of His friend Lazarus. Grief is not the sting of death. It is love, hidden by a distance we are not able to travel. Therefore, we cling to our Savior, or more accurately, He holds on to us. We do not need to do the work of trying to make ourselves “right” in the eyes of God in our grief. All we need to do is put one foot in front of the other toward where He calls us. Corrie Ten Boom, a Holocaust survivor and author, reminds us that “Every experience God gives us, every person in our lives, is the perfect preparation for the future only He can see.” The experience may not be perfect, but God’s preparation is.

With each loss, I have experienced great pain in feeling left behind, and simultaneous peace in the knowledge that death is not our end. That is why God has given us grief, to let us feel the full extent of our love and bring us nearer to a Father waiting to wrap His everlasting arms around us. It seems impossible, but our God sits with us in patience and love. He does not expect you to “get over it.” He does not expect you to put on a face for others and force yourself to be happy for the sake of their comfort.

Share your grief with God. He delights in you and desires to be nearer to you—as near as you will let Him.