Article August 4, 2008 Issue

WHEN GRIEF RECEDES

BY LAURA HILL

A YEAR AGO, I felt as if I was drowning in mental chaos and grief—not knowing how to find the surface of the waters. My mom had passed away, and dealing with her absence was by far the hardest trial I'd ever faced. Struggling to reconcile my feelings of sorrow, I felt betrayed by my own spiritual studies. No amount of reassurance that God was still loving and caring for me, and for my mom, seemed to help. I felt that I was losing my faith.

There were plenty of symptoms that this grief boasted: isolation, doubt, fear, and sadness. And they seemed just as crippling as a physical ailment. I began to feel that I was somehow separated from God.

But intuitively, I knew that the inharmony riling up my thoughts was not from God, who I'd learned is divine Love itself. One day, two important questions came to me: Could I ever really be apart from God? And had God ever changed? Stories from the Bible reminded me that I wasn't the first one to feel paralyzed by anguish.