Grief and the Divine Love of Letting Go

These past handful of months have been hard.

You know that saying, “loving means letting go?” Well, it couldn’t be more true and couldn’t be more difficult. Those closest to me I love with such fierceness that my body is in physical pain when they are hurting. It takes a lot for me to let go of a friendship in my adulthood, and the few times it’s happened it’s because I want what is best for them.

Some months ago, I lost one of the closest friendships I’ve ever had. Their last words cut like knives, but I see pain behind their eyes where only God can meet it with a salve. The social isolation of this strange time allows more time to remember the hurt and feel it even more deeply. I’ve overworked myself to keep the isolation as minimal as possible, and my brain fog gets bad some days. I simultaneously want to sit in melancholy and run from it.

I love this friend so deeply and there aren’t enough words to describe the goodness in them, and the absolute joy they brought into my life. My heart hurts, and I am grieving. I feel it like a death, where the wound seems to sit slightly open even as I continue on creating a life for myself with God.

I think that’s the way God feels; hurting when a relationship with God’s child is broken. God is the queen of loving by letting go; giving us free will to recognize the Divine within and around us freely. Ultimately God wants union with us; without control or coercion, and in freedom. Yet God never stops loving and caring for us, even in the midst of rejection. There is no fear or manipulation in love; but loving something will eventually bring us pain.