While preparing for our last move, I wrote about the regret I felt at not having put down deeper roots during our time in Northern Virginia. When we had moved there, I was trying to cope with the loss of the special community we had just left behind. I was weary of navigating grief and afraid of accumulating more, so I opted to put down shallow roots.
I still made friends and we were still part of a lovely church, but my efforts to connect were tentative at best. Despite my attempts to avoid grief, I learned that it is part of the process, whether you invest a little or a lot into the place you find yourself and the people you meet there.
I have tried to do things differently this time. There are a number of people we've grown to love here; we've invited them into our lives and have, in turn, been welcomed into theirs. We are part of a vibrant and friendly church, we've become regulars at bookstores, coffee shops, and the wine shop around the corner, and there are neighborhood rhythms that have become a part of our family rhythm--all the things that make a place feel like home and all the things that contribute to a sense of loss at the thought of leaving.
When we found out in July that we'll be moving back to the States a year earlier than we anticipated, I could feel the grief close at hand, and I could sense the temptation to disengage in an effort to soften the blow of the coming goodbyes. But then I heard a definition of grief that provided a timely paradigm shift in how I understand grief. It has helped me to remain engaged even in moments when I feel a preemptive sadness for what we're about to lose.
The definition is this: Grief is assigning value to that which we've lost.
Simple and succinct but profoundly helpful for enduring and redeeming the pain that comes with loss. It's a powerful definition in that it provides those who grieve with agency. Rather than grief only being something that happens to us, it can also be our chosen response to the loss of something or someone valuable to our lives. Our grief can be a declaration of that which we've lost as worthy of our love and worthy of the pain we experience in our bereavement.
Military life, or any life that involves putting down temporary roots, is a unique situation in that we know our time in a place will be brief, and so, to some degree, we can calculate our future losses and choose our grief. We can attempt to avoid grief by not connecting with the people or places in our temporary home or we can choose to declare the people we encounter and befriend as valuable and worthy of the pain we'll experience when we say goodbye.
I'm not sure this definition has made it easier to feel the sorrow as we prepare to move. It's just as painful as before. But it has made it easier to bear it. Knowing that the grief is a proof of the value I've assigned to these friendships transforms the pain of loss from something diminishing to something generative.
Much like a seed cracking itself open so that a new, heartier life can emerge, the grief that comes from saying goodbye to the people and places we value and who have, in turn, added value to our lives, does the uncomfortable work of growth. As Parker Palmer puts it, and as I've quoted before and will probably go on quoting, "we could also think of it as a heart broken open to greater capacity to hold the whole range of human experience.”
As Paul says in his letter to the Thessalonians, "we do not grieve as those who have no hope."
He's referring to death and resurrection--we know death does not have the final say. Christ defeated death when he died and rose again, and we'll see those who've died in Christ again. But I think these words can apply to all loss. We can grieve every hope we bury, every friendship we release with goodbye, knowing that they won't ultimately end in diminishment. Instead, when we bring the pain of loss to Christ, he can transform it from the small seed of a hope deferred to a deeply rooted, growing, expansive faith.