Musings on Grief and Conversion, Part One

You don’t have to be on this board for very long before reading that the grieving process takes a very long time, that waves of grief will hit us again and again, that even many years down the road, the anniversary of our beloved’s death will have the power to knock the wind out of us. I am beginning to think that grief is actually a lifelong process.

We are at the midpoint of Great Lent, the time set aside for self-examination before God and repentance in preparation for the great feast of Pascha. This year I have been broken open and laid out utterly naked before God. Yet I have not found my way to "repentance." I cannot get through my grief to find that mindset in my heart or head..

But what is repentance? And how am I connecting it to grief? In the broadest possible terms repentance is turning away from that which separates us from God — or if you are not a religious person, turning away from that which prevents us from reaching our fullest human potential. It is turning away from a place of brokenness and death and turning toward restoration and life. Repentance is actually a lifelong conversion (which literally means “turning around”) process. It’s not something we do once and are done with forever. We must always be examining ourselves to reject the darkness within and embrace the eternal light.

And the work of grief is similar: I have been dragged down into the maws of death, brought face to face with the darkest enemy of the human heart. I must turn away from death — even though it is has seized my beloved — and turn toward life. I must turn away from the life I loved so profoundly and turn toward a new life. I must be willing to change from the woman I was to the woman God wants me to be now. And this is work, powerfully hard work, brutally painful work.

And I think that like the work of conversion, the work of grief may never be done. It may become easier, may become more integrated into my person, but it may, like conversion, be the work of a lifetime. The Greek word for repentance is metanoia, a word that implies a total transformation of one’s thinking and understanding. And surely this is what grief demands of me.