I honestly thought we only grieve and mourn for people we lose in our lives. But the past few months have taught me that we can also grieve for the future we wanted so badly for ourselves — the one we had to give up in order to follow God’s leading.
I used to think grieving wasn’t necessary to close that chapter of my life — that it was silly to bargain (and be angry) with the One who holds the blueprint of my life, and that after saying “yes” to His leading, I could just skip straight to acceptance and move forward. But it took me almost a year to realize that letting go of life plans — abandoning the future you’ve worked on for so long — is also like the death of one’s old self. And you can’t fully carry on to the next phase until you process that loss.
Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. My denial phase lasted for almost a year. I denied the fact that I was holding so much anger in my heart, and I gaslit myself into believing I had already accepted my fate because I was afraid of getting angry at God.
My anger came in three phases: my anger toward God lasted only a few weeks, followed by anger at myself for about a month, and then an odd stage where my anger morphed into some strange, heavy ball of emotion that hovered over me. When that ball finally lifted, I entered a bargaining-and-depression loop that went on for months.
As I assess myself now, I think I’m in that uncomfortable space between the depression phase and the acceptance phase — there is already acceptance, yet I’m still engulfed by immense sadness over something I cannot control. I’m not sure how long I’ll be in this place.
The way DABDA was explained to us in psychiatric nursing class made me believe it was a point-D-to-point-A process — that once you reached acceptance, you wouldn’t go back to bargaining, or that you couldn’t experience depression and anger at the same time. But this experience, caused by years of disobedience, has taught me otherwise: grieving, like healing, is not linear. I might be stuck in a depression-and-acceptance limbo for years before I finally lock in on full acceptance. Or I might briefly revisit anger before jumping straight to acceptance. Or I might bargain again with God. We’ll never know.
But one thing is certain: He is with me through it all — through limbos and valleys, through level paths and steep climbs, through songs of praise and grateful sighs, and even through the fits I throw when I want things done my way. In every phase I must go through, my Heavenly Father is holding my hand. His love, grace, and mercy will sustain me on this journey.
