When Grief Comes to Visit
This week, I am writing to you from Unity Village, where I have been attending the Affiliated New Thought Network (ANTN) conference. I am surrounded by spiritual teachers, ministers, friends, laughter, hugs, prayer, music, and an extraordinary amount of love. And yet, strangely enough, I have also been surrounded by grief.
It has surprised me this week. Grief has come over me without warning. One moment I am completely present, enjoying a conversation or walking across these beautiful grounds, and the next moment, there it is. A wave. Sometimes tears. Sometimes exhaustion. Sometimes irritation or anger. Sometimes simply a deep ache that I cannot quite put into words.
I am learning not to fight it. Instead, I am asking myself a different question: What does my soul need right now? Sometimes the answer is prayer. Sometimes it is meditation. Sometimes I need to take a nap. Sometimes I need to step away from everyone, put the leashes on the dogs, and go for a walk. I notice the trees. I feel the ground beneath my feet. I breathe the air. I listen. I become present again.
And I am realizing that these spiritual practices are not ways of escaping grief. They are ways of making room for it. Perhaps that is part of the medicine for grief. We pray. We meditate. We walk. We breathe. We rest. We connect with Mother Earth. We allow ourselves to cry. And perhaps most importantly, we give ourselves an enormous amount of grace.
There is no correct way to grieve. Grief may look like tears today and laughter tomorrow. It may look like anger in the morning and gratitude by afternoon. We can be having a wonderful day and suddenly feel sadness wash over us. None of that means we have gone backward. It simply means we have loved.
And I am discovering something else this week: grief needs community. What a gift that my grief has chosen to visit while I am surrounded by people who love me. I don't have to explain everything. I don't have to pretend I'm okay. I don't have to put on my minister hat and have all the answers. I can simply be Bobby—and allow myself to be held by a community of love.
Tomorrow, I will stand here at Unity Village and receive my Doctor of Divinity degree from Emerson Theological Institute. I will also have the incredible honor of delivering the commencement address. There is tremendous joy in that. And there is grief. Both are true. Maybe spiritual maturity isn't learning how to eliminate one so we can experience the other. Maybe it is developing the capacity to hold both—to discover that a heart can break and expand at the very same time.
This week has reminded me that our spiritual practices aren't only for the mountaintops. They are especially important in the valleys. They become the places where we can rest when life becomes too heavy to carry by ourselves.
So, if grief comes to visit you, don't rush it out the door. Sit with it. Breathe with it. Walk with it. Pray with it. Let someone who loves you sit beside you. And above all, give yourself grace. Because grief is not the absence of faith. Grief is love learning how to live in a new form. And sometimes the most spiritual thing we can do is simply allow ourselves to feel it.
With love and gratitude, Rev. Dr. Bobby Kyser
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