Grief Unannounced
God's Angel of Love
For context:
More than 4.5 year ago, I kissed her goodbye as she left for a 5-week international disaster response trip. We would plan the holidays and try the new Ethiopian restaurant in town when she returned.
I saw her nine days later, after they opened the wood casket for me in a private viewing room at the funeral home.
You resume normal everyday activities at some point. Working, exercising, cooking, parenting, socializing, church ministry. You might look the same, but your life is different. You suffered heart damage, It didn’t kill you, but it changed your life forever.
Normal socializing suggests regular interactions with men and women every day. But it’s never really “normal.”
A tour of a winery where you are the only one going solo.
Solo attendance at school events.
An invitation to a social event that ends with “please bring your spouse.” (I was out after that addendum because I was immediately the fifth wheel).
I have found ways to enjoy life. Solo restaurant dining is not a problem. The winery tour was actually fun. I have a newfound and revised love for upper midwestern lake life.
What hasn’t changed is a deep longing to be with her. To share those life moments. To this day, I occasionally think reflexively, “I can’t wait to tell her all about this.”
Occupying yourself with work and necessary personal business is part of normal living. 2026 has been intense, with surgery, some white-knuckled medical tests, a painful professional trial, and a joyous breakthrough in priestly ministry. Not to mention college visits with the kid.
It’s a lot. And it was distracting me from the one thing I want - to be with her.
I can’t have that - not now, anyway, though I refuse to dismiss the possibility that we can have some marital “dates” in the afterlife, even if stuffy theologians might mock my youthful dreams.
You can only suppress grief and the pain that comes with it for so long. I let grief come in the door yesterday, or rather, grief forced it open past my tired defenses. I had to spend some time with that pain of yearning not to be fulfilled, not now, anyway.
I know that God has solved this problem for me and I just need to wait.
I just wish, sometimes, that God would send someone other than grief to hang with me in the waiting room we call earth.
But I am still learning that grief is the angel of love. And maybe grief is telling me that she feels the pain of separation, too. I would really like to know.
Grief arrived unannounced yesterday and will be spending some time with me.
Let her in. Because grief’s surprise is that she is an angel of love. Godly love.