Give it Time

“For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build up. A time to cry and a time to laugh. A time to grieve and a time to dance. A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones. A time to embrace and a time to turn away. A time to search and time to quit searching. A time to keep and a time to throw away. A time to tear and a time to mend. A time to be quiet and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace.” Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

I want you to think about where you were September 11, 2001. Were you at work or school? In or near New York City or Washington, DC? I know where I was. 8th grade, Upper Marlboro, MD. I was new to the area as my family had just moved back to the states from Germany just a couple months before when my mom was re-stationed to work at the Pentagon. She wasn’t there just yet as she had some preliminary work to complete in Virginia first, but that didn’t stop my heart from pounding when I heard from my English teacher that the Twin Towers in NYC and the Pentagon had been struck by planes. It’s not hard for me to recall that day’s events, as the country and the world were forever changed by what had taken place. For many, it became a source of Grief as they lost loved ones and a sense of security. And even though this happened almost 20 years ago, there are some who have not gotten over this experience.

How is that possible? How can it be that people are still feeling the effects of something that happened before an entire generation that lives today was even thought about or named? How are people still Grieving this loss? The answer to that is both complex, and simple. Complex because we could break down the effects of trauma, PTSD, anxiety and depression. We could look at the effects of this event on our country’s politics and economics. And we could even look at how society evolved with race and religious relations after this. Those big picture components to dealing with this are just some of the complexities that are involved with this. But the simple side of it, is that the number one component when dealing with any type of Grief or loss… is time.

Time. Moving away from the 9/11 event and thinking about any loss that we experience in life, the one thing that they all have in common is the time it takes to learn to live with it, cope from it, and (if we’re fortunate enough) move on from it, is time. The bible tells us “For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1) And that means Grief as well. God gives us room to feel things and time to deal with them. But what happens when we don’t give Grief the time it needs to be felt? What happens when we rush the process, or prolong it?

When we suppress our feelings because we convince ourselves that we don’t have time to be sad, or worse, don’t deserve to be sad about it, we cause an emotional imbalance in ourselves that can be difficult to recover from. It could cause us to blow up at people who are undeserving of our emotional outbursts, or maybe develop unhealthy coping mechanisms because we stunt our emotional growth by not allowing ourselves to feel. When I think about moving on from a Grieving situation, I always remember that “Rome wasn’t built in day.” That simple phrase reminds me that I don’t have to rush to being ok with something I’m not. The same is true for you. It’s ok for you to take the time necessary to work through your feelings so you don’t have to keep feeling them the same way. On the flip side, we don’t want to take too long to work through our Grief either. That doesn’t mean there’s a set time frame that everyone should subscribe to, BUT there is a time frame, unique to everyone, for moving forward with grief. And the best way to figure out how much time that should be, is by making sure you’re actually feeling it.

What I love about Ecclesiastes 3 is that it doesn’t just talk about the good, or the bad, but gives room for everything we encounter. Love, hate, work, rest, life, death, rejoicing and Grief. They all have their time in our lives when they are relevant and it’s up to us to give them the right amount of time. And when we struggle with knowing what that time is, God gives us resources to working through that! Family, friends, leaders, and therapists can all help with the Grief journey and making sure it’s happening on the right timeline. So whether you’re dealing with a loss from yesterday, or the pangs of a loss nearly 20 years old, just remember that as long as you’re dealing with it… to give it time.