A Grief Expert Replies:

Dear Anon,

Thanks for your note and question.

We are familiar with Psalms, 30:5, one of the translations of which is: For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.

If you look closely at the whole section, you realize that it is a parable with an implied time component, and is not intended to be literal. We realize that you understand that since you ask so poignantly when that morning will come.

And while the poetry of the phrase is powerful, it can be limiting in that it sets you up to ask when it will happen for you—and perhaps for your daughter as well.

But within both the scripture and your question, there resides a problem, that being the implication that time is a healer of emotional wounds. But if so, then even five years is not enough? Or ten or twenty and so on?

Time can’t heal or complete an emotional wound. Time only can pass. It is the actions that we take within time that can help us move forward in response to the tragedies that tear us apart.

Please go to the library or bookstore and get a copy of The Grief Recovery Handbook. Read it and take the actions it outlines. As you do, you will sense a real shift in how you feel, and with it, hopefully, a new morning.

We’d like to add that if you get the book and take the actions and feel a shift, your daughter will see the changes in you and may feel encouraged to want to take those actions for her own heart.

From our hearts to yours,

Russell And John