When Grief Won't Wait
The weight you swallow doesn't disappear — it settles deeper
Grief has a way of hitting hard when you least expect it. For me, most often whilst I'm driving, because that's when I can't run or bury it in busyness. I thought I was going to be okay with this loss when the tears didn't come straight away after I heard the news on Sunday. This morning on my way to The Crate it hit so hard the tears were streaming down my cheeks. Then I swallowed them. Got busy. Focused on the job at hand — and for a time I forgot about the weight on my chest.
More about his legacy here: https://patriziaschwartz.com/my-story/when-a-good-and-faithful-servant-goes-home
Oom Leon is the third significant death in less than a year. Aunty Delice, my spiritual mom, in August. My mother-in-law in March. Now him — another anchor, another spiritual father, the one who wrapped fatherly love around a 19-year-old, another absence that arrived like an old friend you'd already said goodbye to twice over.
Two months ago we celebrated his 80th birthday, and I've been watching and waiting for this moment ever since. No amount of expectation can prepare you for the day when it finally arrives. You can anticipate it. You can hold it in your hands, turn it over, prepare your heart — and still, when the moment comes, the weight hits differently. Harder. Final.
Tonight, on my way to Ellerslie for my first monthly gathering as PSANZ administrator, even the 45 minutes driving through the sobbing didn't lift the weight of the grief I'm feeling. Still, I had to contain it when I got there. Can't have a bunch of speakers see me unravel on the job now, can I?🤔
So I did what I know how to do.
I showed up.
I smiled.
I focused.
I served.
I did the job at hand.
Somewhere beneath all that competence, however, grief was still sitting quietly on my chest. It hadn't disappeared. I had simply swallowed it again.
✍️There is a peculiar grief in losing someone you have already had to learn to live without. Distance teaches you how to carry their absence while they are still somewhere in the world. You learn to live without the ordinary things: the visits, the conversations, the familiar presence, the possibility of simply showing up at their door. Yet somewhere inside you remains the quiet comfort that they are still there.
Death changes that.
It closes a door that distance had merely left far away.
Perhaps that is why this grief feels so heavy tonight.
Then the body tells the truth.
The tears that didn't come on Sunday were never proof that the grief wasn't there. They were only waiting. 🌱
There is no rushing this.
There is no rushing me.
I don't need to make this grief smaller so that other people are comfortable with it.
I don't need to turn sorrow into a lesson before I have finished feeling the loss.
I don't need to be "okay" yet.
There will be time to remember all that Oom Leon gave me. There will be time to tell the stories and honour the spiritual father who wrapped fatherly love around that 19-year-old girl. There will be time to recognise what his love planted in me and what grew from those seeds.
Tonight, perhaps it is enough simply to acknowledge:
I miss him.
This hurts.
I am grieving.
📖 "Jesus wept." — John 11:35 (NKJV)
So can I.
This is my story for His glory.
Grief may arrive without invitation, yet it does not arrive in a place where God is absent. Tonight, the stone may still feel heavy. Tomorrow, it may too. There is no deadline for laying it down. For now, perhaps healing begins simply here: no longer swallowing the tears, no longer pretending the weight has disappeared, and allowing Jesus to sit beside me in the place where love has become grief. After all, grief weighs this much precisely because love mattered this much.
- What would it mean to stop swallowing the tears and let yourself grieve — really grieve — without the pressure to function?🤔
- That 19-year-old who received his fatherly love — what did she need most in that season, and what has she become because of his presence?🤔
- What if your grief is not a weakness that disqualifies you from leading, but a depth that makes you more faithful to those you serve?🤔
- Where have you mistaken functioning well for actually being okay?🤔
- What grief have you been carrying quietly because life kept asking you to keep moving?🤔
- What might happen if you stopped waiting for permission and simply allowed yourself to mourn?🤔
I do not have to rush my grief. My tears are not evidence of weak faith, nor does sorrow cancel the hope I have in Christ. Jesus Himself wept in the presence of death. I can be faithful and heartbroken. I can lead and grieve. I can serve others whilst acknowledging that my own heart needs tenderness too. The weight I have swallowed does not have to remain buried inside me. I can bring it into the presence of Jesus, one tear, one memory, one breath at a time. There is no rushing this. There is no rushing me. God will meet me here.
Lord Jesus, Tonight I don't have polished words. I simply have a heavy heart. Thank You for Oom Leon. Thank You for the fatherly love he wrapped around that 19-year-old girl all those years ago. Thank You for every seed he planted, every kindness, every moment of belonging and every way his life became part of mine. Thank You for Aunty Delice. Thank You for my mother-in-law. Thank You for the people whose lives became woven into mine so deeply that their absence now hurts. Lord, I have lost some of them twice — first through distance and circumstances, and now through death. You know the particular ache of that. You know every goodbye I have already carried and every goodbye I am carrying again. Teach me not to swallow what needs to be wept. When I instinctively reach for busyness, sit with me in the quiet. When the tears come unexpectedly in the car, let them come. When my chest feels heavy and I realise I have been holding my breath, remind me that I am safe in Your presence. You did not despise grief. You wept. Meet me in mine. Hold all these people I love in the places where my own hands can no longer reach them, and hold my heart as I learn once again how to live with absence. There is no rushing this, Lord. There is no rushing me. Walk with me gently through it. In Jesus' Name, Amen.
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