Kristin, thank you for sharing Kimberly's article with us. I think this is an insightful and practical way to think about and consider the grieving process. She is right (and you are as well) to claim that we are not very good at grieving or even entering into the dark night of the soul. I take some of my queues here from Anne Lamott, who rightfully claims that we as Protestants have a preoccupation with Easter over Good Friday... i.e. we are more comfortable in the celebration of life then the pain of it. But she continues that there is no Easter without Good Friday.

On that note, I think we can learn a great deal from our Orthodox Jewish friends, who actively enter into grieving at the point of loss (most noticeably in the death of a loved one). For the year following the loss, the family moves through the grieving process in a tangible and corporal sense; by giving up things that are a daily part of life, so that the loss enters into all parts of life. Over the course of that year, these things are slowly restored to daily living, as a way of reminding them of the redemption they await. Now, for Christians who already live in the redemption of Christ crucified and resurrected, this act of foregoing things might seem misguided, but I think it can help us to understand grieving as a slow and methodological process.

If anything, I am daily reminded by Makhail Bakhtin argument that empathy can be the height of arrogance. Which I think is exactly what Kimberly hit on my stating the down fall of comparing and the need for present silence when helping someone (or oneself) through grieving.

Thanks again for providing a space for this level of thinking to take place! Be blessed!