Grief & Loss
Everyone around me is crying and I feel nothing at all. I have not cried once since he died. Does that mean something is wrong with me?
“Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate.”
David reaches for the word Hebrew uses of laid waste ground, land emptied and left, to describe what is going on inside him. It is not the vocabulary of turmoil. It is the vocabulary of flatness. Scripture has language for going numb as well as for weeping, and it is already sitting in Israel's prayer book waiting for whoever needs it.
“Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”
Paul tells the Roman church that we often do not know what we ought to be praying for, and that the Spirit steps in with groanings too deep for words. He is describing prayer with no words available to it at all. If your grief has gone silent, Paul's assumption is not that nothing is happening. It is that something is being carried on your behalf.
A path forward
Stop auditing your own feelings for evidence that you loved him. Numbness is usually the mind rationing what it can process, not proof of a cold heart.
Pray without trying to feel anything first. Read a psalm aloud as your prayer on the days when you have nothing of your own to say.
Tell your doctor if the flatness spreads into everything else, food, work, people, and stays for weeks. That is worth having looked at properly.
Closing verse
“Lord, all my desire is before thee; and my groaning is not hid from thee.”
- Psalm 38:9
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