A Grief Observed by C.S Lewis engages the struggles we might have when we lose a loved one. C.S. Lewis offers no easy answers but rather his own journey through grief.

In the face of deep loss, we have no choice but to take our questions to God.

The loss of a loved one is difficult. Not only do we miss that person terribly, but we also might struggle with doubts and questions about God: Why did this happen? Why didn’t God cure this person? Will I see my loved one again? Most of us have heard simplistic answers to these questions, like suggestions that they’re in a better place. While perhaps well intended, these responses do not draw from the deep wisdom of Scripture or Christian experience.

Genuine faith is willing to sit with the hard questions and stay with people in their suffering. In the journey of grief, we learn that God does not abandon us. In our suffering, we can see that hope provides a wisdom we might not have had otherwise. All grief is specific to one’s particular loss, but it is also universal. The reflections of Lewis reach out to offer empathy and light for the journey.

In this summary, you will learn:

  • that questions, and even doubts, are part of coming to terms with the loss of a loved one;
  • how grief leads to deeper Christian wisdom; and
  • that God does not abandon us in our suffering.

C.S. Lewis struggles with grief at the loss of his wife.

Late in life, C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) married and fell in love (in that order!) with Helen Joy Davidman, who was ill at the time and died shortly afterward. Lewis narrates his deep loss as well as the difficult questions it raises for him.

Lewis originally wrote these reflections in his journal only for himself but became aware that his struggles might be helpful to others. These sometimes-raw questions and doubts might be surprising for those who know Lewis as a confident Christian apologist. One sees in these reflections that Lewis’ confidence, however, does not wane but takes a different form: bringing his own agony and grief before God.

Lewis and Davidman first became acquainted through letters. After Davidman’s marriage ended, she moved to London and eventually to Oxford. At this point, she and Lewis developed a deeper friendship. Their love of literature, their intellectual abilities, but above all, their Christian faith drew them together. Both had traveled the road from atheism to theism to Christianity. Yet they were an unlikely pair: Davidman, a Jewish child of Polish and Ukrainian immigrants who grew up in the Bronx, and Lewis, an Irish boy from Belfast brought up as a British gentleman.

A sadness tinged their love from its inception, for Joy had cancer. Perhaps because their time was short, the intensity of their love burned brighter. Family members speak of a luminosity that radiated between the two. With the death of Joy, Lewis was plunged into darkness.

Lewis himself was no stranger to grief. His mother died when he was nine, and Lewis saw comrades fall in World War I. Lewis also lost close friends at Oxford, most notably Charles Williams, a member of the famous literary group “The Inklings” (which included, as well, the celebrated author J.R.R. Tolkien).

Yet the death of Lewis’s wife opened up an unknown abyss of grief. In this work, Lewis is not afraid to show his deep sadness with all of its attending doubts and questions. As Lewis himself believed, we sometimes move closer to God even when the trail takes us the long way around.

Grief triggers a dizzying range of feelings and thoughts.

In the body, grief feels like fear. While the emotions are different, the same physical sensation is present: a quivering in the stomach. It makes one unsteady, restless, and exhausted.

Sometimes, grief builds a wall between you and others. You might want people around, but it is hard to attend to what they are saying. Perhaps you convince yourself that things will be okay. After all, this beloved one – whether spouse, parent, child, or friend – was not the whole sum of your life. Don’t people eventually get over the loss of a loved one?

Suddenly, though, a vivid memory of your beloved presents itself: their laugh, a certain gesture, a look in their eyes. The grief you thought was receding has now engulfed you, and the waters of sorrow rapidly rise.

The weight of grief easily leads to a kind of laziness. Everyday tasks are difficult, not because they are hard to do but because doing them seems beside the point. Why write a letter or teach a class when your world has now turned upside down?

These struggles pale, however, in the face of God’s apparent absence. To bring your questions, your struggles, your desperation to God is to be met with silence. Why does God seem present in times of happiness but not in times of despair? Even Christ cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). The deeper fear is not that belief in God will become untenable but rather that you will discover the God you believe in to be a deception.

Yet does the absence or loss of human love mean the absence of God? Faithful lovers realize that they desire something other than only human love. Otherwise, during their life together, they would have lost all interest in God. This suggests the loss of human love does not mean the absence of God.

When it comes to grief, a common response from others is embarrassment. Grief reminds us all that we will die, that one of us must precede the other in death. It can be difficult to listen to platitudes such as “death ultimately is of no consequence.” Others seek to avoid this embarrassment altogether by not saying anything.

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