Four Stages of Grief

How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart all the day?
–Psalm 13:2

Grief often feels like a dark tunnel. The good news is that once you’ve entered the tunnel, you’re already on the way out. To reach the other side, I believe there are four stages you must pass through, each with a biblical basis.

1. Shock. When you lose a loved one, the first stage is shock. Sometimes this shock is expressed in uncontrollable emotion, but the usual response is numbness. This numbness is part of God’s plan to care for us in the initial period of grief. But eventually those emotions will need to be expressed, and we shouldn’t discourage that. Ecclesiastes 3:4 says there is “a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance.”

2. Despondency. When you’re despondent, you find it hard to perform simple tasks. You think, What difference does it make? In Charles Dickens’ novel Great Expectations, the protagonist says he sometimes feels “as if a thick curtain had fallen on all of [life’s] interest and romance, to shut me out from anything save dull endurance.” I think David was experiencing this “dull endurance” when he wrote, “How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever? . . . How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart all the day?” (Psalm 13:1–2).

3. Regression. During this stage, it may seem like you’re going backward. You may become angry–angry at your loved one for leaving you, angry at the doctors and nurses who cared for them, angry at the people who are trying to comfort you, or angry at God Himself. Job exemplifies this stage of grief. He lost his children, his possessions, and his health in a single day. When the numbness wore off, Job cursed the day he was born and said, “Why is light given to him who suffers, and life to the bitter of soul? . . . I am not at rest, but turmoil comes” (Job 3:20, 26). These honest emotions are part of the grieving process.

4. Adaptation. You may never stop missing the person you’ve lost, but you can experience a new normal. As the psalmist wrote, “Weeping may last for the night, but a shout of joy comes in the morning” (30:5).

Today’s devotion is adapted from “Moving from Grief to Acceptance,” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2021.

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (Barnes & Noble, 2005), 104.

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.