Grief is the price we pay for love
On Monday we said a sorrowful farewell to our amazing Queen Elizabeth II and it will have been an experience like none other. So many people, especially those in Commonwealth countries, have spoken in losing her they feel they have lost their mother as she has been the one constant throughout their lives, and I think in our hearts and minds we all kind of thought she would go on forever. Psalm 90:10 says ‘ the days of our years are threescore years and ten’- in other words 70 which ironically was exactly how long the Queen reigned over us-how about that for symmetry?
One of the most heartfelt notes left for the Queen was from the new Prince of Wales, William, who wrote “Grief is the price we pay for love”. William would have now that his grandmother penned those very words after the ‘9/11’ attacks in 2001 when over 3,000 people were killed, and it is a life lesson for us all.
The harsh reality of life is that if you love then you will grieve – that is quite literally the price we pay to love someone in that in time we will really hurt, but it is a necessary part of our lives. One person who really brought this to the fore was another great Christian like the Queen – CS Lewis the writer of the Narnia books and one of the greatest defenders of our faith.
In 1960 under a pseudonym, he published ‘A Grief Observed’ in which he wrote about the great pain (and doubts about his faith) he suffered with the death of his wife Joy Gresham-just 4 years after they were married. In it he talks bravely of the stages of grieving he went through but in end he was left with a feeling of gratitude to have experienced the gift of a true love.
He also spoke about the need to leave the ‘Shadowlands’ of our lives and to take that chance to love people. It was something that his wife had apparently observed in him, in that he spent his life living in a kind of safe ‘bubble’ being a scholar at Oxford for almost 30 years surrounded by other literary friends and students who all looked up to him. When he took her encouragement to step out of that ‘shadowland’ where the sun did not shine he experienced genuine joy -but a few years later he was hit badly by his grief and experienced his ’Slough of Despond’.
As we reflect on our Queen’s life, who truly lived out of the shadowlands, I think we can learn the importance of not hiding away in what is comforting but to take chances in our life, to experience joy and true love, so that at the end of our lives we can say of ourself that, like the Queen’s time on earth, it has been ‘a life well lived’.
Tags: CS Lewis, The Queen, 9/11, elizabeth windsor, Grief