#9 Can You Grieve the Life You Never Had?

Melissa (: 00:00

Sometimes grief isn't about losing a person. Sometimes it's about losing a version of your life. The life you thought you would be living by now. Maybe you thought you would be married by now. Or holding your first baby. Or healthy enough to chase the dreams God placed on your heart. The plans you carried, the dreams you imagined.

The future you quietly pictured in your heart. And then little by little, life unfolded differently. That kind of grief can be one of the hardest to recognize. Because no one sends flowers for it. There is no funeral. No one brings you a casserole. The world doesn't stop to acknowledge what you've lost.

You simply carry it sometimes for years and sometimes you don't even realize you've been carrying it at all. If that's where you find yourself today, I'm so glad you're here.

Welcome to Joy in Suffering, a Christian podcast for women navigating chronic illness, grief, and hard seasons. I'm Melissa, and today I want to talk about a grief that doesn't get talked about very often. The grief of the life you thought you'd have. For years, I didn't even realize that's what I was experiencing.

When I thought about grief, I thought about losing someone you loved. I didn't know you could grieve something you never had, a dream, a future, a chapter of your life you always assumed would one day become a reality. It took me a very long time to recognize that some of the deepest sadness I carried.

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Wasn't disappointment. It was grief. I have grieved a body that doesn't always cooperate. I have grieved my energy, the energy I used to have, and the energy I now have to carefully plan around every single day. I had watched friends graduate from college while I couldn't finish mine, because I

Because of all shattered my femur.

Because a fall shattered my femur and changed the entire direction of my life. I watched people I loved get married, start families, and move into the seasons I thought I would move into too. And I grieved the time that felt stolen from me. Five years, five years of being able to do.

little more than transfer from a bed to a wheelchair. Time I will never give back. I have had to make peace with that. And some days I'm better at it than others. But the deepest grief, the one that stayed with me the longest, has been the dream of becoming a mother. Since I was five years old,

Playing with my baby dolls. That's what I wanted. Not just to have children. I wanted to be a mom, a good mom, one like my own. I remember being fifteen years old and realizing for the first time that I probably wouldn't be able to have children physically. But

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I wasn't ready to let go of that dream just yet. I remember going to my mom and asking, How do you have how old do you have? How old do you have to be to put your name on an adoption list? I'd heard the waiting list could take years and I wanted to be ready. I was fifteen years old. Looking back now.

That memory is so tender to me. It reminds me of a young girl who believed there would always be another way. And for a long time, I believed there would be. But as I got older, I slowly began to realize that even adoption wasn't going to be possible. My health.

Had become so complicated that simply taking care of my own body required everything I had. As much as it broke my heart to admit it, I knew had an.

I knew I couldn't give a child the kind of care they needed and deserved. That realization didn't happen all at once. It came little by little, and with it came a grief I didn't know how to carry, especially as I watched my younger sister become a mother. I was genuinely happy for her.

I loved watching her become the kind of mom I knew she would be. I loved celebrating each new baby joined our family. But if I'm honest, there were moments that were incredibly hard.

Melissa (: 06:49

But if I'm honest, there were moments that were incredibly hard.

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I remember going to baby showers with a smile on my face and driving home with tears in my eyes. I remember Mother's Day feeling just a little quieter for me. I remember wondering what my own children might have looked like or what they would have called me. Those thoughts don't come as often anymore.

But every once in a while, they still do. And here's something I've learned that I hope encourages you if you've ever felt that same tension. You can celebrate someone else's joy while quietly grieving your own loss. Those two things can exist at the very same time. One doesn't cancel out the other.

It doesn't make you selfish. It doesn't mean you're ungrateful. And it certainly doesn't mean your faith is weak. It simply means you've experienced a real loss. And I believe our God has incredible compassion for that kind of grief. It reminds me of one of my favorite verses in Matthew. Jesus didn't say

Blessed are those who never grieve. He said, Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Matthew chapter five, verse four. I love that he doesn't dismiss our grief. He acknowledges it. And then he gives us a promise that comfort is coming from him. And maybe that's why we

We can still bring him every kind of grief. The grief of what happened, the grief of what never happened, because he sees both. He sees not only what happens to us, he also sees what never happened. The prayers we prayed, the dreams we carried, and the future we quietly imagined. He sees all of it.

Melissa (: 09:24

And I think because he sees both, he sees not only what happened to us, he also sees what never happened. That's something we need to remember. Sometimes we minimize our own grief because we compare it to someone else's. We tell ourselves, at least no one died. At least I have. Other people have it worse.

But grief isn't a competition. Jesus never asked us to rank our pain before bringing it to him. He simply said, Come to me. And that's exactly what I hope you'll do with whatever loss you're carrying today. Not hide it, not explain it away, and not pretend you're over it because you think you should be by now.

Just bring it honestly to him, because that's where healing begins. Not when we have all the answers, but when we finally become honest about the questions. It wasn't until years later that I discovered something that completely changed the way I understood my own heart.

I learned that what I had been carrying actually had a name. It's often called non finite grief or ambiguous loss. Those are clinical terms, but the idea is actually very simple. It's the grief of living with a loss that doesn't have a clear ending.

The grief of something that never happened, or something that keeps changing over time. Maybe it's the loss of your health, the career you thought you'd have, a marriage that ended, and a re or a relationship that never became what you hoped. The dream of becoming a parent, or simply the life you imagined when you were younger.

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No one usually recognized those losses the way we recognize the death of a loved one. And because of that, we often don't recognize them ourselves. We just think we're disappointed or that we should be over it by now. But here's what I've learned: when grief doesn't have a name, it has a way of making us feel confused.

Sometimes even guilty. We wonder, why am I still sad about this? Why does this still hurt after all these years? Shouldn't my faith be stronger than this? If you've ever asked yourself those questions, I hope this brings you some peace. You're not failing. You're grieving.

And there is a difference.

Looking back, I think one of the biggest reasons I didn't recognize my grief was because I didn't think I had the right to grieve. I remember thinking, how can I grieve something I never had? I had dear friends who had experienced miscarriage, others who had lost children. Their grief felt so much bigger than mine.

They had lost someone they loved, someone they had carried, someone they had held. And here I was grieving a future I had only imagined. I honestly believed they had the right to grieve, and I didn't, so I minimized my own pain. I convinced myself I was just feeling sorry for myself.

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That I should simply be grateful for what I have. It wasn't until just a few years ago that I realized something that changed everything. Grief isn't measured by comparing our losses. There isn't a scale where one person's grief is more worthy than another's. The grief of losing a child and the grief of longing for a child.

will never have are not the same, but both real and they both matter to God.

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That's when I finally gave myself permission to stop minimizing what I had been carrying for so many years. Not because my grief was equal to anyone else's, but because it was still grief. And God cared about it. The moment I realized that, I also realized something else. God wasn't surprised by my grief.

He had seen it all along, even when I didn't have the words for it, and even when I didn't understand it myself. He knew every dream I had quietly laid before him, every tear I had cried after a baby shower, and every Mother's Day that felt a little lonely, every prayer that ended with Lord, I

I don't understand. He never looked at me and said, Melissa, you should be over this by now.

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Instead instead, I believe he sat with me in it patiently, tenderly, lovingly. Maybe that's what you need to hear today. Not that you need to move on, but that Jesus is willing to meet you right where you are.

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Whether your grief is ten days old or ten years old. And that's what gives me so much hope. Not because every loss is restored in this life, not because every prayer is answered the way we hoped, but because Christ has promised that one day he will make all things new.

Revelation gives us this beautiful promise. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the order of things has passed away.

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And that's what gives me so much hope. Not because every prayer is answered the way we hoped, but because Christ has promised that one day He will make all

But because Christ has promised that one day He will make all things new, Revelation gives us this beautiful promise. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the order of things has passed away.

Melissa (: 18:28

But because Christ has promised that one day He will make all things new. Revelation gives us this beautiful promise. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. Revelation chapter 21, verse 4.

I love that verse because it reminds me that grief doesn't get the final word. Jesus does. Before we close today, I want to share something new I'm going to be doing on the podcast. Each week, I'll be choosing a word of the week, a single word to carry us into the week ahead. Not another thing to add to our to-do list.

But one simple truth to come back to whenever we need it most. Throughout the week, I'll also be sharing a few short reflections on that word over on my substack, Joy Even Here. If you'd like a little extra encouragement between episodes, this week's word of the week is remain. And as I prayed about this episode,

I kept coming back to one word, remain. At first it I wasn't even sure why, but the more I sat with it, the more I realized that's really what this entire episode has been about. Grief has a way of focusing our attention on what's missing, on what we lost, on the dreams that we never.

On the dreams that never came true. And those losses are real. God never asks us to pretend that they aren't, but He gently asks us to lift our eyes and notice what still remains. His love remains.

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But he gently invites us to lift our eyes and notice what still remains. His love remains, his presence remains, his promises remain, his faithfulness remains, and because he remains, our hope remains too. Not because every circumstance changes, but

Not because every question gets answered, but because the author of our story has never left us. When I think back to that 15-year-old girl who dreamed of becoming a mother, my heart still feels tender. There will probably always be a part of me that wonders what that life might have looked like.

But that's no longer the only story I see. I see the beautiful family God has given me. I see my nieces and nephews. I see the ways he's used my life that I never could have imagined. I see his faithfulness woven through chapters I never would have chosen, and I realize the dream changed.

But God never did. So if you're carrying the grief of a life you thought you'd have, I hope you'll ask yourself one gentle question this week. What still remains? Maybe it's someone who loves you. Maybe it's a friendship that carried you through. Maybe it's a small glimpse of joy that you almost overlooked.

Or maybe today all you can see is that God is still holding on to you. And sometimes that's enough. Before we close today, I want to leave you with a song that has encouraged me through many difficult seasons. It's called Even If by Mercy Me. I'll link the song as I usually do in the show notes.

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To you two. And as you listen, I hope you'll remember this. Grief changes the story we expect. Grief changes the story. We expected it to live. But remember, your story isn't over yet. And it doesn't change the God who is still writing it.