Sacred Sunday | The Things We Carry Until We Don't

We assume that if something mattered, we would feel it immediately.

A death.

A divorce.

A betrayal.

The end of a career.

The loss of a dream.

We imagine the feeling should arrive alongside the event itself.

But life rarely works that way.

When something significant happens, there is usually something more urgent to do.

Children still need breakfast.

Bills still need to be paid.

Meetings still happen.

The dog still needs to be walked.

The future still requires our participation.

So we continue.

Not because we are avoiding what happened.

Because we are busy surviving it.

I used to think grief was something that followed loss.

Now I suspect grief follows capacity.

The feeling arrives when there is finally enough room for it.

Not when the event occurs.

When the body decides the emergency is over.

That timing can be deeply inconvenient.

A photograph.

An old video.

A familiar song.

A random Tuesday morning.

And suddenly something that happened years ago is standing in the room demanding your attention.

We call this delayed grief.

As though grief somehow missed its appointment.

I think the feeling arrives exactly when it can.

Not when we want it to.

When our body is finally able to carry it.