The Power of Guilt...and JOY

There’s a quiet kind of guilt that can slip into the grief journey, so quietly that we may not even recognize it at first. It often shows up on the good days when the heaviness lifts just a bit. You laugh without forcing it. Something small, a memory or a moment of beauty, reminds you that life can still feel… good.

And just as quickly as that feeling rises, something else follows close behind:

How can I feel this way when they are gone? Is it okay to feel joy when such a beautiful part of my life isn’t here anymore? Shouldn’t I still be sad?

It’s a common experience in grief, this strange tension between sorrow and joy. And if we’re not careful, guilt can creep in and steal the very moments that begin to bring us back to life.

But here’s the truth we need to hold onto: joy is not a betrayal of love.

Feeling joy does not mean we have forgotten. It does not mean we have moved on in a way that leaves our loved one behind. It does not diminish the depth of what we’ve lost.

In fact, it may be the very evidence of love still alive within us.

God did not create a world where light is reserved only for those who haven’t known sorrow. The sun rises each day for all of us—not just for the neighbor who seems to have it all together, or the friend who never appears to struggle.

The same sun shines on you...and so does the SON.

That same warmth. That same light. That same invitation to live.

Even in grief.

Maybe we can begin to imagine something else, too.

Imagine the day we are reunited with the ones we love, the recognition, the embrace, and the overwhelming joy of being together again.

And perhaps, after that first moment, they might ask us something like:

What did you do? Who did you see? How did you live your life after I was gone?

What would we want to say?

Would we want to tell them that we stayed in the shadows? That we held ourselves back from joy because it didn’t feel right? That even when light found its way to us, we turned away from it?

Or would we want to say:

I carried you with me. I loved others well because of you. I noticed beauty again. I let the light reach me, even when it was hard.

Those who loved us deeply would not want our lives to shrink in their absence. They would not want joy to feel forbidden. They would want us to live...to really live.

So when those good days come (and they will) try not to push them away. Don’t let guilt rewrite them into something they were never meant to be.

Receive them. Let the warmth settle in your heart without apology.

Joy and grief are not enemies!

They can coexist, quietly and honestly, within the same soul.

And finding joy again is not something to feel guilty about.

It is something to be grateful for.