Grief is the worst feeling. It lives deep inside of you and it’s something that never goes away. You grow around grief and spend a majority of your life dancing around grief in hopes to not break the barriers that you’ve placed around your grief.
But facing your grief – for the first time, for whatever you are grieving is one of the worst feelings in the world. Some will tell you that it’s something that you just need to do – run in and face it head on. Some will tell you to take your own time. Everyone has an opinion.
My favorite, and one I have yet to really be able to accept is this one – some will tell you that you need to find God and believe that he will help you through.
I am not really sure I have ever learned how to deal with grief. There are so many things in my life that I am grieving. and most I still can’t even talk about. I don’t want to face the things that hurt – the pain that has kept me wrapped up in a cocoon and where I am trying to not break.
I wasn’t sure I would be able to watch The Gift of Peace, but when I spoke to Nikki DeLoach and Brennan Elliott, I decided to give it a chance. So I am sitting here in the dark, watching the movie and crying my eyes out.
The movie is about a grief support group and how they have gone through so much and how they are learning to live and grow from the pain. It’s about how they are learning to live, love, and move forward. It’s about building a community and finding your purpose, when you feel like your purpose has been taken from you.
Tracy and Greg were so in love. They believed in each other, a future, and their passion for art. But Greg got sick – he got sick and he died. He got sick and he passed. Tracy is angry. She’s very angry. It has been only two years and it feels like yesterday.
Michael is the leader of the Grief Support Group. He’s kind and giving and he has lost someone, but he doesn’t really talk about it. When Tracy asks about if he’s lost someone, he’s a little put off and does everything that he can to avoid speaking about what he’s lost.
And that’s okay. I think that we all have to speak on our own time and in our own way. There is no rule book on grief. Hell, I wish that there was a way that it was easy to share your thoughts and dreams and heart. But even as they say that time makes everything better – but even I don’t feel that’s a universal thing.
When Michael goes to deliver toys for Christmas, the director asks if he’s okay. He tells her that he’s fine, he’s just trying to do the things that Melody would have done. He doesn’t know if this will atone for everything, but it will definitely ease the guilt.
Well I have to say automatically, I wondered, what guilt? What happened that he hurts so bad that he feels that way.
All the members of the group are volunteering and Tracy is in charge of face painting. When the kids run off for cookies, Michael sits down and and gets painted to be Rudolph. The kids are thrilled.
We’re seeing all of the members of the group laughing and smiling and having a great time. When they make it back to the church to bring in the supplies Tracy heads inside and remembers being in the hospital with Greg. He was trying to reassure her, even though you could see in Greg’s eyes that there was a part of him that way lying.
He was lying out of love.
Tracy is really having an emotional pull with feelings and it is definitely tearing her apart. She’s painting, but what she’s lacking is the belief in herself. She wants to help Michael, but he won’t open up. We can see these two connecting, but somehow you just know that they are going to fight it with everything that they are.
Tracy admits that she stopped praying when she lost her husband. She feels bad about it. You can tell that there is a part of her that wants her faith to be sturdy, but how can you not be angry when the person that you love or that is supposed to love you no matter what is taken from you.
There was no part of me that didn’t break when Tracy finally decided to share. Her husband died from a brain tumor. The doctors tried to save him. Michael tells her that it takes a lot of courage to open up like that, and he hopes that she believes him when he tells her that is what healing looks like.
When the group prays for her, Tracy has had to find a way to move forward in every moment of her life – the personal and the professional. When I look at Tracy, I see this person that is strong and filled with pain, but also has hope. She’s just lost herself for awhile.
And that’s what grief does sometimes. It makes you loose yourself and finding your way out of that hole is the worst. It’s like you’re thrown in the pits of hell, and you’re given a spook to crawl out with.
Fifty minutes into the movie, I was angry. I wanted to to scream. I wanted to know why all these people were opening up and Michael hadn’t.
When Michael takes the group on an excursion hr takes them on a hike. He tells them that this is where he feels closest to God. Grace, a member of the group, feels so moved that she starts to sing and wants to tell everyone about her Mom. And when she starts to speak about her Mom, I lost it again. Because well, my Mom, that’s where my grief lies too.
Like everyone experiencing grief, we’re all just looking for a place to be found. We’re looking for a place where we can feel whole again and where it all doesn’t overtake us with every moment and every breathe.
Michael asks Tracy on a date and it scares her. It scares her cause moving on, does that mean that she’s forgetting Greg? Does that mean she’s dishonoring him? When we loose someone in life, it becomes the scariest thing in the world to open ourselves up again. Risking pain, risking feeling this way all over again, it hurts.
People aren’t supposed to leave. People are supposed to stay. What I have learned a long time ago and I keep telling myself this every single day – is that just because someone is gone doesn’t mean that you dishonor them by moving on. It means you love and trust in them enough to know that you’ll never forget them. You moving forward doesn’t mean that you let go of your past.
The people that you love, the people that you are lucky enough to have love you… they become a part of who you are. They are a piece of the soul that was built in part because you were lucky enough that they loved you and that you loved them.
Michael opens up about Melody finally, and tells Tracy about an ornament that was broken in the accident when Melody passed. Tracy offers to fix it for him and she allows him into her space. The vulnerability that you feel with these two is part of the most beautiful parts of this story.
Nikki and Brennan are the parts of this story that work the best, because they feel like they could be any of us. They bring Tracy and Michael to life with such a veracity that you feel a safety in believing in yourself again. They made you believe that as you take a step forward, it’s okay to take a step forward. It’s okay to believe that you can fall and that someone will be there to catch you.
And even when you fall – if you fall – that’s okay.
It’s okay to not perfect.
It’s okay to feel the pain that life throws at you.
It’s okay to grieve.
Healing is not linear. Healing is a road that can bring joy and it can even bring more pain. None of it is wrong.
Bur I assure you, whatever you feel, you are not dishonoring someone, anyone by believing that there love will always stay with you.
Put one foot in front of the other and allow yourself The Gift Of Peace.
Thank you! Beautifully said.