Why Comparing Grief is Meaningless

Have you ever compared your grief to someone else’s grief? Maybe your pain seems small compared to the tragedy a friend is experiencing. Or maybe it’s the opposite: you can’t begin to see how that person could complain when their loss seems so much smaller than yours. I found myself comparing grief one day as I scrolled my social media feed.

You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought as I scrolled past the words on my feed.

An aquaintance had posted a picture of her beloved family pet they had put down that morning. “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever been through,” she wrote.

I don’t doubt it was hard or even the hardest thing she’d gone through yet. But her statement caught me short.

At once, I compared my grief to hers.

I’d been reeling from the sudden death of my husband at 47 years old. Every dream and plan we’d had together had been buried with him. I was not only walking through my excruciating loss but shepherding our seven children through theirs.

I’d faced countless decisions on my own. I’d learned how to fix the washer and how to manage a rental house which were way outside my skillset. I’d parented tough seasons with my kids alone, begged God to help me raise them to adults, and spent night after lonely night with the ache of missing.

It had taken God’s grace and everything in me to let go of the life we had and take hold of the new life that was.

I knew the death of a family pet was hard, but her words stung as I instinctively compared our hardest loss with hers.

Now before you think I’m a completely awful friend, my spirit immediately checked me (and I felt like a heel). I knew comparison was futile and my reaction was wrong. This wasn’t the first time I’d been tempted to compare loss.

After my husband’s death, I got all the well-meaning offers of understanding. “I know what you’re feeling. My husband was deployed for 18 months.” Or “I went through this after my great-aunt died.” These statements were like a gut punch as people tried to compare our loss to theirs.

Other losses seemed exponentially harder than mine, like my friend whose young husband and only two children were killed in a single accident. Or another young friend who’d experienced two back-to-back full-term baby losses. My grief felt manageable when compared to these tragedies.

But comparing grief is meaningless.

Is it harder to lose a child? Or to suffer the death of a parent as a child? Is it worse on a family for the mom or the dad to die? Is saying goodbye slowly after diagnosis tougher than a sudden death without notice? Is it more painful for a widow with young children or an older widow after her nest has emptied?

Yes.

It’s all hard and it all hurts. Which is why comparing grief is futile. Even in a roomful of widows, the losses are different. Each one of us has different marriages, different experiences, and different issues that make up unique kinds of loss.

“Weep with those who weep,” we’re instructed in Romans 12:15. Scripture says nothing about first determining the kind of hurt or size of the hurt. We’re not told to compare our grief and see whose is worse or weigh whose grief is heavy enough to count or warrant our compassion.

We’re simply told to weep with one another. To acknowledge each other’s pain and loss and to walk with each other through it.

No pain is too big nor too small for God’s compassion or our own.

That day when I read my friend’s words, God immediately checked me. And so, asking God to realign my heart, I prayed for her. God used her post to chisel needed junk from my heart and I was able to reply back with a sincere condolence.

Comparing grief is meaningless. My friend was hurting. And her real hurt didn’t in any way diminish my own. God’s grace is deep enough for us both.