It is easy to recognize grief in the wake of a loss, a disappointment, a tragedy.  We know all about these, and about the cycle that follows.  We have come a long way in just shining the light on the importance of allowing the process of grieving to take place within us…and so heal.

It is harder to recognize the presence of grief in goodness. But it is there.

My son was naming this the other day without realizing he was naming it.  He has quite the collection of stuffed animals: dogs, bears, birds, fish.  All of them loved.  Many of them named.  A few months ago, he put most of these stuffed animals in a black garbage bag to “temporarily” make space for some extra furniture in his room.

The animals are still in the garbage bag.

He began lamenting this the other day in the back of my car.  “I used to play with those stuffed animals every day, and now they’re in a bag!”  Other things came out in this impromptu therapy session, “I used to be fine with just having a bike, now I have to worry about what my friends think of it.”

There was my son, grieving in the back seat.  Out loud.  To me.

What is happening is that he is growing up. And this is what we’ve been working toward.  In other words, this is good.  At some point, he should begin looking beyond his stuffed animals. At some point, he should begin to be aware of the opinions and perspectives of others (even when some of those opinions are hurtful or wrong).

What he is grieving is change.  Even though these changes are mostly good.

My wife and I grieve, too.  It is hard to let go of your youngish boy…even when it means embracing the young man that is becoming so much more.

And at some point, we are going to have to watch him move out of our house.  He won’t wake up under our roof every day any more.  We won’t get to see him at our table most breakfasts…or dinners…or…

And we are going to grieve that change, even though it is a good that we have been preparing him for all along.

A lot of changes are like this: when a community of faith changes its rituals to accommodate a new generation, when a man sets aside some of his freedoms to nurture a home with his new wife or child, when a country amends its “infallible” constitution to make way for those it had once excluded.

There is a grief even to these— very good!—things.

The mistake is not in the change, but rather in preventing it.  The mistake is not in the shift, but rather in being afraid of it.

Which can lead to another mistake: thinking that because a change is good it doesn’t require grief.  It does.  All change does.  And because there is a grief associated with the change, we have to give ourselves time to process it, to learn from it, to listen to it, to work though it.  So that we can come out the other side stronger and wiser and more perseverant and aware of the goodness that is being birthed out of it.

And when we don’t let ourselves—or others—grieve through the change, all sorts of toxicities eventually rise to the surface.  Sometimes it’s back pain.  Sometimes it’s a strained relationship.  Sometimes it’s a swastika.

Recently, my kids and I planted a maple tree for Mother’s Day.  The tree did its typical thing: it went from a healthy-looking thing in the pot we bought it in, to a droopy, sad-looking thing once we had put it in the ground.

The worst thing we could have done for the tree would have been to fear the transplant shock that every plant goes through when you move it from a smaller pot to a larger plot.  If we had tried to prevent the tree from looking sad, from drooping down, from going through shock—if we had feared these changes—we would have left it in the pot and slowly killed the tree.

The only things that don’t change are the things that are dead.  The goodness of life is that it grows…which will always require change…and change will almost always be hard.

And so perhaps what we need to do in the midst of (good) change is to foster it, anticipate the impending grief that will come with it, and then give ourselves—and others—time to see what good thing will eventually grow straight out the middle of it.