How Long Will You Mourn?

1 Samuel 16:1 NIV | ​ The Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you mourn for Saul, since I have rejected him as king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil and be on your way; I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem. I have chosen one of his sons to be king.”

The topic of letting go has been a repeated theme that keeps circling my mind and showing up in my personal life. The focal line in the above scripture, “How long will you mourn…”, gently grazed my mind the other day. It was a provoking reminder to examine the truth of what I need to completely mourn and move on from. When you are evolving to your next level of amazingness, shedding is an inevitable catalyst in the process. The purpose of shedding what is no longer meant to remain, is for you to not get weighed down by the nuances of what has expired in your life. Please note, it is detrimental to sit with and process your emotional grief to transcend it. It is also pivotal to fully experience the loss in order to forge ahead. Nonetheless, there comes a point in your journey when you should ask yourself - how long will I mourn? Particularly when it has been an extensive amount of time of repeatedly mourning the thing that God in His divine wisdom redirected you from.

Plainly, loss or rejection can cause great emotional pain and it is not always easy to navigate the waves of the nonlinear healing process. Bear in mind that you have the self-authority to seek professional help, support, and to make a decision to lean into the mourning process. You are empowered to feel every bit of what you are experiencing, but do not allow yourself to be submerged in spiraling to the point of being suspended in the state of perpetual mourning. Examine the hard truth of why you are still mourning a specific thing. Write down the wisdom learned from the lesson and ponder how you can apply it moving forward. Anchor your faith in the fact that God removes to replace with greater. This is evidence by God informing Samuel that just as He has rejected Saul as king there was already a chosen replacement. There is freedom and peace awaiting you on the other side when you step into the strength to process your mourning and be on your way.   

Joy Gem: “What is coming is better than what has gone.”