The Bible says when you go through a season of loss, the first thing to do is release your grief.

Tragedy always produces strong emotions—anger, fear, depression, worry, and sometimes guilt. These feelings can scare us, and we often don’t know what to do with them. When we’ve experienced a major loss, these enormous feelings bubble up within us. If we don’t deal with them now, it will take us far longer to recover.

Some people never directly deal with grief in life. They stuff it. They push it down. They pretend it’s not there. They play like it doesn’t exist. And that’s why they’re still struggling with emotional stress from losses that occurred 20 or 30 years earlier.

There’s a myth that says God wants you to walk around with a smile on your face all the time saying, “Praise the Lord!” The Bible doesn’t say that anywhere.

In fact, Jesus taught the exact opposite. In Matthew 5:4, he says, “God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (NLT). It’s okay to grieve. When a Christian loved one passes away, we know they will go on to heaven, so we need not grieve like the world. Our grief can be different. We grieve because we’re going to miss them, but we can also be at peace because we know they are with God.

But we also grieve many other things: a failed marriage, a lost job, or a broken dream.

So what should you do with your feelings? Don’t repress them or stuff them deep inside you. Release them—Give them to God. Cry out, “God, I’m hurt! I’m grieving! This is a tough one to take. 

If you want a good example of this, read through the book of Psalms, where David often spills his guts and says things like, “God, I’m in a tough time right now. I am really hurting.” You cry out to God, just like David did.

Psalm 62:8 says, “Pour out your heart to him, for God is our refuge” (NLT). If you are going through a loss right now, please understand that if you don’t release your grief, it will eventually come out. Feelings that are pushed down fester, and eventually they explode and that can cause even more pain and regret.

Release your grief first so God can heal your heart.