As a Florida girl, I’ve grown up around the ocean. We have wide beaches known for some of the best shell collecting. But it was only after a trip to Maine that I discovered the beauty of sea glass. The year after Dan died, I flew to Maine to visit my brother and sister-in-law. Walking along the shore of Peaks Island one afternoon, my brother bent down, picked up a glass pebble, and handed it to me.

Cradling this smooth, aquamarine piece in my hand, I could immediately see how grief is like sea glass.

Sea glass is made from broken bottles, dishes, or vases intentionally tossed into the ocean as scrap or that land in the water from a shipwreck. As the fragments of glass tumble for years in the salty waves, they become frosted and the sharp edges are worn down, becoming round and smooth.

When Dan died, it felt like someone had taken the beautiful glass vase that was my life and dropped it. Life shattered into hundreds of pieces, fracturing with sharp edges of pain. The shards of my life that remained felt broken beyond repair. I was living out the scraps of the life I always thought would be there.

That afternoon on the Maine shore, I was just over a year into life after loss. My grief felt even more excruciating in the second year, as the fog of grief had lifted and I faced the painful reality that this was now my life. That Maine sea glass symbolized so much of the grief journey I’d been walking through. But it also resounded with hope that ​God could reshape all that had shattered.​

1. Like the making of sea glass, grief takes time.

Sea glass takes 20 to 40 years to create. It’s an incredibly slow process of day-in, day-out tossing by the waves for the glass to get rounded edges and its translucent finish. While thankfully, it doesn’t take decades for the acute pain of raw grief to lessen, grief can’t be rushed. We can’t fast forward through the hard emotions or deep heart work God does in our mourning.

2. Like sea glass, the sharp edges of pain will soften.

If you’ve ever cut your hand on broken glass or stepped on a glass shard, you know how brutally sharp it is. But when broken glass is tumbled by ocean waves, it softens the sharp edges. When you pick up a piece of sea glass, you can see where the sharp edges once were, but running your hand over the edges no longer hurts. The pain of loss softens as well as we do the hard work of processing our grief. Our life will always be shaped by the person we miss, but the sharp pain of fresh grief will soften over time.

3. Like sea glass, grief is a journey of transformation.

Sea glass begins as a vase, bottle or some other container that is shattered. Those pieces can never be put back the same way again. Instead, they begin a journey through crashing waves and ocean currents, coming to rest on sun-washed beaches as smooth glass pebbles. Loss shatters life as we know it and the shards that remain can never be put back together the same way again. Grief is a journey through waves of agonizing pain and emotion. As we walk through grief and lean on God in ways we never would have otherwise, we’re transformed from who we were before loss.

4. Like sea glass, grief makes us see things differently.

Sea glass starts out transparent but becomes translucent in the waves. The light still shines through sea glass, but it looks different. Grief brings an eternal perspective that helps us see life and heaven in ways we never really could before. It helps us see what matters and what doesn’t, to hold loosely those things that aren’t eternal.

5. Like sea glass, God can bring new beauty and purpose from brokenness if we will let him.

Sea glass only exists because something shattered. In that broken state, it seemed ruined. Maybe even worthless. But as it’s reshaped by the ocean waves, a new beauty emerges. Sea glass is rare and valuable, collected and displayed as beautiful treasures. A life shaped by loss holds rare beauty as well. God can take what the enemy meant to ruin to display his stunning glory. When we allow God to use our suffering to chisel out the junk from our heart and makes us like his Son, an unmatched beauty emerges.

There’s at least one important difference between sea glass and grief. While sea glass is at the mercy of the ocean waves, we’re not complete victims of the waves of grief. It can feel like we’ll be pulled under. But we can learn to navigate the waves with God, leaning on him as we process the hard emotions and trust him with our tough questions. Though we’re pummeled by the waves of loss, we have ​proactive steps to help us ride the waves and move forward.

Sea glass doesn’t just symbolize the brokenness of grief. As I held my first piece of Maine sea glass, I saw the hope in grief as well. God can reshape what’s shattered. When we trust God with the broken pieces of our shattered heart, he will bring new beauty and purpose in our life.

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