Why Does Grief Reveal Some of Our Deepest Connection to God?

**Matthew Gottesman** (0:02)
Welcome to The Niche Is You. My name is Matt Gottesman, at MattGoddessman on Instagram, and this is my daily podcast where I create short, quick hitting episodes to help you uncomplicate life, creativity, and the pursuit of your highest self. There's only main character energy here. Now let's get into it.
Welcome to episode 828 Why does grief reveal some of our deepest connection to God? Why does grief reveal some of our deepest connection to God? So first, let me preface. I recently went through some grief, and I'll explain a little bit of it here, obviously, with all of you. And, you know, I was in grief. It's interesting how sometimes everything just slows down, and we feel a quiet, we feel a sense of time stopping, we feel this, I mean, we feel a lot of things. You can feel numbness, you can feel deep sadness, reverence, all of these things, right?
And I was reflecting how, over the last couple of years especially, as I deepen my relationship with God, there were a couple of times where, you know, you go through a tough scenario that whether loss, you know, which is one I'll explain here in a moment, or just a change in life dynamic, all kinds of things, right? And when we're grieving, it's as I've noticed for me personally, it's I end up spending extra time with God. And when I was training this morning with my trainer, you know, I've referenced him before, we were talking about this, how it's interesting when you go through a grieving period, how slow everything all of a sudden feels, and thankfully so, and you have time to process and to spend time with God and asking questions. So, you know, recently what had happened is I, you know, you know, I don't know how many pet owners there are that listen to this show, and you know, and I get it, there's, you know, you know, some people are pet owners, some people are not. I inherited the family dog about seven years ago from my parents when my father was passing, and my mother was also actually in the hospital at the same time. Like these two healthy people, their whole lives, at the same time, ended up with completely different scenarios. And it was very hard for them at the time to take care of their dog. And so I inherited her. I took her into my home and she brought a lot of life. She brought a lot of life into my home. She brought a lot of of heart and unconditional love. And she brought, and she was very easy, very easy to deal with. Like just, she was already trained. So some of you were probably like, oh, well you lucked out. But you know, over the last year, well, there were a couple of things here and there that I had to help her out with her health over time. And we did, I did, you know, like I, you know, and I worked on it with her and she, you know, and over the last year or so, you know, the age are really catching up with her. And so there were some things there that I had to do, you know, as this pet parent, if you will, that I, you know, I didn't mind. I really didn't mind. And I've had so many friends in my circle be like, wow, like you take such good care of her, you know, you don't mind doing it. I'm like, that's family. That's family. And no, I don't mind. The thing about animals, in my opinion, about pets, and this dog for me was that they love you unconditionally. There isn't anything about you you have to prove or defend or anything like that. And on top of that, I've always believed that dogs, they absorb a lot for us. They live as long as they can for us. They sacrifice a lot for us. And I remember over the last year thinking some of the things I had to do, especially as her health was kind of doing some things here and there, but for the most part she was good. But you sometimes think, oh wow, there will come a time where I don't have to do all this and keep cleaning up after the things that happen when they get older and unhealthy. And then now all of a sudden, I don't. You know, unfortunately, she had finally hit a point where the health is kind of caught up. And, you know, as a family, we had to say goodbye.
And that was actually a lot tougher than I thought. And when I came home and she's, you know, no longer in my house, it's interesting. One of the first realizations I had was it's interesting. You think about a time when you no longer have to do something.