Richard Exley > Quotes

“Don’t let anyone make you feel guilty because you are still grieving. Grief is a slow process and often takes as long as two years to complete its healing work. That doesn’t mean that you will always hurt this badly, but it does mean that you should give yourself permission to take as much time as you need to work through your loss.”
― Richard Exley, When You Lose Someone You Love: Comfort for Those Who Grieve

“There are moments, most unexpectedly, when something inside me tries to assure me that I don’t really mind so much, not so very much, after all. Love is not the whole of a man’s life. I was happy before I ever met H. I’ve plenty of what are called “resources.” People get over these things. Come, I shan’t do so badly.… Then comes a sudden jab of red-hot memory and all this “commonsense” vanishes like an ant in the mouth of a furnace.”
― Richard Exley, When You Lose Someone You Love: Comfort for Those Who Grieve

“Life can be difficult and no one escapes its challenges. Sooner or later you will find yourself pressed to your limits. It may come in the form of a broken relationship, or unemployment, or a serious illness, or the death of a loved one. When it comes you will be tempted to define your life by that painful experience.
Don't succumb to that temptation.
Refuse to define your life by any single event, whatever it may be. Its a real part of your life, but that is all--just a part.”
― Richard Exley

“In the befogging pain of grief, we are able to see only part of the message, and as a result, death often seems like the ultimate insult. It appears to be the final indignity that makes a mockery of our faith. But when the fog of grief begins to clear even just a little—when at last we are able to perceive the whole truth—it becomes obvious that death is a defeated enemy, one that God uses for His eternal purposes until He ultimately destroys it: Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. —2 Corinthians 4:16–18”
― Richard Exley, When You Lose Someone You Love: Comfort for Those Who Grieve