Author Archives: oldtonew_creation

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About oldtonew_creation

I am a wife, a mama, a creative, and someone who has spent most of her life believing that God is in the business of making something new out of the old, the broken, and the left-behind.

parenting without finishing the job

He Who Began a Good Work: Parenting Without Finishing the Job Yourself

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There were a few moments when I felt a tug — not a single moment, but multiple moments throughout the season for a few years after Lucy Grace. And I finally recognized it. What I didn’t have words for yet was that I was parenting without finishing the job myself — trying to control outcomes that were never mine to finish in the first place.

I was parenting from fear.

Maybe a somewhat ordinary fear — maybe a deeper one. A quiet, constant fear growing underneath everything — what if something happens to them too, and I have to survive this again.

I didn’t recognize it for what it was at the time. It just looked like vigilance. Like being a careful mother. But underneath the carefulness was a fear I was never going to say out loud, because it felt too honest, too selfish, too much like making their safety about my own survival.

I know now it wasn’t selfish. It was human. I had already learned, in the most unbearable way possible, that I could not actually keep my children safe from everything. And some part of me spent years trying to parent my way back into a control I had already lost once.

I wrote about those early years of walking with my remaining children through that grief — this post picks up years later, once fear had quietly become a parenting style I didn’t fully see.

Broken People Raising Broken People

Here’s something I’ve had to keep relearning as my kids have gotten older, especially into the teenage years: they are going to make their own decisions. And some of those decisions are not going to be the right ones — because they are human, and because I raised them, and I am human too.

That’s a hard sentence to sit with as a parent. We are broken people raising broken people, and no amount of vigilance changes that math.

I used to think my job was to prevent every wrong decision. To control the behaviors. But that’s not actually possible — and even where it is possible, it isn’t always right. Kids need room to make their own choices, including the ones that don’t go well, because that’s part of how they become people instead of extensions of us.

As parents, we can’t always control the behavior or the outcomes. What we can control is what happens after.

The Son in the Painting

A few years ago I read Henri Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son — his reflection on Rembrandt’s painting of the same name — and it rearranged something in me.

Nouwen writes about his research of the Biblical truth represented in this story and brings the readers along to understand a new depth that Rembrandt reflected in his painting. Nouwen goes through each character represented in Rembrandt’s painting — Buy the book here — Rembrandt didn’t focus on the moment that the younger son (often referred to as the prodigal son) left. He didn’t focus on the moments the son was gone, although they Biblical story allows us to imagine a long list of bad choices. No, Rembrandt didn’t paint the mistakes he made along the way. Instead, he painted the moment he came back — ragged, empty-handed, undone — and the moment the father ran to him anyway.

The Bible tells us, there was no lecture first. No accounting of the wasted years. Just the father’s hands on his son’s shoulders, pulling him in before a single word had been said.

I thought a lot about the son, and how he must have rehearsed his apology the whole way home, bracing for the conversation he thought he deserved. And how none of that conversation actually happened — because the father wasn’t waiting to deliver a verdict. He was just waiting for his son to come home.

This is the Gospel. It didn’t erase the reality of consequences — the son still lived with what he’d lost. But it reframed what the homecoming was for. That image did something to my fear that no amount of vigilance ever could.

What They Actually Need to Know

I’ve stopped believing my job is to prevent every poor choice my kids will make or hard consequence they may face. I can’t. And honestly, some of those consequences are exactly how they’ll learn what I can’t teach them any other way.

But here’s what I do believe is my job — the actual job, the one that matters more than any single decision they make:

They need to know the consequences are real.

And they need to know, with absolute certainty, that they are loved.

And they need to know that no matter what they’ve done or where they’ve been, it is always, always safe to come home.

Not safe from consequences. Safe in identity. Safe in knowing who they are and whose they are, even in the middle of their worst decision — especially in the middle of their worst decision.

That’s the tension I live in now as a parent of teenagers. Letting the natural weight of their choices actually land, while making sure the door home never, ever feels locked.

He Who Began a Good Work

“Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” — Philippians 1:6

I didn’t start this parenting journey understanding this verse the way I do now. I used to read it as a promise about me — that God was finishing the work He started in my own healing.

But it’s also a promise about them.

I am not the one who has to finish the good work in my children. I never was. I can show up, love them, tell them the truth about consequences, and leave the door open — but the actual finishing of who they are becoming belongs to God, not to my ability to control every decision along the way.

That’s what helped free me from parenting through fear. And helped me let go of trying to control all actions and outcomes.

Because God is not finished with their story either. And He has you too.

You Are Not Meant to Do This Alone

If you’re in a season of parenting from fear right now — or trying to let go of control you never actually had — the Old to New Creations Journals were made for exactly this kind of wrestling. A place to bring the fear honestly, and watch God’s faithfulness show up anyway.

And if you’re in a hard season of your own — the free prayer list was made for exactly this. You don’t have to carry it alone. 🤍

    Built with Kit

    Because God is not finished with your story.

    What Happens to Babies Who Die?

    What Happens to Babies Who Die? — A Gentle, Faith-Based Answer for Grieving Families

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    What happens to babies who die? It is a question that lives underneath grief — one that grieving parents wrestle with in the quiet and brace for when their children ask it out loud.

    It comes in different forms. Different voices. Different moments.

    Sometimes the question surfaces in the middle of the night. Sometimes it comes from the back seat of a minivan, in the voice of a six-year-old who has been thinking about it for three days and finally found the courage to say it out loud.

    Where did they go?
    Is she/ he in heaven?
    Did God want her/ him?
    Does God love babies/ children who never got to grow up?

    These are not small questions. They reach into the deepest places of grief and theology at the same time — and they deserve more than a rushed answer.

    I want to try to offer some language — for yourself and for the conversation with your child.

    A Note Before We Begin

    These are questions I want to address honestly — because what happens to babies who die matters deeply and deserves a careful answer. What I am sharing here is my own theological understanding — the way I have read Scripture and the conviction I have come to after years of sitting with these questions personally. Others who love Jesus and take the Bible seriously may land in a slightly different place. I hold my view with humility and with the recognition that there are things about God’s mercy and God’s ways that are simply bigger than any of us can fully contain.

    What I am confident of — deeply, unshakeably confident of — is that God is good. That He loves every child He has ever knit together. And that His grace is wider than our questions.

    What Does the Bible Say?

    The Bible does not give us a single direct verse that directly answers what happens to babies who die — or states plainly that all of them go to heaven. I want to be honest about that rather than pretend the answer is simpler than it is.

    What the Bible does give us is a picture of God’s character — His love for children, His grace that reaches beyond human understanding, and His promise of eternal life for those who belong to Him.

    Here is what I anchor myself to:

    Jesus and the Little Children

    “Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.'” — Matthew 19:14

    This verse is not specifically about infant death. But it tells us something essential about Jesus and children — He welcomes them. He does not turn them away. The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. That phrase has always stopped me. Not belongs to those who have formally accepted me. Belongs to such as these — the ones who come to Him simply, openly, without pretense.

    And for a child who never had the chance to come on their own — this is where I find my footing. A Jesus who welcomes children without condition is a Jesus I can trust with the ones whose time here was so short.

    Known Before Birth

    “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” — Psalm 139:13

    Every child — every single one — was known by God before they took their first breath. Madison Joy was known. Lucy Grace was known. Your child was known. Not as a concept. Not as a possibility. Known — by name, by face, by every little detail of who they were and who they were becoming.

    A God who knits a child together with that kind of intentionality does not abandon them.

    David’s Confidence

    One of the most quietly powerful moments in all of Scripture comes in 2 Samuel 12. David has lost his infant son. He has been fasting and weeping and praying for the child’s life. And when the child dies — David gets up, washes his face, and says something that has sustained grieving parents for thousands of years:

    “I will go to him, but he will not return to me.” — 2 Samuel 12:23

    David was not expressing hopeless resignation. He was expressing confident hope. I will go to him. Not — I will never see him again. But — I will go to where he is. There is a where. There is a reunion waiting.

    What strikes me about David is that this same man — the one who got up and washed his face with confident hope — also wrote some of the most raw and honest laments in all of Scripture. He knew how to hold grief and hope in the same hand. Not because he had everything figured out. But because he trusted the God who held both. [If you are in a season of grief and wrestling right now — I will be writing about lament and what it looks like to bring the real thing to God in the next couple of weeks.]

    Grace That is Bigger Than Our Understanding

    The age of accountability is not a phrase that appears in the Bible — but the concept behind it is rooted in God’s character throughout Scripture. The idea is that God — in His mercy and grace — receives children who die before they are old enough to understand and respond to the Gospel.

    This is the position I hold. Not because Scripture states it explicitly — but because it is consistent with everything the Bible reveals about who God is. His justice. His mercy. His love for the vulnerable. His grace that Paul says in Romans 5 “abounded all the more” where sin — and the brokenness of this world — increased.

    A God of that grace does not leave the most vulnerable without His care.

    And your child — the one you are grieving, the one whose name you say quietly when no one is listening — is not outside the reach of that grace. They never were.

    That is the theology I hold. Jesus knew your child. He came for them. And His promises hold.

    What to Tell Your Child

    Knowing what you believe theologically is one thing. Finding the words to say it to a grieving six-year-old at seven in the morning is another thing entirely.

    Here is some language that might help — for the questions that surface when you least expect them. These are starting points, not scripts. Find the words that sound like you.

    “Did they go to heaven?”

    Yes. Jesus loves every baby — every single one. And the Bible tells us that Jesus came for [insert name here]. He knew him/ her and loved him/ her even before they were born. They are with Jesus now — safe and loved and more awake than they have ever been.

    “Does God love babies who never grew up?”

    Yes. God knit them together — He knew every little thing about them. He loved them before we ever held them. And because He loved her so much — He came for them.

    “Will we see them again?”

    Yes. The Bible promises that for everyone who belongs to Jesus — dying is not the end. It is like finally arriving at the place you were always meant to be. We will see them again. And until then — we can say their name, remember them, and trust that God is taking good care of them.

    “Why did God let her die?”

    That is one of the hardest questions there is. And I want to be honest with you — I don’t fully know the answer. Some things are too big even for grown-ups to fully understand. But I know this: God loved him/ her even more than we do. And I trust Him with what I cannot understand.

    “Am I going to die too?“

    Someday — but not for a very long time. Most people live many, many years, and your body is healthy and strong. God has given you so much life still to live. It is okay to ask this question. It doesn’t mean something is wrong — it means you are thinking hard about what happened, and that is a good and honest thing to do.

    “Why do I still feel sad?“

    Because you love them. And love doesn’t stop just because someone is gone. It is okay to still feel sad — even a long time later. Some days the sad feeling will be small and quiet. Some days it may feel big again. that doesn’t mean something is wrong with you. It means you remember. And remembering is one of the ways we keep loving someone, even when we can’t hold them anymore.

    What to Hold Onto

    If you came here asking what happens to babies who die — I hope you are leaving with something true to hold onto.If you are a grieving parent reading this — I want you to hear this directly:

    Your child was known. By name. By face. By every detail of who they were.

    The God who knit them together did not abandon them. The Jesus who said “let the little children come to me” welcomed them. The grace that Paul says abounds — abounds here too.

    You will go to them. And I believe it with everything I have.

    That is not a tidy answer to an untidy grief. It is not a bow on a box that deserves to stay open. It is just the truest thing I know to say — the thing that has held me through thirteen years of missing Lucy Grace and sixteen years of missing Madison Joy.

    God has them.

    And He has you too.

    A Resource for the Conversation

    If you are navigating this conversation with your own child — Mommy, Is Madison Sleeping? was written for exactly this moment. This is a faith-based picture book that walks children and parents through the honest, gentle, Scripture-rooted conversations that follow the death of a loved one — including where loved ones go when they die and whether Jesus loves them.

    The manuscript is complete and I am actively pursuing publication. Subscribe below to be the first to know when it is available — because this book is coming, and I want you to have it when it does.

    And if you are in a hard season right now — the free prayer list was made for exactly this. Prayers for yourself, your spouse, and your kids — for the hard days and the ordinary ones. 🤍

      Built with Kit

      Because God is not finished with your story.

      lament and grief

      Lament and Grief — The Road Between Rushing to Be Okay and Sitting in It Forever

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      I recently had the privilege of teaching on Psalm of Lament at Northland Christian Church — and I will be honest with you: it is something I have only recently been learning to practice myself.

      Last year I went through some spiritual formation training — learning to actually practice spiritual disciplines, some of which were new to me. Lament was one of those. I had never officially practiced it. As part of that training I sat down and wrote my own lament for the first time.

      And something shifted.

      Not because lament fixed anything. But because it gave me language for something I had been carrying for years without knowing what to call it. I had been processing grief on my own — wrestling with my feelings and adding to the desperate prayer in the dark hospital room. But honestly, I wasn’t using the roadmap God had provided in Psalms.

      This post is drawn from that teaching. I wanted to bring it here because I think a lot of us need permission to do something we have been told, in a hundred subtle ways, that we should not do.

      Bring the real thing to God.

      Listen to the full sermon here. Or the post-sermon podcast here.

      The Song Stuck in Your Head

      We all have loops.

      The argument we did not win. The hurtful thing we said years ago that we still have not let go of. The diagnosis. The empty side of the bed. The grief that does not have a name but costs something every single day.

      We are broken people living in a broken world. And carrying that brokenness is not comfortable — so we try to fix it, outrun it, explain it away.

      But what if there was a different way?

      What if God not only knew we would need space to process what we are carrying — but actually built instructions and examples of how to process our experiences into Scripture?

      That space is called lament.

      Why Lament Matters

      Open the book of Psalms — one hundred and fifty songs and prayers — and ask which category shows up most. Not praise. Not thanksgiving.

      Lament.

      More than a third of the Psalms are laments. Some scholars count it as high as forty percent. That is more than any other single category in the entire book. And that is not even counting the fact that there is an entire book of the Bible named Lamentations — five chapters dedicated entirely to grief brought honestly before God.

      This is not a coincidence. This is the same God writing the whole story — cover to cover — making sure His people had language for the hardest things.

      And then Jesus stood on a hillside and said something that still stops me:

      “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” — Matthew 5:4

      Read that slowly. He did not say — blessed are those who mourn and then, eventually, once they have finished grieving, they will be comforted later. The comfort is not a reward that shows up after the mourning ends. It is already inside the mourning. Right there in the middle of it.

      That is the whole point of lament — to help us hold two true things in the same hand. How broken the world is. And how real God’s promises are. Not one or the other. Both at the same time. Both are true.

      The Two Ditches

      Most of us handle pain one of two ways. And both of them feel like the responsible option. Neither of them is.

      Ditch One — We Rush to be Okay

      Before you have even had a chance to feel it — someone hands you “everything happens for a reason.” You are scared and someone says “just have faith.” We skip straight to the bright side. We tidy up our grief before it has even finished bleeding.

      A friend of ours — in his early twenties — was diagnosed with cancer. Thankfully they caught it early and he was able to fight it. But something he shared with us about that experience has stayed with me ever since. Somewhere in the middle of that battle he started to realize that people wanted to rush right past the reality of what he was going through. They wanted the pretty bow and did not know how to sit in the messiness and the fear.

      We don’t suffer well. Not because we are bad people — because we are uncomfortable.

      We look at someone else’s grief and think — I could not carry that. So we keep our distance. We hand out the verse instead of sitting in the dark with the person. And applying that same reasoning to ourselves, we hesitate to allow those uncomfortable feelings. This keeps us stuffing our feelings instead of processing them.

      Ditch Two — We Sit in it Forever

      The other ditch looks completely different but does the same damage.

      This is where grief becomes a place to live rather than a road to walk. The wound stays open not because you are processing it but because you have stopped believing it will ever close. You rehearse the hurt. You replay the loss. You build your identity around the ache until the ache is all you can see.

      Both ditches skip the processing — one by rushing past it, the other by getting stuck in it. And neither of them is lament.

      Lament is the road between them.

      The Road — Turning, Naming, Asking, Trusting

      Psalm 22 is one of the most honest prayers in all of Scripture. It opens with a cry that should feel familiar to anyone who has ever felt abandoned in a hard season:

      “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” — Psalm 22:1

      That is not polished faith. That is raw, desperate, honest faith. And it is in the Bible. Which means God can handle it.

      Here is what the road of lament actually looks like — four movements drawn from the Psalms:

      First — Turning

      Lament begins with a choice to turn toward God rather than away from Him. Not because you feel like it. Not because you have it figured out. But because you have decided — however desperate or angry or confused you are — that He is still the one you are bringing it to.

        Even “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” is a prayer. David did not stop talking to God when God felt absent. He turned toward God instead of turning toward himself or anyone /anything else.

        Second — Naming

        “I am a worm and not a man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people.” — Psalm 22:6

        David does not manage his feelings for public consumption. He names them — specifically, honestly, without softening. The embarrassment. The isolation. The physical symptoms of grief listed in verses 14 and 15 — bones out of joint, heart like wax, strength dried up like a potsherd. (Note: David didn’t manage his joy for public consumption — he danced in his underwear).

        This is what Lamentations 2:19 means when it says “pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord.” Pour out — not edit first. Not clean up before you show up. God does not need your presentable feelings. He wants the real ones.

        What is the thing in your head right now — the loop you cannot stop — that you have not said out loud because you are afraid it sounds unstable or unfaithful?

        Name it. He can handle it.

        Third — Asking

        “Do not be far from me, for trouble is near.” — Psalm 22:11

        After naming the pain — David asks. Specifically. Repeatedly. He comes back to it again and again throughout the psalm — do not be far, come quickly, deliver me, rescue me, save me.

        Real lament keeps asking even when the answer is slow. That is not weakness. Every time you ask again you are reminding yourself of what God is actually capable of. You are keeping your resolve from running out before the answer shows up.

        Fourth — Trusting

        “I will declare your name to my people; in the assembly I will praise you.” — Psalm 22:22

        Nothing is fixed yet. David is still in it. But he already knows how the story ends — so he starts thanking God ahead of time.

        Psalm 22 splits almost exactly in half. Everything before verse 22 — the forsaken cry, the scorn, the fear — that is the first half. And then right here, with no resolution described in between, the whole tone flips. From this point to the end of the psalm it is declaration and praise. Nothing changed in his circumstances. He just decided to start speaking differently to God.

        I know this position personally. I have written about the night I prayed for a miracle — and then prayed the harder prayer here. What I remember most is that both prayers were real. The desperate asking and the surrendered trusting were not opposites. They were the same faith — just at different moments on the road.

        That is what Peter meant when Jesus’s teaching got hard and people started walking away. Jesus asked the twelve — “Are you leaving too?” And Peter said:

        “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” — John 6:68

        He did not say that because he had it all figured out. He said it because he had already decided — whatever happens, I am not walking away from you to go find answers somewhere else.

        That is trusting. Not certainty about how the story ends. Certainty about who you are staying with while it unfolds.

        You Are Not Behind

        So — the loop in your head right now. The grief that does not have a name. The anger you have been afraid to bring to God because it sounds unstable or unfaithful.

        God wants you to name it. Not brush by it. Not get stuck in it. But bring it — honestly, specifically, repeatedly — to the One who is not fragile enough to be undone by your real feelings.

        Turning. Naming. Asking. Trusting.

        That is the road.

        You do not have to do all four perfectly. Some days you will only have energy for the naming part — and that is enough. Because even that is turning toward God instead of away from Him.

        I am not going to wrap this up neatly — because lament does not work that way and neither does real life. If you are still in the middle of it right now — you are not behind. You are not doing this wrong. You are just where David was in verse one before he ever got to verse twenty-two.

        Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

        You do not have to wait until the mourning is finished to find that out.

        Two Questions to Sit With This Week

        Which ditch do you live in more often — rushing to be okay or sitting in it forever?

        What would it look like to bring something to God this week without needing to fix it first — to just name it out loud and let Him hold it?

        If you are in a season of lament right now — the free prayer list was made for exactly this. Prayers for yourself, your spouse, and your kids — for the hard days and the ones that have no name. And if you want to go deeper — Praying Through the Hard Middle was written for the seasons when the words will not come on their own. 🤍

          Built with Kit

          Because God is not finished with your story.

          Parenting After Loss

          Parenting After Loss — How to Walk With Your Remaining Children Through Grief

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          Nobody prepares you for the moment your six-year-old points to the funeral home from the bank drive-through and says — that’s where Lucy is.

          We had driven past that building a hundred times. It was just part of the landscape of our town. Until it wasn’t. Until it became, in my son’s very concrete six-year-old mind, the place where his baby sister lived now.

          It took us a while to understand what he actually believed. And longer still to gently, honestly help him understand what had really happened — without correcting him in a way that made him afraid to say the wrong thing again.

          That is one thing about parenting remaining children through loss that is easy to forget. It is not one conversation. It is a hundred small moments — at the bank drive-through, at the dinner table, in the middle of a completely ordinary Tuesday — where your child hands you something real and raw and you have approximately three seconds to figure out how to hold it well.

          They Think in Pictures. Literal, Concrete, Specific Pictures

          My son was six when we lost Lucy Grace. My daughter was four — young enough that the conscious memories did not follow her the way they followed the rest of us. But she was there. She felt what our family felt. She carried it in the way a four-year-old carries things — in her body, in the atmosphere of our home, in the grief that was simply part of the air we all breathed for a long time.

          She knows Lucy Grace is part of our family. We still pray together and praise God for our family — for Lucy, for Madison Joy, for all of us. The memory may not be there — but the belonging is. And there is something quietly profound about that.

          My daughter carried the grief without the memory. My son carried both.

          In those early days the children drew pictures — the way children do when words are not enough. Lucy’s face was purple in their drawings. They drew what they had seen. Or what they imagined. Or what their small minds had constructed from the pieces they had been given.

          I have kept those pictures. I have not shared them publicly — they belong to my children. But I have thought about them a thousand times. The purple face. The careful crayon-colored specificity of a child trying to make sense of something that does not make sense.

          Children do not grieve abstractly.

          They grieve in color. In location. In the questions that surface when a thought floats up — and then they pivot, immediately and completely, back to something entirely ordinary.

          Following Their Lead

          My son would ask a deep, gut-wrenching question about Lucy Grace — where is she, is she okay, will I die too — and then, before I had finished answering, he would be back to playing. Or he would say he was hungry. Or he would just — move on.

          It felt careless at first. If I am honest — it hurt. And sometimes it frustrated me. To talk about her and then just drop it and move on felt so abrupt. So at odds with the weight of what we were discussing.

          But I learned something quickly — something a grief-trained nurse who walked alongside us through that season helped me understand:

          Take their lead.

          Children process as much as they can in the moment they can process it. The pivot is not carelessness. It is self-protection. It is a small person doing the only thing a small person knows how to do — carrying what they can carry, and putting it down when it gets too heavy. And then picking it back up when they are ready again.

          Once I understood that — I stopped trying to extend the conversation. I stopped correcting. I stopped staying in the grief longer than they needed to be there.

          Because the moment I made it about what I needed from the conversation — they stopped bringing me the real questions. They started trying to answer in ways that would please me instead of being free to process when they could.

          So I learned to follow. To answer honestly and truthfully when they asked. To let them put it down when they needed to. And to trust that they would pick it back up again.

          They always did.

          The Questions They Actually Asked

          Several of the questions in my children’s picture book — Mommy, Is Madison Sleeping? — came directly from my own children. The book grew out of real conversations, real moments, real questions that real children asked when they were trying to make sense of loss.

          Is she sleeping?
          Where did she go?
          Will I die too?
          Why do I still feel sad?

          This one — Will I die too? — my son asked. And I learned, later, that underneath that question was a fear he carried quietly for a long time. The fear that what happened to Lucy Grace could happen to him.

          Children need honest answers to honest questions. Not answers that minimize the fear — but answers that hold the fear and offer something true alongside it. That was the whole reason I wrote the book. Because I lived the conversation. I know how hard it is to find the words in real time.

          And I know how much it matters to find them.

          What Grief Does to a Child Over Time

          Twelve years after losing Lucy Grace — my son, eighteen years old at the time, told me something I have thought about every day since.

          He said he had thought of Lucy Grace for the first time in a long time. And in thinking of her — he began to ponder a question he could not quite fully form. Had her loss shaped him? Had she changed him in ways he was only beginning to understand? Losing a baby sister at six years old — when you are already living out that instinctive older brother protectiveness — does something to a person that takes years to surface.

          He could not fully articulate it. And I don’t know that I could, either. But I had watched it unfold.

          I affirmed him completely. Because he was right. He was impacted — deeply, lastingly, in ways that are still unfolding. He processed something as a six-year-old that most adults struggle to carry. Without the language for it. Without the theology for it. Without even fully knowing he was doing it.

          And now — at eighteen — he was beginning to find the words.

          That is what grief does to a child over time. It does not disappear. It grows with them. It resurfaces at new ages and new stages with new questions and new layers. The six-year-old who pointed to the funeral home becomes the eighteen-year-old who realizes — quietly, in an ordinary moment — that he has been carrying something significant his whole life.

          That is not damage. That is formation.

          Your Kids Can Handle More Truth Than You Think

          I had good advisors. A grief-trained nurse who walked alongside us and gave me language I did not have on my own. Adults who spoke honestly into our family — who told us we could be truthful with our children, that it was okay to show emotion, that our kids could handle more honesty than we feared.

          That last one was the most important.

          We are often tempted to protect our children from the full weight of grief. To soften it. To skip to the hope before we have sat in the loss. Maybe we’re trying to avoid it ourselves, but children have remarkable capacity for truth when it is offered with love. They do not need us to have all the answers. They need us to stay in the conversation.

          Here is what I know now that I wish I had known then:

          Let them ask the real questions. Even the ones that stop you cold. Even the ones you do not know how to answer. I do not know is an honest answer. Let me think about that and we can talk more is an honest answer. What is not honest — and what children feel immediately — is deflection.

          Follow their lead on timing. Do not force the grief conversation. Do not extend it past where they are. When they pivot to play or hunger or something completely ordinary — let them. They will come back when they are ready.

          Say the name. Out loud. Regularly. Naturally. Not just in grief moments — in ordinary ones. Lucy Grace is part of our family. Madison Joy is part of our family. Children need to hear the names said easily — not just in hushed, heavy moments — so they know it is safe to say them too.

          Let them see your emotion. Not in a way that frightens them or puts them in the position of caring for you. But honestly. A parent who never cries teaches a child that grief is something to hide. A parent who cries and keeps going teaches a child that grief and hope can live in the same body at the same time.

          Expect it to resurface. At seven and at twelve and at eighteen and beyond. Each new stage brings new capacity to understand what happened — and new questions you did not anticipate. That is not regression. That is the ongoing work of a child becoming a person who has carried something real.

          What My Children Taught Me

          Nobody handed me a roadmap for this season. It arrived before I was ready — and suddenly I was parenting children through grief while barely keeping my own head above water.

          What I learned is that my children needed me to walk through it with them — honestly, imperfectly, at their pace.

          They taught me that grief in a child looks nothing like grief in an adult. It is faster and slower at the same time. More concrete. More colorful — literally. More willing to pivot and return and pivot again without apology.

          They taught me that children are braver than we give them credit for — when we give them permission to be.

          And they taught me that Lucy Grace left a mark on every person in our family. Even the ones who were too young to remember. Even the ones who are only now — twelve years later — beginning to understand how deep that mark goes.

          She was gift of light. She still is.

          If you are parenting remaining children through loss right now — the free Prayer List includes prayers for children and for you as you navigate these conversations. And if you you’r elooking for a resource to read with your child — Mommy, Is Madison Sleeping? was written from exactly these conversations. Subscribe below to be the first to know when it is available.

            Built with Kit

            Because God is not finished with your story.

            What Grief Does to a Marriage — And What Held Ours Together

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            You expect grief to be hard. You expect the missing and the crying and the days that knock you sideways. You expect the anniversary dates and the empty chairs and the moments that ambush you in the cereal aisle at the grocery store.

            What you do not expect is what grief does to the space between you and the person you love most.

            There are a lot of life situations that can birth grief. Not just the loss of children — though that is part of our story — but the other kinds too. The job that disappears. The parent you say goodbye to too soon. The parenting seasons that bring you to your knees. The emotional and hormonal shifts that change you in ways you did not see coming. The losses that do not come with a sympathy card but cost just as much.

            And in every one of those seasons — grief does something to a marriage that you may not see coming.

            We talked. But neither of us knew how

            In the early days we did not go quiet. We tried to talk. We were committed to not shutting each other out — and I am grateful for that. But talking and knowing how to talk are two different things.

            Part of the problem was that we did not always know what we were feeling. Grief is not one emotion. It is a hundred of them — sometimes in the same afternoon. Sadness and anger and relief and guilt and love and loneliness and gratitude all tangled together in a way that defies description. You cannot tell your spouse what you need when you do not know what you are feeling. And you cannot name what you are feeling when you have never felt anything quite like it before.

            We had the conversations. We just did not always have the language. We did not know how to say I need you to sit with me in this or I need you to give me space right now or I am not angry at you — I am just drowning and you are the safest person to drown near.

            So sometimes what came out was not what we meant. And sometimes what we heard was not what was said.

            Grief does that. It takes the clearest communicators and turns them into people who cannot find the words. Because the words that exist do not quite fit what you are carrying.

            We grieved differently. And sometimes that felt like distance

            He processed one way. I processed another. In different seasons — sometimes he went quiet when I needed to talk. Sometimes he moved forward when I needed to stay still. Sometimes he expressed it through work or projects or activity while I was still sitting in the feeling of it.

            None of that was wrong. It was just different.

            But different — when you are already depleted, already raw, already running on empty — can feel like alone. Even when you are in the same room. Even when you are both trying.

            It is the quiet cost of grieving alongside someone you love. The way grief can make you feel lonely inside your own marriage — not because your spouse is not there, but because you are both so deep in your own version of it that the gap between you feels wider than it is.

            And in that gap — the enemy of your marriage is not your spouse. It is not the person across from you who is grieving differently or needs something you cannot give right now. The real enemy — and I mean that literally — uses exactly this moment… the feeling of being alone and misunderstood inside your own marriage — to keep you stunned, silent, and hurting. To convince you that the distance is permanent. That the gap means something it does not mean. That you are more alone than you actually are.

            You are not. And they are not your enemy.

            We took turns struggling

            This is the thing I have come to understand — slowly, over time — about grieving alongside someone you love.

            You will not always be in the same place at the same time. And that is not a failure. That is actually — if you let it be — a gift.

            There were seasons when he was struggling and I was okay. And I could be the steady one. The one who showed up. The one who held the space while he found his footing again.

            And there were seasons when I was the one who was not okay. When the grief came back in a new form or the hard season pressed in harder than expected. And he was there. Steady. Present. Holding the space while I found mine.

            We did not plan it that way. We could not have. But looking back — I can see that God was doing something in the rhythm of it. Making sure that when one of us went under the other one could reach down and hold on.

            That is not something you can manufacture. It is something you receive — with gratitude — when you realize it is happening.

            We could not do it alone

            There came a point when we realized that what we were carrying was bigger than what we could work through just the two of us. We needed someone outside the marriage to help us see what we could not see from inside it. Someone trained to help us find the language we were missing.

            I wrote about my own journey of finally asking for help— and what I found when I did. Getting that help was not an admission of failure. It was one of the bravest things we did for our marriage.

            If you are in a season where the gap between you and your spouse feels wider than you know how to close — please hear this: asking for help is not giving up. It is choosing each other hard enough to do the uncomfortable thing.

            What held us together

            It was not one thing. It was never one thing.

            It was communication — learning slowly and imperfectly to say the true thing instead of the safe thing.

            It was patience — giving each other room to grieve at a different pace without making that difference mean something it did not mean.

            It was community — the people around us who showed up, who stayed, who reminded us that we were not alone in it.

            It was faith — the quiet, stubborn conviction that the God who brought us together was not finished with us yet. That He was present in the gap between us even when we could not feel Him there. That He could hold what we could not hold for each other.

            And it was time. More time than we expected. More grace than we thought we had. More choosing each other — imperfectly, repeatedly, on the hard days as much as the easy ones — than either of us knew we were capable of.

            If your marriage is in a hard season right now

            Whether it is grief or loss or something else entirely — a job, a diagnosis, a child who is breaking your heart, a season that has gone on longer than you prayed —

            You are not failing your marriage by struggling.
            You are not failing each other by grieving differently.
            You are not too far gone to find your way back to each other.

            And you do not have to figure it out alone.

            The gap between you — however wide it feels right now — is not the end of the story. It is the middle of it. And middles are hard. But middles are also where the work happens. Where the growth happens. Where you discover what you are actually made of — individually and together.

            Keep choosing each other. Even when it is hard. Especially when it is hard.

            Because God is not finished with your story — and your marriage is part of that story.

            If you are in a hard season right now — the free Prayer List includes prayers for spouse and your marriage. And if you want to go deeper — the Old to New Creations Journals were designed for exactly this kind of slow, intentional work.

            Because God is not finished with your story.

            The Hard Middle

            You Do Not Get Over Grief. You Learn to Carry It Differently

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            Thirteen years.

            That is how long I have been carrying the grief of losing Lucy Grace. And sixteen years since we said goodbye to Madison Joy.

            People ask sometimes — usually gently, usually with hope in their eyes — whether it gets easier. Whether time really does heal. Whether the missing eventually fades.

            I want to be honest with you.

            You do not get over grief. You learn to carry it differently.

            That is not a discouraging thing — though it might sound like one at first. It is actually one of the most freeing things I have learned. Because once you stop waiting to get over it — once you stop measuring your healing by how little you feel — you can start measuring it by something else entirely.

            By how differently you carry it.
            By what you have learned to do with it.
            By who you have become because of it.

            Here is what thirteen years has taught me.

            You cannot carry it alone.

            I tried. For longer than I want to admit.

            I was good at holding it together. At showing up. At performing fine when I was not fine. At being the kind of person who did not make her grief other people’s burden.

            But grief was not designed to be carried alone. And the harder I worked to carry it that way — the heavier it became.

            What changed was not finding the right people. It was learning to let people in.

            That is a different thing entirely. The right people were already there — they had been there for years. What was missing was my willingness to let them see what I was actually carrying.

            There was a couple in our lives — people who became some of our closest friends — who showed us what it looked like to be truly known. To bring the real thing into a friendship and have it held rather than fixed. To say this is hard and be met with we know — we are here.

            Through one of the hardest seasons our family has walked through — a season that had nothing to do with infant loss and everything to do with the kind of grief that does not come with a sympathy card — they showed up. And in their showing up I realized something I had missed for years.

            God had been building our community all along.

            Not just through this season. Through all of them. He had been placing people in our lives — some for a little while, some for longer — always for a purpose. Always for exactly the season we would one day need them for.

            I had just been too busy carrying it alone to notice.

            You Have to Give Yourself Permission

            Permission to feel it. To name it. To not perform your way through it.

            Grief does not respond well to performance. The more you manage it — the more you control the narrative, the more you hold the acceptable version of your sadness up for people to see — the longer it takes to actually move through it.

            Permission sounds passive. It is not. It is one of the hardest things I have ever chosen.

            Permission to cry at the grocery store when a song comes on.
            Permission to say I am not okay today without immediately following it with but I will be fine.
            Permission to say her name — Lucy Grace, Madison Joy — out loud, in public, to people who might not know what to do with it.

            Saying the name out loud is an act of defiance against the part of grief that wants to go quiet and invisible. It is a way of insisting that the person who died mattered — that the love did not stop — that the missing is not something to be managed but something to be honored.

            Grief is not linear — and it does not end on a schedule.

            There is no timeline. There is no finish line. There is no point at which you are supposed to be done.

            I have met people who are embarrassed to still be grieving something that happened years ago. Who apologize for crying. Who wonder out loud whether something is wrong with them for still feeling it.

            Nothing is wrong with you.

            Grief comes back. It comes back on the anniversary. On the birthday. On the holiday that will never feel exactly the same. On an ordinary Tuesday when a song plays or a smell drifts through the air or a child says something that cracks you open all over again.

            That is not regression. That is love. It is the cost of having loved someone — and it is worth paying.

            Community is not something you find. It is something you let in.

            I used to think community was about finding the right people. The right church. The right small group. The right friend who would understand.

            And those things matter — the church, the small group, the friends who show up.

            But what I have learned is that community starts with a decision you make before you ever walk into the room.

            The decision to be known.

            Not the curated version of known — not the version where you share enough to seem relatable but not so much that anyone sees the real thing. Actually known. The afraid version. The falling apart version. The version that does not have it together and is not pretending to.

            Our small group, our church community, the friendships God has built around us over the years — they have been one of the greatest gifts of my grief. Not because they fixed anything. But because they stayed. They showed up. They said her name. They held the weight alongside us without trying to take it away.

            And I almost missed all of it because I was too busy being fine.

            What thirteen years has taught me about God.

            He is faithful. Not in the way that means everything goes the way you prayed. But in the way that means He has never once left you in it alone.

            I look back over thirteen years and I can trace His faithfulness in the people He placed in our path. In the seasons that broke us open and the community that caught us when they did. In the ways He provided — not always the way we asked, but always in the way we needed.

            He was building something all along. In the grief and through it. With the people He brought and the ones He kept and the seasons that cost more than we expected.

            And what He was building — slowly, over thirteen years — was us.

            Not a finished product. Not a neat before and after. Just people who are better at carrying it. Who have learned to let others in. Who know that you do not get over grief — but that you do not have to carry it alone — but that you do not have to carry it alone.

            And that makes all the difference.

            If you are in the early days of grief right now — or the middle days, or the days that were supposed to be over by now — I want you to know that what you are carrying is real and it is heavy and it is allowed to be both of those things.

            You do not have to be over it yet.

            You do not have to carry it alone.

            And God is not finished with what He is building in you — even here, even now, even in this.

            If you are looking for a place to start — grab the free Prayer List — prayers for yourself, your spouse, and your kids for every kind of season. And if you want to go deeper — the Old to New Creations Journals were designed for exactly this kind of slow, intentional carrying.

            Because God is not finished with your story.

            Becoming

            When I Finally Asked for Help — and Why It Took So Long

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            I did not know I needed help.

            That is the honest truth of it. And I think it is the thing most people never say — not because they are lying, but because when you are in the middle of it, you genuinely cannot see it.

            Six months after losing Lucy Grace, I was functioning. I was getting up in the morning. I was showing up. I was doing the things that needed to be done. By most external measures — including my own — I was fine.

            But fine is not the same as okay. And okay is not the same as free.

            I was not surviving well. I just did not know it yet.

            What grief does that nothing else does

            Grief strips away your coping mechanisms.

            For most of my life I had managed — quietly, competently, invisibly — a set of deep fears I did not even have names for. Fear of not being enough. Fear of not being truly loveable. Fear that the people I loved most would eventually find me too much or not enough or somewhere in between.

            I was driven. I out-worked almost everyone around me. My goal — if I am being completely honest — was to over-achieve. Some people might call that perfectionism and I would have pushed back on that label. I did not think I was perfect. I just believed, somewhere underneath everything, that perfect was the target. And anything short of it was missing the mark.

            The performance was the protection. If I worked hard enough, achieved enough, showed up well enough — maybe the fear would not catch up with me. Maybe I could outrun it.

            But grief does not let you outrun anything.

            It takes everything you have just to get through the day — and suddenly the fears you had been quietly containing for years had nowhere left to go. They came out sideways. In the way I kept score in the wrong direction. In the insecurity that kept whispering — even on the good days — that it was only a matter of time.

            I was not just grieving Lucy Grace. I was grieving a version of myself I had worked very hard to maintain — and could no longer hold together.

            The moment I could not explain away

            It came in the middle of a conversation I was not expecting.

            Someone who loved me — someone who knew me well enough to say the hard thing — held up a mirror.

            They pointed out something I did not want to see. That even when things were good — even on the days that should have been easy, the moments that should have been enough — I was not holding onto those. I was keeping score in the wrong direction. Cataloguing the evidence for my fears rather than the evidence against them.

            They were not saying it to be cruel. They were saying it because it was true.

            And something in me went very quiet.

            Because I knew — in the way you know things you have been trying not to know — that they were right. I had been doing this for a long time. And this was not just grief talking. This was something older.

            Your mirror moment may have looked nothing like mine. Maybe it was a conversation with someone who loved you. Maybe it was something you noticed in yourself in a quiet moment. Maybe it was a pattern you could not explain away anymore. The details are different for everyone. But the feeling — of seeing yourself clearly for the first time and not being sure you liked what you saw — that part is not mine alone.

            The conversation that changed things

            Not long after — rattled and raw and not entirely sure what to do with what I had seen in myself — I called a trusted friend. A fellow pastor’s wife who knew both my world and my heart.

            I did not call her because I knew I needed help. I called her because I did not know what else to do.

            She listened. She did not fix it or explain it or tell me what it meant. She just stayed in it with me — and then challenged me to focus on one small thing I could ask of the person I loved that would bring me peace. Something specific. Something reachable. Not the whole problem — just one thing.

            That was the first time in a long time someone had helped me narrow the overwhelming down to something I could actually hold.

            And then — gently, almost as an afterthought — she asked whether I had talked to anyone. A counselor. Someone trained to help with what I was carrying.

            I had not. The idea felt like an admission of something I was not ready to admit.

            But I went. And something began to shift.

            What I found when I finally looked

            I want to be careful here — because this part of the story is not a quick before and after. It was not a single conversation or a single session that changed everything. It was slow. It took years. The kind of change that does not announce itself but you look up one day and realize you are standing somewhere different than you were.

            What I found — slowly, over time — was that the fears I had been carrying were not the truth about me. They were stories I had absorbed somewhere along the way and never stopped to question. Agreements I had made without realizing I was agreeing to anything.

            Lies. Not dramatic ones. Quiet ones. The kind that whisper rather than shout. You have to earn it. You are only as good as your last performance. If people really knew you — all of you — they would find you to be too much or not enough.

            I learned to recognize the moment the fear was driving instead of the truth. Not perfectly — not overnight — but slowly. I learned to slow down the narrative in my mind and ask a simple question: Is this actually true? Or is this the fear talking?

            I learned to receive the good days rather than waiting for them to be taken away. I learned to trust what people showed me rather than bracing for the moment they would show me something different. I learned — and this was the hardest — to let people see the real version of me. Not the driven, achieving, gracious version. The afraid one.

            This did not happen quickly. Healing like this rarely does. It was years of slow work — recognizing a tendency, naming a lie, choosing truth instead, backsliding, trying again. The kind of change that does not feel like change while it is happening and then one day you look up and realize you are standing somewhere you could not have imagined.

            And what I found at the end of that slow road — or at least at the place I am standing now — was freedom.

            Not the absence of fear. Not perfection finally achieved. Just the quiet, steady ability to look at the fear and choose something else. To believe — actually believe, not just say — that I was enough. That I was loveable. Not because I had earned it. Because I was.

            That is not a small thing. That is everything.

            Why I am telling you this

            Because I spent a long time believing that asking for help was a sign of weakness. That a woman of faith should be able to carry her grief with more grace. That what I was feeling was not bad enough — not clinical enough, not dramatic enough — to warrant the kind of help that required sitting across from someone and saying I am not okay.

            If that is where you are — I want to say this as clearly as I know how:

            You do not have to be in crisis to need help. You do not have to be falling apart visibly. You do not have to hit a wall before you are allowed to ask someone to walk alongside you.

            Sometimes the sign that you need help is simply that you are not thriving. That you are functioning but not free. That you have been managing something for so long that you have forgotten you were managing anything at all.

            Grief has a way of revealing what was already there. And what gets revealed deserves to be healed — not re-buried, not re-managed, not pushed back down until the next time it surfaces.

            If this post resonates with you — if something in you went quiet while you were reading it — that quiet is worth paying attention to.

            You are allowed to ask for help. Even now. Even if what you are carrying does not have a name yet.

            Because God is not finished with your story.

            And sometimes the next chapter begins the moment you stop trying to write it alone.

            If you are looking for a place to start — the Old to New Creations Journals were designed for exactly this kind of slow, intentional work. And if you are in a hard season right now — grab the free Prayer List — prayers for yourself, your spouse, and your kids for the ordinary days and the ones that knock you down.

            Because God is not finished with your story.

            A family walking together outdoors — How to Talk to Your Child About Death, Old to New Creations with Jessica Mitchell

            How to Talk to Your Child About Death — The Words That Help and the Ones to Avoid

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            Nobody prepares you for this conversation.

            You can read every parenting book on the shelf. You can feel confident about screen time and boundaries and how to handle a tantrum. And then one day — maybe suddenly, maybe after a long illness, maybe after a loss you did not see coming — your child looks up at you with those completely trusting eyes and asks the question you do not know how to answer.

            Where did they go? Will you die too? Is he sleeping? Why do I still feel sad?

            And you realize you are standing at the edge of the most important conversation you have ever had — with no script, no preparation, and a heart that is probably breaking right alongside theirs.

            I have been there. More than once.

            My sister lost her daughter, my niece Madison Joy, at thirty-five days old. Three years later I delivered my own stillborn daughter, Lucy Grace — gift of light. I have sat on the couch with grieving children and searched for the words. I have watched my nephew’s small face as he tried to make sense of something no child should have to make sense of.

            And I have learned — slowly, imperfectly — that there are words that help and words that confuse. There is a way to tell the truth that a child can hold. And there is a way through this conversation that does not require you to have all the answers.

            This post is what I wish someone had handed me.

            Start Here: The Most Important Thing

            Before we get to the specific words — here is the foundation everything else rests on.

            Your child does not need a perfect answer. They need a present parent.

            What matters most in this conversation is not that you say exactly the right thing. It is that your child feels heard, that you tell the truth, and that you stay in the conversation with them — even when it is hard, even when you are crying, even when you do not know what comes next.

            Children can handle a lot of truth when it is offered with love and honesty. What they cannot handle well is confusion, silence, or the sense that death is too scary for the grownups to talk about.

            So stay in the conversation. That is the most important thing you can do.

            I shared the verses that held me when nothing else could. If you’re a parent guiding a children through grief, spend some time sitting with these verses.

            Use the Real Words

            This is where most parents start — reaching for softer language to protect their child from the sharpness of the word died.

            They went to sleep. We lost them. They passed away. They are gone.

            These phrases feel gentler. But for young children — who think in very concrete, literal terms — they create confusion that can turn into fear.

            A child told someone went to sleep may be afraid to go to sleep themselves. A child told you lost someone may wonder why you have not gone to look for them. A child told someone passed away may not understand that this is permanent.

            Use the words died and death. Gently. Honestly. With love in your voice and your hand in theirs.

            These are not cruel words. They are true words. And truth, offered with gentleness, is one of the most merciful things you can give a grieving child.

            The Questions They Ask — and What to Say

            Here are the questions children most commonly ask when someone they love has died — along with honest, age-appropriate responses. These are starting points, not scripts. Find the language that sounds like you.

            “Is he/she sleeping?”

            “No, they are not sleeping. When someone dies, their body stops working completely — and it will not wake up again. It may look a little like sleeping on the outside, but it is very different. Heaven is where they are now — and that is a real place, full of light and love and Jesus.”

            “Where did they go?”

            “Heaven is a real place — full of light and joy and Jesus. And the Bible tells us that anyone who believes in Jesus gets to be with Him in heaven when they die. They are safe there. They are not hurting or scared. They are loved.”

            “Will I die too?”

            This is one of the hardest questions — because it comes from a real and reasonable fear. Answer it honestly without creating more fear.

            “Everyone dies someday. But I plan to be here for a very, very long time. And whatever happens — you will always be loved. You will never be alone. God promised that, and He has never broken a promise yet.”

            “Will you die too?”

            “I plan to be here for a very, very long time. And if that ever changes — you will be loved and cared for. You will never be alone. God goes with you everywhere — even the places I cannot.”

            “Why do I still feel sad? It has been a long time.”

            “Because you loved them. And missing someone is just love with nowhere to go right now. Feeling sad does not mean something is wrong with you. It means your heart is working exactly the way it was made to. It is okay to still be sad. I am still sad sometimes too.”

            “Can they see me?”

            This one requires honesty about what we do and do not know for certain.

            “We do not know everything about heaven. But we know that God sees you — always — and that the people who loved you never stop loving you. People who are loved like that are never really forgotten.”

            What Not to Say

            These phrases are common and well-intentioned. They come from love. But for young children they can create confusion, fear, or a distorted understanding of both death and God. I wrote more about what not to say here.

            “They are in a better place.” This is true — but on its own it can feel like it is asking your child to skip the part where they are allowed to be devastated. Pair it with permission: “They are safe with Jesus — and it is completely okay to miss them.” That small addition makes all the difference.

            “God needed another angel.” This is not theologically accurate — people do not become angels when they die. And for a grieving child it can quietly plant a seed of anger toward God. He took them because He needed them. That is a hard thing to sit with when your child needed them too. Keep the focus on truth: they are with Jesus, known and loved and held.

            “Be strong.” “Don’t cry.” “You need to be brave.” However lovingly intended — these phrases teach children to suppress grief rather than process it. Instead try: “It is okay to cry. I am crying too. We loved them so much.” Letting your child see your tears may be one of the most important things you do. It shows them that grief is not something to be ashamed of. It is love doing its work.

            “Everything happens for a reason.” For a grieving child — or a grieving adult — this phrase raises more questions than it answers. Better to sit in the mystery honestly: “I do not know why this happened. But I know God loves us, and He has them.”

            “They went to sleep.” / “We lost them.” / “They passed away.” As discussed above — reach for honest, concrete language instead. Died and death are not cruel words. They are true ones.

            Grief Is Not One Conversation

            Here is something nobody warns you about: this conversation does not end.

            A child who seemed to understand at three will ask new questions at five. A child who was quiet about it at six may bring it up with fresh grief at nine. An anniversary, a birthday, a holiday, an ordinary Tuesday — the grief will come back in new forms at different ages as your child grows and their understanding deepens.

            This is not regression. This is healthy. It is the way children process — slowly, in layers, over time.

            Every time the question comes back — it is an invitation. An opportunity to say the name again. To remind them that the people we love are never forgotten. To go a little deeper than you could the last time.

            Keep the door open. Stay in the conversation. Let them bring it back as many times as they need to.

            Because grief is not one conversation.

            It is love — doing what love does.

            A Resource for the Conversation

            If you are looking for a place to start — a resource to hold during one of the hardest conversations you will ever have — I wrote a children’s book for exactly this moment.

            Mommy, Is Madison Sleeping? is a faith-based picture book for families navigating the death of a loved one with young children. It follows a little boy named Owen as his mother walks him honestly and gently through the questions children actually ask — validating his grief, answering with truth, and anchoring every hard thing in Biblical hope.

            It is for any loss — a grandparent, a sibling, a parent, a friend. And it includes a full parent guide in the back matter with suggested responses to common questions, what language to avoid, and how to navigate grief that comes back over time.

            The book is on its journey toward publication. Subscribe below to be the first to know when it is available.

            If you are in a season of waiting or grief right now – or walking alongside a child who is – the Old to New Creations Journals and the free Prayer List were designed for exactly this.

            Because grief is not something to overcome. It is love that has not stopped.

            And God is not finished with your story. Or your child’s.

            The Verses That Held Me When Nothing Else Could

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            I did not go looking for most of these verses.

            They found me.

            In hospital rooms. In the middle of the night. In the quiet after everyone went home and the house felt too loud with silence. In the moments when I did not have words of my own — these words were already there, waiting.

            My sister lost her daughter, my niece, Madison Joy, at thirty-five days old. Three years later I delivered my own stillborn daughter, Lucy Grace — gift of light. I have sat in the kind of grief that has a death certificate and a name and a space in your heart that nothing else will ever fill.

            And I have held onto these verses like a lifeline.

            I am not sharing them as a list of things to say to someone who is grieving. I am sharing them as what they actually are — the words that kept me tethered to God when I could not feel Him, could not find Him, and was not entirely sure I trusted Him.

            Maybe they will do the same for you.

            Grief is Not Selective

            It does not only come for the parents who buried a child. It comes for the family that packed up everything they knew and moved somewhere new — and grieved the community that used to answer the phone. It comes for the season of waiting when the future would not come clear no matter how hard you prayed for direction. It comes for the parent sitting up at night with a broken heart over a child walking a road you never imagined for them. It comes for the relationship that needed to end or change — and the loss of what it used to be. It comes for the job that disappeared. For the dream that did not survive the year you thought it would.

            I have sat in some of these myself. Not all of them came with a name. But they all cost something. And the verses I am about to share — they were not only written for the ones holding a death certificate.

            They were written for anyone whose heart is broken.

            That includes you.

            When You Need Permission to Grieve

            “Jesus wept.” — John 11:35

            The shortest verse in the Bible. The most important one I know for anyone sitting in grief.

            Jesus did not arrive at the tomb of Lazarus with an explanation or a silver lining. He did not say everything happens for a reason. He stood at the grave of someone He loved — knowing full well He was about to raise him from the dead — and He wept.

            If Jesus wept, your tears are never something to be ashamed of. Your grief is not a lack of faith. It is love. It is human. And it is something God Himself has felt.

            When You Need to Know God Sees You

            “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” — Psalm 34:18

            This verse appears twice in my children’s book Mommy, Is Madison Sleeping? — once in the story and once at the very end, in the back matter for parents. I did not plan it that way. It just kept coming back because it kept being true.

            God is not distant in grief. He is not watching from a safe distance while you fall apart. He is closest of all in the broken places. That is not a platitude — it is a promise. And He has never broken one yet.

            When You Need to Know Where They Are

            “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?” — John 14:1-3

            Heaven is not a metaphor. It is not a comfort we invented to make death easier to bear. It is a real place — prepared by Jesus Himself — where those who belong to Him will one day be together.

            Madison Joy is there. Lucy Grace is there. And Jesus said so.

            When You Need Resurrection Hope

            “Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.'” — John 11:25-26

            This is the anchor of everything. Not just a promise about heaven — a promise about Jesus Himself. He is the resurrection. He did not just teach about life after death. He walked out of a tomb and proved it.

            That changes everything about grief. Not because it takes the pain away — it does not. But because it means death does not have the final word. Jesus does.

            When You Need to Know the Love Does Not Stop

            “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” — Romans 8:38-39

            Nothing. Not even death.

            I have read this verse hundreds of times. And still — every time — something in me exhales. The love does not stop at the grave. It does not stop at the diagnosis. It does not stop at the divorce or the prodigal or the dream that died or the season that will not end.

            Nothing in all of creation can separate you from His love. Not even this.

            When you need peace that does not make sense

            “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” — Philippians 4:7

            I used to think this verse meant God would eventually make things make sense. That the peace would come when I understood.

            I was wrong.

            The peace that passes understanding is not the peace of having answers. It is the peace of being held by someone who has all the answers — and trusting that is enough. It comes in the dark. In the not-knowing. In the middle of something that will never fully make sense this side of heaven.

            It guards your heart. Even when your heart is broken.

            When you need to know God is not finished

            “Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” — Philippians 1:6

            He started something in you. Even this — even the grief, the loss, the broken middle of your story — is not the end of what He is doing. He does not abandon what He begins.

            This is the verse behind the name. Old to New Creations. 2 Corinthians 5:17 (“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”). The belief that God is constantly at work making something new — even when the old thing breaking apart is something you loved.

            He is not finished.

            Not with your story. Not with your grief. Not with you.

            When you need to know He will not leave

            “The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.” — Deuteronomy 31:8

            He goes before you. Into the hard thing you are walking toward — the anniversary, the due date that came and went, the holiday that will never feel the same — He is already there. Already present. Already holding what you are about to face.

            You are not walking into it alone.

            Whatever brought you to this post today — whatever grief you are carrying that came with a name or did not — these promises are yours.

            A Note for Parents

            If you are navigating grief with young children — trying to find the words, trying to answer the questions you never thought you would have to answer — I wrote a children’s book for exactly that moment.

            Mommy, Is Madison Sleeping? is a faith-based picture book for families navigating the death of a loved one with young children. These verses — and the hope they carry — are woven throughout every page. (Currently, I’m in the midst of a long process to find a literary agent and publisher).

            If you are in a season of waiting or grief right now, the Old to New Journals were designed for exactly this.

            Because grief is not something to overcome. It is love that has not stopped.

            And God is not finished with your story.

            If these verses have held you — share this post with someone who needs them today.

            What Not to Say to Someone Who is Grieving (And What Actually Helps)

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            Someone you love is hurting.

            Maybe they lost a child. Maybe they lost a spouse, a parent, a sibling – someone who was woven so deeply into the fabric of their everyday life that they do not know yet who they are without them.

            Or maybe the loss does not have a funeral. Maybe it is a marriage that fell apart. A prodigal child who walked away. A diagnosis that changed everything. A dream that quietly died while nobody was watching. A friendship that ended without explanation. A career that collapsed. A pregnancy that never made it.

            Some grief has a funeral. Some grief has a Tuesday.

            It comes when everyone else has moved on and you are still standing in the rubble of something that used to be your life. It comes for things that do not have sympathy cards – and those are sometimes the loneliest griefs of all because nobody names them, nobody shows up, and nobody knows what to say. Sometimes we stuff our grief deep inside of us, because we don’t feel safe sharing it with anyone else.

            I have been on both sides of this. I lost my niece, Madison Joy, at thirty-give days old. I lost my daughter, Lucy Grace, to stillbirth. My family has also walked through grief connected death, to lost jobs, and to the kind of mistakes that change everything. And I have had the honor to walking alongside others through their own.

            And I have also sat in the quieter kinds – the ones that nobody sees coming, the ones that do not come with instructions.

            So I want to give you something useful today. Not a script. Not a formula. Just the honest truth about what helps and what does not – from someone who has lived more than one kind of loss.

            The grief nobody names

            Before we get to the phrases, I want to pause and say something that does not get said enough.

            Not all grief is grief over death.

            Some of the deepest grief I have ever witnessed — in my own life and in the lives of women around me — has been over things that are still technically alive. A child who is estranged. A marriage that is ending. A friendship that betrayed you. A season of infertility. A vision for your life that is not going to happen the way you planned.

            These losses are real. The grief is real. And yet so often the people carrying them feel they have no right to grieve — because nobody died, because things could be worse, because at least you still have your health or your job or your faith or your kids.

            Can I say this clearly? You have the right to grieve anything you have lost.

            Grief is not a competition. It does not require a death certificate to be legitimate. It is simply the cost of having loved something — a person, a dream, a version of your life — and finding it gone.

            If that is where you are today, this post is for you too.

            What not to say – and why it lands the way it does

            “They went to sleep.” “They passed away.” “We lost them.”

            These phrases feel softer. Gentler. Like they protect the grieving person from the sharpness of the word died.

            But euphemisms create distance from the truth — and grieving people are already living the truth. They do not need it softened. They need it named.

            For children especially, these phrases cause real confusion. A child told someone went to sleep may be afraid to go to sleep themselves. A child told you lost someone may wonder why you have not gone to look for them.

            Use the words died and death. Gently. Honestly. They are not cruel words. They are true words. And truth held with love is the most merciful thing you can offer.

            “They are in a better place.”

            This one is true. I believe it completely. Madison Joy is with Jesus. Lucy Grace is with Jesus.

            But on its own, without anything else, this phrase can feel like it is asking the grieving person to skip straight to the good ending. Like the hope cancels out the devastation.

            It does not.

            If you want to use this phrase, pair it with permission: “They are safe with Jesus — and it is completely okay to miss them.” That small addition changes everything. It holds the hope and the grief at the same time — and that is exactly where most grieving people actually live.

            “God needed another angel.”

            This comes from a tender place. The people who said it to me meant it with love.

            But it is not theologically accurate. People do not become angels when they die. And for a grieving person — or a grieving child — this phrase can quietly plant a seed of anger toward God. He took them because He needed them. That is a hard thing to sit with when you needed them too.

            Keep the focus on the truth instead: they are with Jesus, known and loved and held. That is enough — and it is the right kind of enough.

            “Be strong.” “Don’t cry.” “You need to be brave.”

            We say these things because we want the people we love to be okay. And sometimes we say them because we do not know how to sit with someone in the not-okay.

            But grief needs room. It needs to be felt, not managed. Telling someone to be strong — even with the most loving intent — teaches them that their sadness is something to push through rather than something to move through.

            What helps instead: “It is okay to cry. I am here. You do not have to hold it together right now.”

            That is it. Permission and presence. It is the whole thing.

            “Everything happens for a reason.”

            This one was said to me more than once after losing Lucy Grace. And every time I heard it, something in me went quiet and closed.

            I do not believe that God authored my daughter’s death as a plot point in a plan. I believe He is sovereign over a broken world and that He can redeem anything — including the worst things. Those are not the same.

            For a grieving person, this phrase raises more questions than it answers. What is the reason? Could I have prevented it? Did God choose this?

            Better to sit in the mystery honestly: “I don’t know why this happened. But I know God loves you. And I am not going anywhere.”

            “At least…”

            At least you have other children. At least you had time together. At least you know what happened. At least it was not worse.

            Every version of this phrase does the same thing — it asks the grieving person to measure their loss against something else and find it smaller. To be grateful rather than devastated.

            Grief does not work that way. A grieving person is not comforted by the knowledge that things could be worse. They are standing in the ruins of what is. Meet them there.

            “I know exactly how you feel.”

            You probably do not. Even if you have experienced a similar loss — even if you have walked through something that looks identical from the outside — grief is deeply personal. The relationship, the circumstances, the history, the faith journey — all of it shapes the experience in ways no one else can fully know.

            What you can say instead: “I don’t know exactly what this feels like for you. But I want to. Tell me about them.”

            That question — tell me about them — is one of the most generous things you can offer a grieving person. It says: the person you lost mattered. I want to know who they were. Their name is not a wound I am afraid to touch.

            The grief nobody shows up for

            Here is what I want to say to the person sitting in the quieter kind of loss.

            The marriage that is ending. The child who walked away. The dream that died slowly over years. The friendship that fell apart without warning. The diagnosis that changed the whole plan. The season of waiting that never resolved the way you prayed.

            Nobody brings casseroles for these. Nobody says I am so sorry for your loss. The world keeps moving and you are standing still. You’re not even sure you are allowed to call this grief. You are.

            Some of these I have lived myself. Others I know from standing beside someone I love while they carried something I could not carry for them.

            The absence of a funeral does not make the loss less real. The absence of a death certificate does not mean your heart is not broken. And the absence of sympathy cards does not mean you are not allowed to need someone to sit with you in it.

            If you are in that kind of grief today — the kind that does not have a name or a ritual or a casserole — I want you to know that you are seen here. This space is for you too.

            We do not suffer well.

            Not most of us. Not naturally.

            When grief arrives — in whatever form it takes — our first instinct is to understand it. To explain it. To find the reason, the lesson, the silver lining. To fix it for the people we love or to fix it in ourselves. To get to the other side of it as quickly as possible so we can go back to being okay.

            And so we say everything happens for a reason because we cannot bear to sit in the mystery. We say be strong because we do not know how to be present with pain. We say at least because we are trying to build a ladder out of the hole before the person has even had a chance to look around and understand where they are.

            We are not bad people for doing this. We are people who were never taught how to suffer.

            But there is another way.

            What if grief — all of it, every kind — was not a problem to be solved but an invitation to trust? Not to understand why. Not to find the reason. Not to get to the other side. But to go through it with your hand in the hand of a God who has been to the other side of death and come back.

            That is what the peace that passes understanding actually is. It is not the absence of pain. It is not the explanation you were looking for. It is the presence of God in the middle of something that does not make sense — and the slow, quiet discovery that He is enough. That He was always enough. That even this — even the worst thing — cannot separate you from His love.

            That is not something you arrive at quickly. It is not something anyone can hand you in a phrase at a funeral.

            It is something you find on your knees. In the dark. When the casseroles have stopped coming and the world has moved on and you are still in the middle of it.

            And it is there — I promise you it is there — that God does His deepest work.

            Not in spite of the grief. Through it.

            So what do you actually say?

            You say less than you think you need to.

            You show up. You bring food. You sit on the couch and you do not try to fix it. You say their name — or the name of what was lost — out loud, because the thing grieving people fear most is not that someone will bring it up. It is that everyone will forget.

            Say I am so sorry. Say I loved them too. Say tell me about them. Say I am here and I am not going anywhere. Say their name.

            And then stay.

            That is what our pastor and his wife did for us after we lost Lucy Grace. They showed up at our door one evening with ice cream. They stayed ten minutes. They did not explain it or fix it or find the silver lining. They just showed up.

            It was everything.

            A note for parents talking to grieving children

            If you are a parent walking a child through any kind of loss — the death of someone they loved, a family change, something that shifted their world — the same principles apply.

            Children need honest, concrete language. They need permission to feel what they feel. They need to know that the missing is not something wrong with them. They need you to say the name — of the person, of the loss, of whatever it is that is gone.

            If you are looking for a resource to help you have those conversations about death specifically, I wrote a children’s book for exactly that moment. Mommy, Is Madison Sleeping? is a faith-based picture book for families navigating the death of a loved one with young children. It is for any loss — a grandparent, a sibling, a parent, a friend.

            Because grief is not something to overcome. It is a love that has not stopped.

            And God is not finished with your story.

            If this post helped you, share it with someone who is walking alongside a friend in grief. Sometimes the most loving thing we can do it learn how to show up well.

            If you are in a season of waiting or grief right now, the Old to New Journals were designed for exactly this.

            Join the Old to New Creations community and receive new posts, honest stories, and faith resources directly in your inbox.

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