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.

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

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

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)

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.

    Built with Kit

    Why We Take the Day Off Every Year: Creating Space for Grief That Comes Back

    It took us a little while to figure this out.

    The second anniversary arrived and we were not prepared for it. Not because we had forgotten — you do not forget the anniversary of the day you delivered your stillborn daughter. (If you haven’t read Lucy Grace’s story yet, you can find it here). But because we had convinced ourselves that we were further along than we were. That the new normal we had found in the months leading up to it would hold on that day too.

    It did not.

    We learned something that second year —

    You cannot always predict how a grief anniversary will land.

    And trying to push through it like any other day is not strength. It is just a different kind of ‘not okay.’

    Why We Take the Day Off

    After that second year we made a decision.

    We take the day off.

    Not just my husband and me — our whole family. We create space. We slow down. We let the day be what it needs to be without the pressure of normal life crowding in around it.

    Let me tell you how we got there — because the lesson did not come all at once.

    If you haven’t read my story of burying grief – and what finally helped – you can read that here.

    The first year we knew the anniversary was coming and we planned intentionally. We took the kids and did something fun together — something that honored Lucy Grace and then celebrated life. We knew that all the firsts were significant. We knew we needed to prepare. And so we did — and it helped.

    The second year we thought we were further along – whatever that means.

    In the months leading up to the second anniversary we had more good days than hard ones. More laughter than tears. And somewhere in that season of feeling more like ourselves again we made an assumption —

    Maybe this year the anniversary would feel like a new normal too.

    It did not.

    The emotions rushed back for both of us — not gradually, not gently, but with the full force of a grief that had not diminished just because we had been carrying it more quietly. And what we realized in the middle of that day — scrambling to find our footing without having created any space to land — was something I have not forgotten since:

    Even when we are not consciously processing our loss — our bodies are.

    Grief does not wait for our permission. It does not check whether we have scheduled time for it or whether we have decided we are past it. It lives in us at a level that goes deeper than our conscious awareness — and on the anniversary of a significant loss it has a way of surfacing whether we are ready or not.

    What we learned that second year was this —

    If we tried to rush past this day we would actually be burying a pain that needed to be remembered in order to continue growing toward health.

    Burying it is not the same as healing it.

    Pushing through is not the same as moving forward.

    And so from that year on — we took the day off. As a family, for many years. And more recently it has looked different — for me it is still a day I protect and hold carefully. For others in my family the rhythm has shifted over time as grief has changed shape for each of them.

    And that is okay.

    Grief does not look the same for every person in a family. The way someone honors an anniversary — or chooses not to — does not measure how much they loved the person they lost. It measures where they are in their own journey. And those journeys do not always run on the same timeline.

    What matters is that the day is not ignored. What matters is that she is remembered. What matters is that the space exists — for whoever needs it, in whatever form they need it.

    The Years That Fall on the Same Day

    There is something I want to mention that caught us off guard the first time it happened —

    Grief anniversaries that fall on the same day of the week as the original loss hit differently.

    Lucy Grace was born sleeping on a Monday morning. Most years the anniversary falls on a different day — a Thursday, a Tuesday. But approximately every six years the date falls on the same day of the week again.

    Those years land harder.

    Not because the grief is larger — but because the ordinary rhythm of that day carries a memory that the other days don’t. Something about the same morning light, the same day-of-week feeling, the same sequence of hours — it brings it back in a more visceral way.

    We did not anticipate that the first time it happened.

    Now we know to pay attention to it.

    If you are navigating grief anniversaries — it might be worth noting which day of the week your loss occurred. Not to dread the years when it comes around again — but to be gentle with yourself when it does. To take the space you need. To not be surprised by the weight of it.

    What We Do

    I am going to keep the specific details of how we spend the day close to our family — some things are meant to stay private and sacred.

    But I will tell you the spirit of it.

    We say her name. We remember out loud. We tell stories — the ones we have told before and the ones that surface fresh each year. We give ourselves permission to feel whatever is there without rushing past it or explaining it away. We do something that honors her — something that says you were here and you mattered and we have not forgotten.

    And we do it together — or alone, or somewhere in between, depending on the year and the person and what the day requires.

    For the Children

    One of the things I am most grateful for is that our children have grown up in a family where Lucy Grace’s anniversary is acknowledged and honored every year.

    They were almost four and almost six when we lost her. They asked questions then that were appropriate for their ages. And as they have grown — those questions have grown with them. Each year the anniversary gives us a natural and gentle opportunity to revisit her story at whatever level of understanding they are at now.

    That is one of the gifts of creating an annual rhythm around grief —

    It gives children a framework.

    It tells them that death is not something we pretend did not happen. That the people we lose do not get quietly retired from our family story. That saying someone’s name — even years later, even when it hurts — is one of the most loving things we can do.

    Lucy Grace is part of our family. She always will be. And our children will grow up knowing that.

    You Do Not Have to Have It All Figured Out

    If you are reading this and you have never created any kind of ritual around your grief anniversary — please hear me —

    There is no right way to do this.

    There is no perfect rhythm. No formula. No grief anniversary checklist that will guarantee you feel the right things in the right order.

    There is only the intention to create space.

    To say — on this day, every year, I am going to slow down and remember. I am going to honor the person I lost. I am going to give my grief a place to go rather than pushing it down and hoping it stays there.

    That intention alone is enough to start.

    Maybe for you it looks like taking the day off work. Maybe it looks like visiting a grave or a meaningful place. Maybe it looks like cooking a favorite meal or planting something or releasing something. Maybe it looks like gathering the people who loved them and telling stories around a table. Maybe it looks like sitting quietly alone with God and letting yourself feel whatever is there.

    Whatever it looks like for your family — do it intentionally. Do it consistently. And do it without apology.

    Because the people we have loved and lost deserve to be remembered.

    Not just in the first year when the grief is fresh and everyone understands.

    But every year. For as long as we are here to remember them.

    A Note on the Grief That Surprises You

    One more thing before I close —

    Grief anniversaries are not the only days that will catch you off guard.

    Sometimes it is a random Tuesday in March with no particular significance that suddenly feels impossibly heavy. Sometimes it is a song on the radio or a smell or a stranger’s laugh that sounds like theirs. Sometimes it is a milestone — a birthday they never reached, a graduation they never attended, a wedding they never saw.

    Grief does not stay on the calendar.

    And that is okay.

    When it arrives unexpectedly — on the ordinary days, in the quiet moments, in the middle of something completely unrelated — give yourself the same grace you would give yourself on the anniversary. I wrote about the hand metaphor – and what grief looks like as it changes over time – here.

    Slow down. Feel it. Say their name. And trust that the God who is close to the brokenhearted is just as present on the random Tuesday as He is on the anniversary.

    “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” — Hebrews 13:8

    He does not take days off from being faithful.

    And you do not have to take days off from grieving.

    If your family has created rituals around a grief anniversary that have helped you — I would love to hear about them in the comments. And if this post found you in the middle of a hard anniversary season right now — I am so glad you are here. You are not alone.

    Share this with someone who needs permission to slow down and remember.

    The spiritual practices that helped us create intentional space for grief are ones I wrote about here.

    Six Months After Loss: What Nobody Talks About and What Finally Helped

    Nobody warns you about six months. Okay, maybe there are warnings, but I was not prepared.

    They show up in the early days — the casseroles, the cards, the phone calls, the people who sit beside you and cry with you and make sure you are not alone. And that is a gift. A real and necessary gift. We were a part of an amazing Church, in relationship with people that loved and cared for one another so well. We rejoiced with one another. We cried with one another.

    But six months later — when the casseroles have stopped coming and the world has largely moved on and everyone around you seems to have quietly concluded that you are probably fine by now —

    That is when it got hard for me in a different way.

    Not the sharp, immediate grief of the hospital room. Not the raw, tender grief of the early weeks. But something slower and heavier and harder to name. Something that had been quietly building underneath the surface while I was busy trying to hold it together.

    And somewhere around six months after losing Lucy Grace —

    I hit bottom.

    But before I tell you about that — I want to tell you about a night that happened somewhere in that season that I have never forgotten.

    Our pastor and his wife showed up at our door.

    These were not strangers — they were people who had been in that hospital room with us. Who had held Lucy Grace. Who had cried with us over her small, still body. Who had shown up in the most sacred and devastating moment of our lives and stayed.

    And now here they were at our front door.

    With ice cream.

    No agenda. No prepared words. No fix. Just ten minutes and two people who wanted us to know —

    You are not forgotten.

    The world had kept moving. Life had kept happening all around us the way it always does — indifferent to the fact that we were still in the middle of something that felt unsurvivable. And in the middle of all of that ordinary world-keeping-moving —

    They showed up with ice cream.

    I cannot tell you why that particular moment has stayed with me the way it has. Maybe because it was so simple. Maybe because it cost them so little and meant so much. Maybe because it arrived in a season when I most needed proof that someone still remembered — that Lucy Grace still mattered — that we had not been quietly filed away under tragedy we are moving past now.

    Ten minutes.

    That is all it was.

    And it was everything.

    What Grief Bottom Looks Like

    I want to be careful here because grief bottom looks different for everyone. I am not going to tell you that mine looked dramatic or sudden — because it didn’t. It looked more like a slow accumulation. Like a cup that had been filling drop by drop for months and finally ran over.

    What I knew was this —

    I was not okay.

    Not in the way that everyone occasionally says they are not okay and means they are having a hard week. I mean genuinely, deeply, something-needs-to-change not okay.

    The emotions and fears I was carrying had become too heavy to manage on my own. And what I began to recognize — slowly and uncomfortably — was that not all of them were new.

    Grief has a way of doing this. When it is powerful enough — and the loss of a child is about as powerful as grief gets — it strips away the coping mechanisms you have quietly built over a lifetime. The inner lies you had always managed to keep at bay suddenly have a clear and open path to the surface. The fears you thought you had dealt with turn out to have only been set aside.

    And there they all were.

    Old and new together. Loud in a way they had never been allowed to be before.

    The Lie You Don’t Know You’re Believing

    I want to pause here and say something that I think is important —

    We all battle lies.

    Not just people who have experienced loss. Not just people in crisis. All of us — every single one — carry stories we have told ourselves about who we are, what we deserve, what God thinks of us, and whether we are enough. Stories that were planted early and reinforced quietly over years until they feel less like lies and more like just… the truth.

    Grief doesn’t create those lies.

    But it removes the armor we use to fight them.

    I recently found a Bible study by Jennie Allen called The Lie You Don’t Know You Believe — and the title alone stopped me in my tracks. Because that is exactly what it felt like in that season. Not lies I had consciously chosen to believe. Lies I didn’t even know were there until grief made them impossible to ignore.

    This is the scheme of the enemy. He does not need us to consciously embrace darkness — he just needs us to be too exhausted and too overwhelmed to keep the lights on.

    Grief can do that.

    Which is exactly why that season — as hard as it was — was also one of the most important invitations of my life.

    It’s Okay to Not Be Okay — But Let’s Take Steps to Get Better

    I want to say something directly to anyone reading this who is in their own version of grief bottom right now —

    It is okay to not be okay.

    Please hear that. Six months after loss — or a year after, or three years after — the world’s timeline for your healing is not God’s timeline. There is no finish line you should have crossed by now. There is no point at which still grieving becomes a character flaw.

    You are allowed to still be in it.

    But — and I say this with all the love and honesty I have —

    Not okay is not a place to stay forever.

    Not because grief has an expiration date. But because you were not made to carry this alone. And there are people and resources and tools that God has placed in this world specifically for the moments when the weight becomes too much to manage by yourself.

    I wrote about the power of presence over words – and the nurse who taught me that – here.

    For me that looked like counseling — and I want to remove any shame from that word right now. Seeking help is not weakness. It is not a lack of faith. It is not an admission that God is not enough.

    It is wisdom.

    It is the recognition that God often does His healing work through people — through trained, compassionate, skilled people who have been given tools to help us find our way through the things we cannot find our way through alone.

    There are many forms that help can take —

    Professional counseling with someone trained in grief and trauma. A grief support group where you are surrounded by people who understand from the inside. A church community that creates space for the hard conversations. A trusted friend or mentor who will sit with you in the honest places without trying to fix you. A Bible study that names the lies you have been carrying and replaces them with truth.

    You do not have to choose just one. You do not have to have it all figured out before you reach out. You just have to take one step toward help — and trust that God will meet you there.

    The Long and Nonlinear Road

    I want to be honest with you about something —

    Healing did not happen quickly for me.

    The counseling helped. The community helped. The tools I was given helped. But the deeper work — the lies, the fears, the patterns that grief had exposed, the renewing my mind — that took time. More time than I expected. More time than felt comfortable.

    Nearly five years.

    I want you to sit with that number for a moment — not to discourage you, but to give you permission.

    Five years of God quietly, faithfully, persistently doing something in me that I could not always see or feel or measure. Five years of choosing — imperfectly, inconsistently, one day at a time — to trust Him with the broken pieces. Five years of acting my way toward faith even when the feelings weren’t there yet. (I wrote about the harder prayer and what defiant joy looks like in the middle of grief here).

    And then one day — not dramatically, not with a trumpet fanfare — I realized something had shifted.

    I had accepted my imperfections.

    Not resigned myself to them. Not given up on growth. But genuinely accepted that I am a person God loves and has a purpose for — exactly as I am, in the middle of the story, with all the unfinished edges still showing.

    I had let go of control.

    Not perfectly. Not permanently. But in a real and lasting way that had not been possible before. The need to manage outcomes, to hold everything together, to protect myself from the next unsurvivable thing — I laid it down. Not because the fear disappeared but because I finally trusted that God’s hands were more capable than mine.

    And I was free.

    Not from grief — the missing is still there and always will be.

    But free from the lies that had been using grief as a doorway.

    Free from the weight of carrying things I was never meant to carry.

    Free to be who God created me to be — shaped by the loss but not defined by it. Devastated but not destroyed.

    The spiritual formation practices that eventually gave me solid footing again are the ones I wrote about here.

    God Was There the Whole Time

    Here is what I know looking back —

    God was not more present in the hospital room than He was in the grief bottom.

    He was not closer to me in the sacred moments than in the shameful ones. Not more available in the bold prayers than in the seasons when I had no prayers left at all.

    He was there.

    In the counseling office. In the grief group. In the Bible study that named the lies. In the five slow years of one step at a time.

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

    Close to the brokenhearted.

    Not close to the ones who have it together. Not close to the ones who are praising Him with confidence and clarity and unwavering faith.

    Close to the brokenhearted.

    That is where He was. That is where He is. That is where He will always be.

    If You Are in the Bottom Right Now

    You are not alone.

    You are not too far gone. You are not beyond help. You are not a burden to the people who love you. And you are not a disappointment to God.

    You are a person in the middle of something hard — and that is exactly where He does some of His most profound and lasting work.

    Take one step today.

    Make one phone call. Send one text. Look up one grief counselor or one support group or one Bible study. Tell one person the honest truth about where you are.

    Just one step.

    And trust that the same God who met me in a hospital room at 2am — and in a counseling office six months later — and in the slow quiet years of healing that followed —

    Will meet you exactly where you are.

    “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion.” — Philippians 1:6

    If this post found you in your own grief bottom today — please reach out. Leave a comment, send a message, or find a trusted person in your life and tell them the truth about where you are. You were not made to carry this alone. I also wrote about how we learned to create intentional space for grief that keeps coming back — you can read that here.

    And if this resonated with you — share it. You never know whose six months this might find.

    I Prayed for a Miracle and God Said No: What I Know Now That I Didn’t Know Then

    I want to tell you about a prayer I prayed in a hospital room in the middle of the night.

    Not because it was a beautiful prayer — though in its own raw and desperate way, I think it was.

    But because of what happened after.

    Not the miracle I asked for. The other thing. The harder and more unexpected thing.

    The thing I am still living out today.

    The Bold Prayer

    It was late. Or early. I genuinely couldn’t tell you which.

    Jonathon had fallen asleep in the chair beside my bed. The nurses had been in and out. The hospital was doing that thing hospitals do in the middle of the night — humming quietly with the business of keeping people alive while the rest of the world slept.

    And I was alone with God for the first time since we had received the news.

    Lucy Grace‘s heart was no longer beating. It had been medically confirmed. There was no coming back — not in the way we had hoped and prayed and desperately wanted.

    And I prayed anyway.

    Not quietly. Not resigned. Boldly — the way you can only pray when you have absolutely nothing left to lose and everything left to hope for.

    I asked God to bring her back.

    I told Him I believed He could — because I did. I still do. I serve a God who parted seas and raised the dead and spoke the whole universe into existence. Bringing my daughter back was not beyond Him.

    And then I let myself imagine it. The doctors with no explanation. The story spreading. People all over the world hearing about a God who is still very much alive and active. Our family singing His praises for the remainder of our days.

    God felt so present in that quiet moment that I truly believed He would.

    The Harder Prayer

    And then came the other prayer.

    The one that cost me something.

    It didn’t arrive dramatically — no lightning bolt, no audible voice. Just a quiet, persistent sense that there was something else I needed to say. Something that needed to be surrendered before morning came.

    “Even if you choose not to save her — we will still praise you.”

    I want to be honest — those words did not come easily. They were not a performance. They were not the thing I said because it sounded like the right Christian response in a crisis.

    They were a choice.

    A deliberate, costly, one-word-at-a-time choice to trust God with something I did not want to trust Him with.

    And the moment I did — something shifted.

    Not the circumstances. Not the outcome. Not the devastation that was waiting for me on the other side of morning.

    But something underneath all of it.

    Something steady. Something that had absolutely no business being there.

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

    I had read that verse many times. I had written it in cards for other people. I had believed it in theory.

    That night I felt it for the first time.

    Devastated But Not Destroyed

    In the weeks and months that followed — the ones where the miracle didn’t come and the grief did — my husband and I kept coming back to a passage of Scripture that became something like a lifeline for us.

    “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” — 2 Corinthians 4:8-9

    Devastated — yes. Confused — absolutely. Struck down in ways we had never anticipated — without question.

    But not destroyed.

    That distinction mattered more than I can explain. Because there were days when destroyed felt like an accurate description of what was happening inside us. Days when the grief was so heavy and so present that it was hard to imagine ever feeling anything else.

    And on those days we came back to that verse.

    Not crushed. Not in despair. Not abandoned. Not destroyed.

    We were still here. God was still here. And our current circumstances — as real and as painful as they were — did not define our future.

    I wrote honestly about what those months looked like — including hitting a grief bottom I did not see coming — here.”

    Defiant Joy

    Years later, I found a book that gave language to something I was experiencing but couldn’t quite name.

    Defiant Joy by Stasi Eldredge.

    The title alone stopped me in my tracks — because that is exactly what it felt like. Not a gentle, peaceful, everything-is-okay joy. But a defiant one. A joy that looks the darkness in the eye and chooses to exist anyway. A joy that is not the absence of pain but the stubborn, faith-filled refusal to let pain have the final word.

    That is the joy I was reaching for in that hospital room when I prayed the harder prayer.

    Not happiness. Not relief. Not the absence of grief.

    But the deep, settled, unshakeable conviction that God is still good — even when the circumstances say otherwise. Even when the miracle doesn’t come. Even when morning arrives and everything you feared is still true.

    You Have to Choose and Act Your Way Into It

    Here is something my husband said many times that became a personal challenge during this time: “Sometimes you have to choose and act your way into a feeling. You can’t feel your way into an action.”

    That is one of the most practically true things I know about faith. It’s a choice.

    Because faith — real, lived, costly faith — is not a feeling that arrives and then produces action. It is an action that you choose before the feeling gets there – or in the midst of the feelings. You choose to trust. You choose to praise. You choose to get up in the morning and put one foot in front of the other and believe that God’s promises are true even when your circumstances are screaming otherwise.

    And somewhere in the choosing — somewhere in the acting — the feeling eventually follows.

    Not always immediately. Not always in the way you expected. But it comes.

    Because God is faithful to meet the faith we bring Him — even the small, trembling, I’m-not-sure-I-can-do-this faith. Even the faith that arrives as a prayer prayed in a hospital room in the middle of the night that costs everything to say.

    He meets it. Every time.

    John Mark Comer writes beautifully about this in Practicing the Way – a resource I will share more about soon.

    What I Know Now That I Didn’t Know Then

    I could not have told you that night what I know now.

    I could not have told you that the harder prayer — the one that cost me something — would become one of the most significant moments of my faith journey. That the peace that arrived in that hospital room would still be something I draw from years later. That the choice to trust God with the unsurvivable would shape the way I trust Him with everything else.

    I could not have told you that Lucy Grace — who never took a breath in this world — would change the way I live in it.

    That her brief and beautiful presence would give me the courage to write a book that had been sitting unwritten for years.

    That her story — and Madison Joy’s story — would become the foundation of something that reaches forward into other families’ grief and offers them hope.

    Old to new.

    Even here. Even this.

    I don’t know what you are walking through today.

    Maybe you are in your own hospital room — literally or metaphorically — praying bold prayers and waiting to see how God answers.

    Maybe the miracle didn’t come the way you asked. Maybe you are in the aftermath — trying to figure out how to praise a God who said no. Maybe the faith feels small and the grief feels large and you are not sure you have what it takes to choose joy when everything in you wants to collapse.

    Can I tell you something?

    The prayer doesn’t have to be polished. The faith doesn’t have to be big. The joy doesn’t have to feel natural.

    It just has to be defiant.

    Choose it anyway. Act your way toward it. Trust that God will meet you there.

    Because He will.

    He always has.

    “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” — 2 Corinthians 4:8-9

    You can read the full story of how this shaped the Old to New brand here.

    If this post resonated with you today — share it with someone who needs permission to choose joy in the middle of something hard. And if you are in your own hospital room right now — I would love to pray for you. Leave a comment below or reach out directly. You are not alone.

    The Old to New journals were designed to help you document God’s faithfulness even in the seasons when it is hardest to see.

    A Nurse Taught Me This and I Have Never Forgotten It: The Words That Changed How I Understand Grief

    I want to tell you about a woman I never properly thanked.

    I don’t even remember her name anymore — which feels like a strange thing to admit about someone who gave me some of the most meaningful words I have ever received. But grief has a way of blurring the edges of things while keeping the substance perfectly clear. I lost her name somewhere in the fog of those two days.

    But I kept everything she said.

    She Didn’t Have to Come

    When we found out that Lucy Grace’s heart was no longer beating, the hospital connected us with a nurse who had been specifically trained in grief counseling for exactly this kind of loss.

    She was on her way somewhere with her daughter when she got the call.

    She came anyway.

    If you haven’t read the story of the first night in the hospital, you can find it here.

    She came the evening we found out — when the world had just gone quiet and wrong and we were still trying to find our footing. She sat with us and she talked and she shared things that I honestly — in that moment — wished she would stop sharing. I was exhausted. I was overwhelmed. I was running on no sleep and too many emotions and not nearly enough capacity for anything else to come in.

    But she kept going. Gently. Persistently. With the quiet confidence of someone who had done this before and knew something I didn’t yet —

    That I would need these words later. Even if I couldn’t receive them now.

    And then she came back.

    The next day — after Lucy Grace was born — she came back.

    She didn’t have to. She had somewhere to be. She had her own life and her own daughter waiting. But she showed up again because she understood something about grief that I was only beginning to learn:

    Showing up once is kind. Showing up twice is love.

    The Hand

    At some point during one of those visits — I couldn’t tell you exactly when, because time moved strangely in that hospital room — she taught me something that I have carried with me every single day since.

    She asked me to hold up my hand.

    Right in front of my face. As close as I could get it.

    “What do you see?” she asked.

    Just my hand, I told her. Everything else was blocked.

    “That,” she said, “is what grief feels like right now. It is right in front of you — all the time — and it is really all you can see.”

    Then she asked me to move my hand away. Just a little. Slowly.

    And as my arm stretched out I could see around it — the window, the light, the room, her face.

    “That is what happens over time,” she said. “The grief doesn’t go away. Your hand is still there. But little by little you start to see other things too. Good things. Beautiful things. Things that remind you that life is still happening and God is still present.”

    And then she said something I was not expecting.

    She told me that one day I might look up and realize — almost without noticing — that my hand had moved. That the grief was no longer consuming my entire line of sight. That I could see around it.

    And when that moment came, she said, my first instinct might not be relief.

    It might be guilt.

    The sudden, disorienting feeling that the grief lifting somehow means the love is lifting too. That moving forward is a betrayal. That if I stop being consumed by the loss then I am leaving her behind — that the missing was proof I loved her and letting it ease means something has changed that shouldn’t.

    She wanted me to know that before it happened.

    Because that guilt — as real and as heavy as it feels — is not the truth.

    The hand moving is not forgetting. The hand moving is not leaving her behind. The hand moving is not loving her less.

    It is simply grief doing what grief was always meant to do — not disappear, but change. Not consume forever, but make room. Make room for life and joy and beauty to exist alongside the missing rather than being blocked out entirely by it.

    You are allowed to see other things. You are allowed to breathe. You are allowed to let the hand move —

    And trust that she is still there. Still loved. Still yours.

    Even when the grief is no longer all you can see.

    I have shared that image more times than I can count.

    With friends walking through loss. With family members who couldn’t see past the pain. With anyone who needed to know that the way grief feels right now is not the way it will always feel.

    The hand is always there. But it moves.

    Jennie Lusko beautifully talks about the grief journey in her book The Fight to Flourish.

    What She Said About the People Who Show Up

    There was something else she shared — and this one is for everyone reading this who has ever stood beside a grieving person and not known what to say.

    She told us that people would say things that maybe weren’t quite right. Things that didn’t fully land. Things that might even frustrate us in our grief — because grief has very little patience for empty words and hollow comfort.

    “Sorry” gets said a lot, she told us. Even by people who had nothing to do with it. Even by people who don’t know what else to offer.

    And in our exhaustion and our pain, she said, we might find ourselves frustrated. Irritated by the inadequacy of the words. Wishing people would just say something true or say nothing at all.

    She leaned in a little when she said the next part.

    “Don’t miss their presence.”

    Because it is not the words that heal.

    It is the showing up.

    The words — even the imperfect ones, even the awkward ones, even the ones that miss the mark entirely — are often spoken out of love that doesn’t know how to express itself. Out of the deep human discomfort of standing beside pain we cannot fix and reaching for something — anything — to offer.

    They are not perfect. But they came. And showing up matters more than words or perfection ever could.

    What I Want You to Take From This

    If you are the one grieving —

    Give the people who show up a little grace for their imperfect words. Receive their presence even when their language falls short. The fact that they came — that they picked up the phone or drove to the hospital or sat beside you in the quiet — that is love in its most honest form.

    And the words that feel like too much right now?

    Write them down if you can. Or trust that they will come back to you.

    Because grief receives things slowly — bit by bit, layer by layer, long after the moment has passed. Something that felt like too much in the hospital room may become exactly what you needed six months later when the world has moved on and you are still carrying it.

    That nurse knew that.

    She came back the second day anyway. She kept talking even when I was too exhausted to listen. And every word she said eventually found its way home.

    I wrote honestly about what that season looked like — and what finally helped — here.

    And If You Are the One Showing Up

    You do not need the perfect words.

    You do not need a theology degree or a grief counseling certification or a carefully prepared speech.

    You need to show up.

    Sit beside them. Hold their hand. Say “I don’t know what to say but I am here” — because that is the most honest and the most healing thing you can offer.

    And if you say something imperfect — and you probably will, because we all do — extend yourself the same grace you would extend to anyone else who loved someone enough to try.

    Showing up speaks louder than words ever could.

    “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.” — Proverbs 17:17

    If this post helped you — share it with someone who is walking alongside a grieving friend right now. And if you have your own story of someone who showed up when it mattered most — I would love to hear it in the comments below. I also wrote about how we learned to create intentional space for grief that comes back — you can read that here.

    If you or someone you love needs a grief support community, GriefShare offers faith-based grief groups in churches nationwide.

      Built with Kit

      To the Fathers Who Grieve Quietly: You Are Not Alone

      This post is for the ones who don’t usually get a post written for them.

      The fathers. The husbands. The brothers and uncles and grandfathers and friends. The men who showed up to the hospital and held it together. The men who stood at the graveside and didn’t know where to put it. The men who went back to work the following week because life kept moving and someone had to keep moving with it.

      The men who grieved — and are still grieving — quietly.

      This one is for you.

      The Grief Nobody Talks About

      We talk a lot about the grief of mothers.

      And we should — it is real and it is profound and it deserves every bit of the space it gets.

      But there is another grief sitting right beside it that does not get nearly as much acknowledgment.

      The grief of the father who held his wife together in the hospital room while his own heart was breaking.

      The grief of the man who was handed a baby he would never get to know — and had to find somewhere to put that love with nowhere to go.

      The grief of the husband who watched the woman he loves walk through the worst thing she has ever experienced — and felt the weight of not being able to fix it.

      The grief of a father who never quite got to know his child the way a mother does.

      Because pregnancy is intimate in a way that belongs uniquely to the mother. A father can put his hand on the belly and feel the kicks. He can talk to his baby and sing to her and pray over her. He can show up to every appointment and read every book and be as present as any father has ever been.

      And still — he experiences his child from the outside.

      The mother carries her on the inside. Feels every movement. Knows her before anyone else does.

      And when that baby is gone — the father grieves not only the child he lost, but the relationship he never quite got to begin. The getting-to-know-you that was supposed to happen on the other side of the delivery room and never did.

      That is a grief that does not get named very often.

      That grief is real. It is heavy. And it matters.

      What I Observed

      I have had a front row seat to men walking through the loss of a child — and the loss of a grandchild.

      My brother-in-law — who stood beside my sister when Madison Joy died, who held his family together with a quiet strength I will never forget, and who walked through the kind of grief that reshapes a person from the inside out.

      My husband — Lucy’s daddy — who sat beside my hospital bed the night before we delivered her, who fell asleep in that chair after hours of holding me together, and who has carried his own grief with a steadiness and a faith that has humbled me more times than I can count.

      You can read the full story of that night here.

      And then there are the grandfathers.

      Our dads — who watched their own sons & daughters walk through the unsurvivable and could not fix it. Who held their own grief while trying to hold ours. Who lost a grandchild and gained a whole new layer of pain that nobody had prepared them for either.

      There is something particularly heavy about that grief — the grief of a father watching his child suffer. It sits on top of their own loss rather than instead of it. They are grieving the grandchild they will never know and grieving alongside the child they have always known — at the same time, with nowhere to put either one.

      And the world does not always give men a natural space for that.

      There is a pressure — spoken or unspoken — to be strong. To keep it together. To be the steady one. To hold everyone else up while quietly setting their own grief aside until there is a better time for it.

      Sometimes that better time never comes.

      I know my dad carried this. He still does. And I know this because recently — years after losing both Madison Joy and Lucy Grace — he read the manuscript for Mommy, Is Madison Sleeping?

      And he cried.

      Not because the book was sad — though it is, in the honest and necessary way that all true things about grief are.

      But because grief, when it is finally given words and a place to land, has a way of releasing something that has been held for a very long time.

      That is what this post is for.

      To give it a place to land.

      A Letter to Lucy Grace

      written by her daddy

      When we lost Lucy Grace I asked Jonathon to write a letter to her — something we could keep in a memory book for our family. Something that would make sure her story was held in his own words, not just mine.

      What he wrote stopped me in my tracks.

      I want to share it with you today — with his permission and with all the love and grief it carries:

      I never got to know you quite like your mommy did. But in the last few weeks of you being in your mommy’s tummy, you kicked and kicked. You loved to kick anytime I’d put my hand on your mommy’s tummy — as if to say, “Hey, get your own space.” I even joked with people that I thought you’d be a red-head, because I was pretty sure you’d come out having a really fun and fiery personality. But you weren’t. You had brown hair just like your beautiful mom.

      I always looked forward to those moments that seemed few and far between. Like rocking you to sleep, or holding your hands for some of your first steps. Taking you to your first day of school. Baptizing you. And walking you down the aisle as you would marry a man who loves Jesus and loves you. But I never got to do that with you.

      Some day I’ll get to know you — the true you. The you that God created you to be. Until then, I’ll just have to settle for the you that I have concocted up in my mind of what you would have been like. But there will be a missing piece in my heart and our family this side of heaven.

      Getting to know you would have been an incredible joy in my life. Dealing with your loss was never something that I dreamed would happen, but something that I will allow God to teach me tremendous things. I miss you and I love you.

      — Daddy

      I have read that letter more times than I can count.

      And every single time, the line that gets me is this one —

      “Baptizing you.”

      Jonathon is a pastor. He has had the privilege of baptizing many people — children and adults — marking the moment they step into a public declaration of their faith. It is one of the most sacred things he gets to do. It’s one of the moments that he dreamt about as a father.

      He never got to do it for his own daughter.

      That is a grief that lives in a very particular place. The place where calling and fatherhood were supposed to intersect — and didn’t.

      And he carried it. Quietly. Faithfully. With a grace that I do not fully understand but have been deeply grateful for every day since.

      For the Men Who Are Still Carrying It

      If you are a father who has lost a child — If you are a husband who held your wife together while your own heart broke — If you are a brother or an uncle or a grandfather or a friend who showed up and stayed —

      I want you to know something.

      Your grief is not less real because it is quieter. Your love is not less deep because it did not have as many words. Your loss is not less significant because the world moved on before you were ready.

      You are allowed to grieve. You are allowed to say her name. You are allowed to miss the moments you never got to have — the first steps, the first day of school, the walk down the aisle, the ordinary Tuesday evenings that never came.

      You are allowed to have a missing piece.

      If you are a father navigating child loss, “Grieving Dads” by Kelly Farley was written specifically for you.

      What Faith Looks Like in a Grieving Father

      One of the things that has struck me most about watching Jonathon and my brother-in-law walk through loss is this —

      Their faith did not make the grief smaller.

      But it gave the grief somewhere to go.

      There is a difference between a man who grieves without hope and a man who grieves with it. Not in the size of the pain — but in the foundation underneath it. The thing that holds when everything else is shaking.

      Jonathon said it himself in that letter —

      “Dealing with your loss was never something that I dreamed would happen, but something that I will allow God to teach me tremendous things.”

      That sentence is not the absence of grief. That is grief submitting itself to something bigger than itself. That is a father choosing — in the middle of the hardest thing he has ever faced — to stay open to what God might do with the broken pieces.

      That is faith. Not the kind that makes everything okay. The kind that holds you when nothing is.

      I wrote honestly about what happened six months after our own loss — and what finally helped — here.

      To the Women Who Love Grieving Men

      Before I close I want to speak briefly to the women reading this who love a man who is grieving quietly.

      He may not have the words. He may not cry in front of you. He may go back to work and mow the lawn and fix things around the house because doing something — anything — is the only way he knows how to hold it.

      That is not absence. That is how some people carry love.

      Give him grace. Say her name in front of him. Let him know that his grief has a place in your home — not just yours. And trust that God is doing something in him that may not be visible yet.

      I wrote about the power of showing up – even without the right words – here.

      A Note on the Book

      Mommy, Is Madison Sleeping? was written with Owen and his mama at the center — but it was written for every member of the family sitting on that couch.

      Including Daddy.

      Grief is not one conversation — and it does not belong to only one person in the family. This book is a tool for every grown-up who loves a grieving child and needs honest, faith-rooted words for the hardest conversation they will ever have.

      Whatever the loss. Whoever the child. Whoever is sitting beside them on the couch.

      The Old to New journals include specific prayers to pray over your spouse and your children – a practical tool for any season, including grief.

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

      If this post found its way to a father who needed it today — share it with him. And if you are that father — I would love to hear from you. Leave a comment below or reach out directly. Your story matters here too.

      Mommy, Is Madison Sleeping? How One Little Boy’s Question Became a Children’s Book

      Some ideas arrive loudly.

      They show up with momentum and excitement and a clear sense of direction — and you know immediately that you are supposed to do something with them.

      And then there are the other kind.

      The ones that arrive quietly. That settle somewhere deep and stay there. That you cannot fully explain and cannot fully ignore. That come back again and again over months and years until you finally stop pretending you are not supposed to do something about them.

      For over fifteen years, God has been nudging me toward this.

      Not loudly, but clearly. A quiet, persistent, unmistakable sense that the brokenness I had walked through — and watched the people I loved walk through — was meant to be more than a private grief. That it was meant to become something that could reach forward and offer hope to someone I would never meet.

      I could not make that feeling go away.

      Believe me — I tried.

      The Morning Question

      It started with my nephew.

      If you have been following along these past few weeks you already know Madison Joy’s story — my niece, born on Christmas morning, gone thirty-five days later. You know what my sister walked through. You know what our family walked through.

      If you haven’t read Madison Joy’s full story yet, you can find it here.

      Let me bring back the detail that stopped me cold.

      In the months after losing Madison Joy, my nephew — two years old, full of that particular toddler energy that has absolutely no interest in slowing down for grief — would wake up every morning and do what he had always done. Pad down the hall. Find his mama. And ask the question that had become part of his morning routine.

      “Mommy, is Madison sleeping?”

      He asked because he didn’t have other words — he had done it so many times before when Mommy was reminding him to keep his voice down because the baby was resting. He asked out of love and out of hope and out of the beautiful, heartbreaking logic of a two year old mind that had no framework yet for what death meant.

      And every single morning — my sister’s heart caught in her chest.

      When she told me about those mornings I felt something shift inside me. Not dramatically. Not with a trumpet fanfare. Just quietly and certainly — the way things feel when they are true.

      Someone needs to write a book about this.

      The Nudge That Wouldn’t Leave

      I want to be honest with you about something.

      God has been nudging me toward this book for over fifteen years.

      Fifteen years of that quiet, persistent tug. Fifteen years of picking it up and putting it down. Fifteen years of “someday” and “when the time is right” and “I’m not sure I’m the right person for this.”

      And fifteen years of God quietly, faithfully, persistently disagreeing.

      I can only explain it one way — it never went away. Not when life got busy. Not when other things took priority. Not even when my own grief arrived and I wondered whether I had any business writing about something I was still living through myself.

      The nudge stayed.

      Because I think God knew something I was still learning — that the brokenness was not a disqualifier. It was the qualification. The very thing that made me want to set it down was the thing that made the message worth carrying.

      You do not have to have it all figured out to be the right person for something.

      You just have to be willing to keep saying yes to the nudge. And that’s how Old to New Creations was born.

      You can read the full story of how Old to New Creations got its name here.

      Why This Book Needed to Exist

      Here is what I discovered when I started looking for resources to help families talk to their young children about death and loss — especially from a faith-based perspective:

      There was not much there.

      There were books for older children. There were books that addressed loss in vague, gentle terms that avoided the hard questions. There were secular books that offered comfort without Biblical hope. And there were a handful of faith-based titles that came close — but none that spoke directly to toddlers and preschoolers in honest, concrete language that a two year old could actually hold onto.

      None that gave parents a real starting place for the conversation — whatever kind of loss had brought them to it. The death of a grandparent. A parent. A sibling. A friend. Anyone a child has loved and lost.

      None that gave parents a guide for the questions children actually ask — including the scary ones.

      None that validated the full range of a child’s grief response — including the anger, the resistance, the covering of ears and wiggling away — and called it normal.

      And none that were written by someone who had sat on their own couch, held their own grieving child, and lived the conversation from the inside.

      I had. Twice.

      So I wrote the book I wished had existed.

      If you are looking for additional resources for grieving families, “The Memory Box” by Joanna Rowland is a beautiful companion title.

      “My Sibling Still” by Leah Vis speaks tenderly to families navigating sibling loss.

      What Mommy, Is Madison Sleeping? Is

      It is the story of a little boy named Owen whose baby sister Madison has died. It is the story of a mother sitting down on the couch morning after morning, taking his little hands in hers, and finding the words — honest, gentle, Biblical words — to answer the question he keeps asking.

      But while Owen’s story is specific, the truths his mother speaks are not.

      They are for any child who has ever lost someone they loved. Any child trying to make sense of an empty chair at the table. Any child asking why someone they loved isn’t coming back. Any child who needs an honest, loving, faith-rooted answer to the hardest question they have ever asked.

      The book addresses the questions children actually ask: What does dead mean? Where did they go? Can they see me? Am I going to die too? Will we ever see them again?

      It validates every feeling — the confusion, the sadness, the anger, the fear — and gives each one a name and a place.

      It anchors every hard truth in Biblical hope — not vague comfort, not empty reassurance, but the real and certain promises of a God who has never broken one yet.

      And it includes a comprehensive guide for parents and caregivers — because grief is not one conversation. It comes back, in new forms, as children grow. And every time it does, you deserve a resource to come back to.

      A Book Born From Two Losses

      This book carries two names in its heart.

      Madison Joy — born on Christmas morning, gone at thirty-five days, whose brief life raised a question in her brother’s heart that took fifteen years to bloom into something that could help other families, too.

      And Lucy Grace — my own daughter, delivered still, whose brief and beautiful presence gave me the courage to finally stop saying someday and start saying yes.

      If you haven’t ready Lucy Grace’s story yet, you can find it here.

      I wrote this book for my nephew — who deserved honest, loving words for the hardest thing his two year old heart had ever held.

      I wrote it for my sister — who deserved a resource to come back to every time the question returned in a new form.

      I wrote it for my own children — who asked their own questions alongside me and needed truth that was bigger than my grief.

      And I wrote it for you — whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever loss has brought you to this page.

      Because the nudge was never just about my family.

      It was always about yours too.

      What Comes Next

      The book is currently on its journey toward publication — and I will be the first to let you know when it is ready to be in your hands.

      In the meantime — if you are walking through a grief conversation with a young child right now and you need resources, I would love to help. Leave a comment below or reach out directly. And if you are a grief counselor, a child life specialist, a pediatric nurse, or a pastor who works with grieving families — I would especially love to connect with you.

      This book exists because a two year old asked a question his mama couldn’t answer alone. This blog and ministry exists, because God wants to walk with each of us to make old things new – Old to New Creations.

      And it is going to find its way to every family that needs it.

      I am sure of that — because the same God who nudged me for fifteen years is not in the habit of starting things He doesn’t finish.

      “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

      If this resonated with you today — share it with someone who needs it. And if you want to be the first to know when the book is available, subscribe below. This is fifteen years in the making. It is almost time.

      In the meantime, if you are walking through grief right now and looking for a tool to anchor your faith, the Old to New journals were designed for you.

      Thirty-Five Days: The Loss That Started It All

      While many people know the grief of losing someone, there is another kind.

      The particular kind of grief of standing beside the ones who are experiencing loss. The sisters. The aunts. The friends. The ones who love the grieving.

      I know that grief.

      It is the grief of watching someone you love walk through something you cannot fix.

      And it changed me just as permanently as anything I have ever experienced firsthand. (Learn more about the origin of Old to New Creations here).

      Madison Joy

      My niece Madison Joy was born on Christmas morning.

      I want you to sit with that for a moment — because it matters. Christmas morning. The morning the whole world celebrates the arrival of a baby who came to bring life and light and hope. And there she was — Madison Joy — arriving on that same morning, full of promise and possibility and that particular joy that only a brand new baby carries.

      She was beautiful like her momma.

      She was here.

      She was loved.

      She was ours.

      For thirty-five days.

      The Call No One Expects

      I am going to keep some of the medical details close — they are my sister’s story to tell in full, and I want to honor that. What I will tell you is that Madison Joy suffered a brain bleed. Emergency surgery followed. And then came the waiting — the desperate, faith-filled, on-your-knees waiting that every person who has ever sat in a hospital waiting room knows intimately.

      We prayed. Our family prayed. Our church – our community – prayed. People who had never met Madison Joy prayed — because that is what you do when a thirty-five day old baby is fighting for her life and you believe in a God who can intervene.

      We had never imagined God wouldn’t save her.

      And then He didn’t.

      Not the way we asked.

      Three years after Madison Joy, our family faced a similar and devastating loss of our own – you can read Lucy Grace’s story here.

      Walking Alongside

      I want to speak for a moment to everyone reading this who has ever been the one walking alongside.

      Because grief has many seats at the table — and not all of them get acknowledged.

      Watching my sister and brother-in-law walk through the loss of Madison Joy was one of the most life-changing things I have ever witnessed. I say life-changing deliberately — not as a figure of speech but as a literal truth. The person I was before that season and the person I became on the other side of it are not quite the same.

      What I observed in that hospital, and in the months that followed, was something I did not have adequate words for at the time.

      My sister — in the middle of the most devastating loss a mother can experience — found what she later described as a peace that passes all understanding.

      Not on the other side of it. Not after the grief had softened or the tears had slowed.

      Right there. In the hospital. In the middle of the worst moment of her life.

      The grief was real — crushing and bottomless and every bit as heavy as you would expect. The pain did not disappear. The tears did not stop. But underneath all of it, arriving as a gift from God Himself, was something steady and unshakeable that had absolutely no business being there, given the circumstances.

      That is not a human peace. You cannot manufacture that in yourself. You cannot think your way into it or grieve your way toward it.

      It is given. Freely. By a God who does not wait for the storm to pass before He shows up in it.

      I recognized it. I had felt it myself in my own hospital room years later.

      It is the kind of peace that does not make sense from the outside. The kind that makes people who don’t know Jesus tilt their heads and quietly wonder. The kind that can only come from One place.

      I want to be honest though — we each carried a different measure of grace for our role in this. My grief as the sister was real and it was heavy. But it was not the same as my sister’s grief as the mother, or my brother-in-law’s grief as the father. Walking alongside someone through loss does not mean carrying an equal share of it. It means showing up faithfully for whatever portion you are asked to carry — and trusting God to sustain the ones carrying more than you can imagine.

      I wrote specifically for the fathers and the men here.

      The Hardest Part of All

      In the weeks and months after losing Madison Joy, grief did what grief often does —

      It uncovered things that were already there.

      For my sister. For her husband. For me, in ways I would not fully understand until years later when I faced my own loss.

      Grief has a way of stripping away the coping mechanisms we have quietly built over a lifetime. The inner lies we have always managed to keep at bay suddenly have a clear path to the surface. The emotional pain we thought we had dealt with turns out to have only been set aside.

      That is not a flaw in the grieving process. That is the grieving process doing exactly what it was designed to do — bringing everything to the light so that healing can reach all the way down.

      It is painful. It is disorienting. And it is one of the most important things I want you to know if you are in the middle of it right now:

      The grief that is uncovering old pain is not punishing you. It is inviting you toward a deeper healing than you have ever had.

      Helping a Two Year Old Understand

      My nephew was two years old when he lost his baby sister.

      Two years old.

      Old enough to know something was wrong. Old enough to miss her. Young enough that the concept of death was completely beyond his reach. Helping him understand — or even begin to understand — was one of the most difficult and tender challenges my sister faced in those early months.

      And every morning, without fail, he would pad down the hall and find her.

      And every morning he would ask the same question.

      “Mommy, is Madison sleeping?”

      He asked because he didn’t have other words — he had done it so many times before when Mommy was reminding him to keep his voice down because the baby was resting. He asked out of love and out of hope and out of the beautiful, heartbreaking logic of a two year old mind.

      And every morning, my sister’s heart caught in her chest.

      That question is the reason this blog exists. That question is the reason a book exists. You can read the full story of how it became a book here. And that question is the reason I kept writing long after it would have been easier to stop.

      If We Can’t Bring Her Home

      Before I close I want to share something my sister said — because it is one of the most faith-filled sentences I have ever heard spoken in the middle of grief.

      In the hospital, facing the unsurvivable, my sister and brother-in-law made the decision to donate Madison Joy’s organs.

      And my sister’s heart behind that decision was this:

      “If we can’t bring our daughter home — maybe our faith can be used by God to make it possible for someone else to bring their child home.”

      I have turned that sentence over in my mind hundreds of times since she said it.

      In the middle of her own devastation — before the grief had even fully arrived — she was thinking about another mother. Another family. Another child who might live because of hers.

      That is not a human instinct. That is the Holy Spirit working through a broken heart that chose, even in the worst moment, to remain open.

      Old to new.

      Even here. Even this.

      For the Ones Walking Alongside

      If you found this post because you are not the one who lost someone — but you love someone who did — I want you to know that your grief is real and it matters too.

      You do not have to have all the right words. You do not have to fix it. You do not have to be strong every moment.

      Show up. Stay. Hold their hand. Sit in the quiet with them when there is nothing left to say.

      And trust that God is doing something in you through this season too — something you may not be able to see yet. Something that will matter more than you know.

      “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” — Psalm 147:3

      Next week I want to take you inside the story of how a two year old’s morning question became a children’s book — and why I believe it is a resource every family needs before loss arrives, not just after. Subscribe below so you don’t miss it.

      And if Madison Joy’s story touched you today — share it. Her thirty-five days mattered. They still do.

      If you are walking alongside a grieving family right now and looking for a tool to help anchor your own faith through uncertainty, the Old to New Journals were designed for exactly this season.