Category Archives: Faith & Spiritual Formation

What does faith actually look like when things fall apart? Not the performance of it — the real thing. Scripture that holds when nothing else does. Prayer practices for the seasons when words will not come. The slow, quiet work of learning to trust a God who is still at work even when you cannot see it.

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.

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.

Lucy Grace – Gift of Light: The Morning We Said Hello and Goodbye

If you missed the night before, start here.

There are mornings that change you.

Not in the slow, gradual way that most change happens — where you look back years later and realize something shifted without you noticing. But in the immediate, irreversible way. The way that means there is a before, and there is an after, and the person on the other side is not quite the same as the one who woke up that morning.

June 17th was that morning for me.

She Came Earlier Than Expected

I had been started on induction medications the night before. After some pain management in the middle of the night I had managed to get a little sleep — fragile, in-and-out sleep, the kind that doesn’t quite reach the bottom. I had been mentally preparing myself for a long day. I assumed delivery would be closer to midday. Time to breathe. Time to gather myself.

But Lucy had her own timeline.

By early morning — earlier than any of us expected — she was here.

And the room that had been so quiet the night before was suddenly, gently, full.

The Woman Who Showed Up

I need to tell you about my midwife.

I had trusted her through all five of my pregnancies — but due to the nature of on-call schedules, she had never actually delivered any of my children. Not my first, not my second. She had been present for so much of the journey and absent for every arrival.

But I had chosen her for a reason that went all the way back to my very first pregnancy — one that ended in an early miscarriage. She happened to be the one on call in the office that day. And it was her care, her honesty, and the way she treated me like a person rather than a patient that convinced me — this is who I want walking with me through this.

She had walked with me through loss and through joy and through every kind of pregnancy in between. And on the morning I needed her most — the morning none of us had ever imagined would come — she made sure she was there.

She rearranged her schedule. She showed up.

I will never forget that.

If you are in the early stages of pregnancy and you are choosing a provider — choose someone whose care you have felt on a hard day. Not just a good day. Because you do not know which kind of day is coming.

The Nurses

I have thought about those nurses many times since those days I spent in their care – the day before and this morning.

They were professional and skilled and everything you would want in a medical team. But they were also something else — something that goes beyond training and job descriptions. They were human in the most beautiful way. Their eyes gave them away. You could see that they wished they could change it. You could feel that they cared — not just about doing their jobs well, but about us. About her.

That mattered more than I can say. In a moment when the world felt very cold and very hard, the warmth of the people in that room made us feel loved.

And then one of them asked us something I will never forget.

Take the Pictures

When we learned we would deliver and the reasons around it, we had been offered the option of having a photographer come to document the birth.

We said no.

I understand why we said no. We had never imagined this would be our experience. We weren’t prepared for any of it — let alone the idea of a photographer in the room on the hardest morning of our lives. It felt like too much. It felt wrong somehow.

But our nurses — in their deep, quiet care for us — asked for our permission to take pictures themselves. Because they knew, even when we didn’t, that someday we would want them.

I am so glad we said yes.

I am so glad they asked.

Those pictures are some of the most precious things I own. They are proof that she was here. That she was real. That she was held. That she was loved – even though she never opened her eyes in this world.

So if you are ever in a similar moment — or if you are ever supporting someone who is — please hear me on this:

Take the pictures. (Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep is an amazing nonprofit that provides professional photographers for families experiencing infant loss).

It will not feel like the right thing to do in the moment. Do it anyway. You will be grateful for the rest of your life that you did.

She Was Lucy Grace

I told you last week that Jonathon and I had not settled on her name.

We had it narrowed down to two. We had thought and prayed and gone back and forth — but we had not decided. And then suddenly we were facing the reality that we had less than twelve hours to choose. Her name would be the only thing we would have. No memories of her cooing or laughing or walking. No stories of how she loved people or what made her giggle or who she would have become.

Just her name.

I didn’t want to wait until I saw her. I was afraid that in the emotion of the moment I would still be unable to decide — that grief and joy and exhaustion would make the decision impossible.

But by the grace of God, the moment our midwife placed her on my chest —

We knew.

She was Lucy Grace.

Lucy — light. Grace — gift.

Gift of light.

She was small and perfect and entirely herself. And she was ours — for that morning, for that day, for always.

The Gift of a Full Day

We were able to spend most of that day in the hospital room with her.

Our parents came. Close friends came. The people who loved us most showed up and sat with us and held her and cried with us and made that room feel less like a place of loss and more like a place of love.

I did not expect that.

I did not expect that the hardest day of my life would also contain some of the most tender, sacred moments I have ever experienced. The way grief and gratitude can exist in the same room at the same time — I did not fully understand that until that day.

She never took a breath in this world. But she was not alone. And neither were we.

What Lucy Grace Left Behind

Lucy has changed the way I live my life.

Not in spite of losing her — because of it.

She has helped me solidify my faith in ways I never could have anticipated. My faith is not in myself or in what I can control. It is not in my circumstances. It is not even in the people closest to me — as much as I love them. My faith is rooted in God’s love for me. In His presence in hospital rooms in the middle of the night. In the peace that showed up when it had absolutely no business being there.

That faith is available to you too.

Not because life will go the way you planned. Not because God will always answer the way you asked. But because He is faithful — in the before, in the after, and in every hard middle in between.

Lucy Grace — gift of light.

Her time here with us was brief.

But the gift of light is eternal.

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” — John 1:5

Next week I will share the story of Madison Joy — my sweet niece, the baby girl whose loss started this whole journey, and the little boy whose morning question changed everything. If you don’t want to miss it, subscribe below.

And if Lucy Grace’s story touched you today — share it. You never know whose hospital room this might find its way into. I also wrote about how we learned to create intentional space for grief that keeps coming back — you can read that here.

The Old to New Journals were designed for spiritual formation – if you are in a season of grief or longing for spiritual formation, check them out!

Why I Named It Old to New: The Verse That Changed Everything

It started with a pair of old jeans.

Not a theology degree. Not a grief ministry. Not a vision for a brand that would one day carry the stories of two little girls and a book that had been fifteen years in the making.

Just a pair of old jeans — and a question that has driven me my whole life.

What could this become?

Where It All Began

I have always loved taking something old and making it into something new.

Long before Old to New Creations had a name — long before it had a mission or a brand or a journal or a book — it lived in my hands. In the quiet, creative hours spent repurposing things that other people might have set aside.

Old jeans became purses and bags — cut and stitched and decorated with appliqué designs that made them entirely and uniquely themselves. Nothing about them said old denim anymore. They said made with intention.

And then there were my Grandma’s sheets.

The soft ones. The special ones — the kind that carry a particular warmth that only comes from years of being washed and slept in and loved. When they were no longer needed as sheets I could not bring myself to let them go. So I repurposed them into little dresses for little girls.

Something ordinary — something that might have been discarded — transformed into something new and sweet and full of a different kind of love than it had carried before.

I did not know then that God was showing me something.

I just thought I was sewing.

The Name That Came Before the Meaning

Old to New Creations became the name for what I was making long before it became the name for what God was doing. You can read the full brand introduction here.

It fit the work — the literal, hands-on, fabric-and-thread work of taking old things and making them new. It was descriptive and simple and true.

And it stayed.

Through seasons of crafting and creating. Through the early days of sharing what I was making. Through years of life that brought joy and loss and grief and growth in ways I never anticipated when I first stitched a purse out of a pair of old jeans.

The name stayed — quietly, persistently — even as the meaning began to expand beyond anything I had originally intended for it.

The Moment It All Connected

It was not until I sat down to design the journal that I saw it clearly.

I had been carrying the name for years. I had been living the story for years — the grief, the spiritual formation, the slow and nonlinear journey of allowing God to make something new out of the broken places. And when the time came to put a name on the journal — the tool I was creating to help other women practice intentional faith —

The name was already there.

Old to New Creations.

Not just a craft brand. Not just a sewing hobby. But the thread that ran through everything — from my Grandma’s sheets to a hospital room in the middle of the night to a Fuller Seminary cohort to a children’s book that had been waiting fifteen years to be written.

The same name. The same truth. The whole journey.

And underneath all of it — a verse I had known for years that suddenly felt like it had been written specifically for this moment:

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” — 2 Corinthians 5:17

The Verse That Changed Everything

I want to sit with this verse for a moment — because I think it is one of the most radical and most misunderstood promises in all of Scripture.

The old has passed away. The new has come.

We tend to read that as a one-time event. The moment of salvation — the before and the after. And it is that. Absolutely and completely that.

But I have come to believe it is also something more.

It is a description of how God operates.

Not just at salvation — but throughout a life. Throughout a grief. Throughout a season of loss and confusion and inner lies and slow healing. Throughout the ordinary Tuesday mornings and the hospital room nights and the anniversary days and the counseling offices and the small groups and the sewing tables.

God is always in the process of making something new.

Not erasing the old — the old is still there. The jeans are still denim. The grief is still grief. The scars are still real. But He takes the old and He works it into something that could not have existed without it. Something that carries the history and is transformed by it at the same time.

That is Old to New.

Not the destruction of what was. The transformation of it.

I wrote about the slow and nonlinear road of healing here.

What This Brand Is Really About

I want to tell you — as clearly as I can — what Old to New Creations exists to do.

It exists for anyone who has ever held something broken and wondered if it could ever be made new.

It exists for the grieving mother who cannot see past the loss to imagine what God might be building in the rubble.

It exists for the woman who has been a Christian her whole life and suspects there is a depth of practice and presence she has not yet found.

It exists for the person in the hard middle of something — the waiting, the suffering, the confusion, the slow work of healing — who needs to be reminded that God is not finished with their story.

It exists because of a pair of old jeans and my Grandma’s sheets. Because of Madison Joy — born on Christmas morning, thirty-five days. Because of Lucy Grace — gift of light, delivered still, whose brief and beautiful presence changed everything. Because of a Fuller Seminary cohort and a Listening Prayer session and a small group that has shown up for years. Because of a two year old boy who padded down the hall every morning and asked a question that planted a seed. Because of fifteen years of a quiet, persistent nudge that would not go away.

All of it — every broken and beautiful piece of it — has been Old to New all along.

I just needed time to see it clearly.

I wrote about that prayer and what followed here.

An Invitation

If you have been reading along these past twelve weeks — thank you.

You have walked with me through hospital rooms and grief bottoms and anniversary days and spiritual formation cohorts and sewing tables. You have let me share the most sacred and most difficult parts of a story that I was not always sure I was ready to tell.

And if any part of it has resonated — if any part of it has found you in your own hard middle and offered even a small measure of hope —

Then it was worth every word.

Because that is what Old to New is for.

Not to present a polished, finished version of a life that has it all figured out. But to share honestly from the middle of the journey — the broken places and the beautiful ones — and point to the God who has been faithfully, persistently, supernaturally at work in all of it.

He is doing a new thing.

Even now. Even here. Even in whatever you are carrying today.

“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” — Isaiah 43:19

Do you perceive it?

Look closer.

It is already happening.

Thank you for being here. If this series has meant something to you — share it with someone who needs it. And if you are just finding Old to New Creations for the first time — welcome. If you want to start at the beginning, click here.

There is more to come. Subscribe below so you don’t miss what’s next.

I Didn’t Know What Spiritual Formation Was — Until It Changed Everything

I have been a Christian for most of my life.

I grew up knowing God. Loving God. Trying to follow God in the ways I had been taught — going to church, reading my Bible, praying, serving. I was not a nominal Christian going through the motions. I was genuinely trying.

But there was a whole world of practice I had never been introduced to.

A depth of intentional, structured, ancient spiritual discipline that the Church has carried for centuries — and that somehow had never quite made it into my faith formation in any meaningful way.

I did not know what I was missing.

Until I did.

The Cohort That Changed Everything

Through my work I was given an extraordinary opportunity — the chance to participate in a Spiritual Formation cohort developed in partnership with Fuller Theological Seminary.

I want to be honest about what I expected going in —

I expected to learn some things. I expected it to be interesting. I did not expect it to reshape the way I practice faith at a foundational level.

But that is exactly what it did.

What made it different from anything I had experienced before was not just the content — though the content was rich and deep and more practically useful than anything I had encountered in years. What made it different was the combination of three things that I have come to believe are essential to real spiritual growth:

Time and space to actually practice. Honest community to practice alongside. And tools — real, concrete tools — to put in my bag and carry forward.

Be With Jesus. Be Like Jesus. Do What Jesus Did.

John Mark Comer — in his spiritual formation curriculum Practicing the Way — describes the goal of discipleship in three simple steps:

Be with Jesus. Be like Jesus. Do what Jesus did.

That framework stopped me in my tracks the first time I encountered it — because it is so simple and so complete at the same time. Discipleship is not primarily about what you know. It is about who you are becoming. And you become like Jesus the same way you become like anyone — by spending time with Him, by practicing the things He practiced, and by doing the things He did in the world.

That is what the cohort gave me.

Not just information about spiritual disciplines — but the time and space and community to actually try them. To sit with them. To discover which ones opened something in me and which ones I would return to again and again.

The Practice That Changed Me Most

I want to tell you about one practice in particular — because it is the one that most surprised me and most stayed with me.

Listening Prayer.

I had prayed my whole life. Talked to God, thanked God, asked God, wrestled with God. But I had never been intentionally taught to simply — listen on behalf of others.

In our cohort we were given instructions and then given space to listen to God on behalf of one another. To be still and quiet and open — and to receive whatever came. A verse. An image. A word of encouragement. A sense of something that was hard to name but unmistakably present.

And then one by one we shared what we had received.

I want to tell you what happened in that room — because I have no other explanation for it than God.

As each person shared what they had heard or seen or sensed on behalf of someone else in the group — the themes connected. Not because anyone had planned it or coordinated it or known what anyone else was going to say. But because the same God was speaking to all of us — and He was saying something consistent and true and deeply personal to the person it was for.

I watched it happen again and again — in the cohort and later in the small group I led.

People who came in skeptical left undone. People who had never experienced God that personally before encountered Him in a way that changed their understanding of what prayer could be.

That is what spiritual formation does when it is practiced in honest community.

It makes the invisible God suddenly, undeniably present.

The Practices I Still Carry

The cohort introduced me to a full range of spiritual disciplines — and I continue to draw from all of them in different seasons and in different ways. But there are a few that have become the most consistent threads in my daily and weekly practice:

The Examen A practice of pausing at the beginning and the end of the day to recognize God’s presence in it. Not rushing past the ordinary moments but looking forward and backward and asking — where was God in this? Where did I feel most alive? Where am I struggling? What does God have in store for me today? It is a practice of paying attention — of training yourself to notice the God who is already there in the moments you might otherwise miss.

Gratitude Journaling Simple and profound — the daily practice of naming what you are grateful for. Not because everything is good, but because there is always something good if you are willing to look for it. Gratitude does not deny the hard things. It refuses to let the hard things have the only voice.

Intentional Prayer for the People You Love One of the things I brought directly into the Old to New journals is the practice of praying specifically and intentionally over the people in your life — your spouse, your children, yourself. Your future spouse or future children if they have not yet arrived. Your grandchildren. The people God has placed in your care and in your heart.

There is something powerful about moving from general prayer — “God bless my family” — to specific, Scripture-rooted, intentional prayer for each person by name. It changes the way you see them. It changes the way you love them. And it changes you.

I wrote about what that choosing looked like in the middle of grief here.

The People Who Practiced Alongside Me

I cannot talk about spiritual formation without talking about community — because formation was never meant to be a solo practice.

In the cohort it was the people who sat beside me — who opened themselves up honestly to God and to one another — who made the practices come alive. Spiritual disciplines practiced alone are powerful. Spiritual disciplines practiced in honest community are transformative.

That is still true for me today.

I continue to meet regularly with a small group through my church — people who have walked with me through whatever life has thrown our way for years now. We have supported one another and listened and cried together. We have shown up for each other’s children. We have sat in hospital rooms and celebrated milestones and held each other in the hard middle of things.

That is discipleship.

Not a program or a curriculum or a cohort — though all of those things have their place. But people. Consistent, faithful, honest people who show up for each other over the long haul.

Be with Jesus. Be like Jesus. Do what Jesus did.

And do it with people who are trying to do the same.

How This Became the Journals

I left that cohort with something I had not walked in before —

A full bag.

Practical tools. Tested practices. A framework for intentional faith that I could actually live out in the ordinary rhythm of a busy life. And a deep, growing conviction that these tools were not meant to stay in a seminary cohort or a church program.

They were meant to be accessible.

To the woman who has never heard the word Examen but who would practice it every day if someone just showed her how. To the mother who wants to pray more intentionally for her children but does not know where to start. To the person in the middle of grief or transition or waiting who needs something more than good intentions to anchor their faith.

That conviction became the Old to New journals. (You can read the full story of how Old to New Creations got its name here).

Not a theology textbook. Not an academic exercise. But a practical, approachable, beautiful tool — designed to help women document God’s faithfulness, practice the disciplines that deepen faith, and move from a hurried life to a holy one.

One intentional page at a time.

These were the tools I eventually found my way to after hitting grief bottom – read that store here.

What I Want You to Know

You do not need a seminary cohort to practice spiritual formation.

You do not need a theology degree or a church program or a perfectly structured quiet time. You need a willingness to show up — to be with Jesus in the ordinary moments of your ordinary life — and to practice, imperfectly and consistently, the things that open you to His presence.

If you want to go deeper into spiritual formation, authors like Dallas Willard, Richard Foster, and Ruth Haley Barton have written beautifully on the subject.

Start with one thing.

Try the Examen tonight — just five minutes of looking back over your day and asking where God was in it. Start a gratitude journal — just three things, every morning. Find one person to practice alongside — one honest, faithful person who will show up for you and let you show up for them.

And trust that the God who showed up in a Fuller Seminary cohort and in a small group Listening Prayer session and in a hospital room in the middle of the night —

Is the same God who will show up in your ordinary Tuesday.

He always has. He always will.

“And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” — Philippians 1:6

If this post resonated with you — I would love to know what spiritual practice has been most meaningful in your own faith journey. Share it in the comments below.

And if you are looking for a practical tool to begin or deepen your own spiritual formation practice — the Old to New journals were written for exactly this.

If you’re just starting to follow my story, you can Start Here to go back to the beginning!