Category Archives: Marriage & Family

Grief does something to a marriage. So does parenting. So does the ordinary weight of building a life with someone through hard seasons. This space is for the honest conversation about what it looks like to love your spouse and your children well — in the middle of loss, waiting, and everything in between.

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

Broken People Raising Broken People

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

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

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

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

The Son in the Painting

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

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

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

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

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

What They Actually Need to Know

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

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

They need to know the consequences are real.

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

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

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

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

He Who Began a Good Work

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

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

But it’s also a promise about them.

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

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

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

You Are Not Meant to Do This Alone

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

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

Because God is not finished with your story.

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

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

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

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

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

They Think in Pictures. Literal, Concrete, Specific Pictures

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

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

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

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

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

Children do not grieve abstractly.

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

Following Their Lead

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

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

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

Take their lead.

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

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

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

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

They always did.

The Questions They Actually Asked

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

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

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

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

And I know how much it matters to find them.

What Grief Does to a Child Over Time

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is not damage. That is formation.

Your Kids Can Handle More Truth Than You Think

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

That last one was the most important.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What My Children Taught Me

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

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

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

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

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

She was gift of light. She still is.

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

Because God is not finished with your story.

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

We talked. But neither of us knew how

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

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

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

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

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

We grieved differently. And sometimes that felt like distance

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

None of that was wrong. It was just different.

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

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

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

You are not. And they are not your enemy.

We took turns struggling

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

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

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

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

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

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

We could not do it alone

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

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

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

What held us together

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

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

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

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

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

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

If your marriage is in a hard season right now

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

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

And you do not have to figure it out alone.

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

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

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

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

Because God is not finished with your story.

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

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.