Tag Archives: faith and grief

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

I did not know I needed help.

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

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

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

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

What grief does that nothing else does

Grief strips away your coping mechanisms.

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

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

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

But grief does not let you outrun anything.

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

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

The moment I could not explain away

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

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

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

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

And something in me went very quiet.

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

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

The conversation that changed things

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I went. And something began to shift.

What I found when I finally looked

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is not a small thing. That is everything.

Why I am telling you this

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because God is not finished with your story.

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

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

Because God is not finished with your story.

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

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.

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

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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.

A Book Born From Two Losses: Introducing Mommy, Is Madison Sleeping?

What the Book Is

Mommy, Is Madison Sleeping? is a faith-based picture book for children ages 3-6 and the caregivers who love them.

It follows 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 to answer the question he keeps asking. Honest words. Gentle words. Words rooted in Biblical truth and the real and certain promises of a God who has never broken one yet.

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 is not 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.

The Two Names at Its Heart

This book carries two names.

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.

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.

What Comes Next

Mommy, Is Madison Sleeping? is currently on its journey toward publication.

I will be the first to let you know when it is ready to be in your hands.

In the meantime — subscribe below to stay connected. And if you are walking through a grief conversation with a young child right now and need resources, I would love to help. Leave a comment or reach out directly.

This book is fifteen years in the making.

It is almost time.

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

Want to be the first to know when the book is available? Subscribe below.