Sample Chapters

Introduction

Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. — Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

Grief is a landscape we never expect to enter. We know that death is part of the human story; thousands die every day, but statistics mean nothing when the loss becomes personal. When someone you love takes their final breath, the world you knew is suddenly gone. What remains is an empty chair, a voice you will not hear again, and a silence that settles into the corners of your life. Grief begins there—quietly, painfully, and without your consent.

My wife Janet and I entered that landscape when our firstborn daughter, Claire, age thirty‑three, went to be with her Lord after a long battle with leukemia. Her absence reshaped every corner of our lives. Life is now divided into two chapters: before and after her passing.

If you are reading this, you may know something of that division. You may be carrying a loss that has altered your world. You may be trying to understand why ordinary tasks feel heavier, why memories ambush you without warning, or why your faith feels both essential and fragile. Grief has a way of touching every part of us, our emotions, our bodies, our relationships, and our beliefs. It is not a single feeling but a whole landscape of experiences that shift from day to day.

When Claire was in treatment, we prayed constantly, through procedures, hospital stays, and long nights of uncertainty. Even then, we knew we might one day face the unthinkable. We talked about how her loss would affect our family, our future, and our marriage. We wanted to grieve in a way that honored her life, protected our relationships, and kept our hearts open to God. But when she died, we quickly realized something important: we could not walk this road alone.

We joined a local grief support group (a 13-week GriefShare course) where we could speak honestly, listen deeply, and learn from others walking a similar road. It reminded us that grief is not a problem to solve but a journey to walk—slowly, gently, and with companions along the way.

GriefShare encouraged expressive writing, and research shows it can ease depression and the physical symptoms of grief. Although I had spent decades writing academically, this was different. Journaling invited me into a kind of writing I had long admired in others, writing that expresses the inner life. I had always written with a clear purpose, usually for publication, so writing simply to process my grief felt unfamiliar. Yet it became a way not to produce, but to heal.

Over time, I sensed that my writing might serve a purpose beyond my own healing. Not to offer quick answers, there are none. Not to explain away suffering, grief resists tidy explanations. But to offer companionship. To say, “You are not alone.” To share what I have learned from Scripture, from research, from others who have suffered, and from the slow, painful work God has been doing in my own heart.

This book is my attempt to walk with you through the valley of grief. I write not as a theologian with all the answers, but as an educator, a husband, and a grieving father learning to live with loss one day at a time. As Richard Rohr often teaches, we tend to guide others in the very places where we ourselves are still learning. In many ways, these pages are my way of learning, slowly, sincerely, and in God’s presence, what grief is trying to teach me.

Grief is different for everyone. Your story will not look like mine, and it shouldn’t. But there are patterns, truths, and gentle insights that can help us understand what is happening inside us. My hope is that something here, a sentence, an idea, a moment of recognition, will help you in aching spaces of grief. That you will feel seen, understood, and accompanied. That you will sense the quiet presence of Christ, who walks with us even in the darkest valleys.

Elisabeth Elliot once wrote, “I cannot say to you, I know exactly what you’re going through. But I can say that I know the One who knows.” That is my hope for you as you read. Not that your grief will be fixed or hurried, but that you will discover, even in sorrow, that God is near. He is gentle with the brokenhearted. He is patient with our questions. And He can hold what we cannot.

Wherever you are in your grief, raw, numb, angry, exhausted, confused, I invite you to walk with me through these pages. You do not have to navigate this alone. There is companionship here. There is wisdom here. And, by God’s grace, there is hope.

 

Chapter 1

When Darkness Falls: The Diagnosis

“Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant.” 

— Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (2005)

There are moments in life when the world shifts beneath your feet — when the story you thought you were living is suddenly replaced by one you never wanted to write. For us, that moment came in April 2020, in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, while Janet and I were living in Doha, Qatar. Our daughter Claire had just turned twenty-eight. We called to celebrate, expecting laughter and the usual catch-up. Instead, the moment she spoke, something in her voice made our hearts tighten.

She sounded tired, not the usual tired of a long week, but a heaviness that didn’t match her age or her usual energy. She brushed it off as the flu or an infection. We reassured her, but unease settled in our chests. Even over the phone, a parent can hear when something is wrong.

Because of COVID, everything was telehealth. No physical exams. No labs. No in-person visits. Symptoms that might have been caught quickly were now filtered through screens and phone calls. She was prescribed medications, then antibiotics, but nothing changed. Each conversation left us more concerned.

By April 6th, the concern had become urgent. Claire struggled to catch her breath. Her complexion changed. The telehealth nurse finally said what we had been afraid to hear: “You need to go to the ER.” From Doha, all we could do was wait.

The hours stretched painfully long. Janet kept her phone in her hand, answering every call immediately. When Claire finally reached us, I remember hearing her trembling voice, upset and frightened, saying the doctors suspected cancer and were transferring her by ambulance to the cancer center. Later that night, I spoke with the physician. I remember the tone of his voice before I remember his words, the pause that tells you everything is about to change. Then he said it: leukemia. In a single sentence, our lives were rerouted.

It is strange to receive devastating news from thousands of miles away. The distance between Qatar and the United States became more than geography; it became a kind of helplessness. Parents are wired to protect, to intervene, to show up. But we could not sit beside her hospital bed. We could not hold her hand. We could not read the fear in her eyes. All we had were phone calls, updates, and the ache of knowing she was facing something unimaginably heavy without us physically present. Love can cross any distance. Presence cannot. During COVID, that forced distance became its own kind of wound, a separation no parent is meant to bear.

As the reality settled in, so did the questions. How could this happen? What does this mean for Claire? For us? Where is God in all of this? There are moments when faith is not a warm feeling but a desperate reach. This was one of those moments. Our prayers felt like half-formed words spoken through tears. Hope felt slippery, hard to grasp.

This kind of disorientation soon became familiar to us. Scripture gives us permission to bring this tension honestly before God. The psalmists cried out in their confusion and anguish: “How long, O Lord?” (Psalm 13) and “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” (Psalm 22). These are not prayers of lost faith but the cries of people who trust God enough to bring Him their deepest pain. Walter Brueggemann describes lament as “an act of bold faith” that insists on naming reality before God. In those early days, our prayers sounded more like lament than anything polished or composed. We cried out. We questioned. We pleaded. And in doing so, we discovered that God does not turn away from honest sorrow. He meets us in it.

In those first days, our prayers sounded more like lament than polished or composed words. We cried out. We questioned. We pleaded. And in doing so, we discovered that God does not turn away from honest sorrow. He meets us there. A diagnosis like this doesn’t simply interrupt your life; it redraws the map entirely. The plans you held, the assumptions you lived by, the future you imagined, all of it must be reconsidered in light of a new and unwanted reality.

Given Claire’s health and the constraints of distance, we returned to the United States in June 2022. Once home, the reality of her illness came into full view. No longer receiving updates from afar, we watched every procedure, every setback, and every fragile hope unfold before us. It was unfamiliar terrain where faith felt stretched, and the next step was all we could take. It was unfamiliar terrain where faith felt stretched, and the next step was all we could take. This was the beginning of our journey into grief. And it is here, in this place of disorientation and ache, that many of us first learn what it means to walk with God through the valley.

 

Chapter 4

Firsts, Lasts, and Firsts

“We relearn the world by living through the loss, by revisiting the places, events, and relationships that now feel so different.”

(Attig, 2011, p. 4)

The Theology of Firsts, Lasts, and New Firsts

Scripture teaches that God is present at both beginnings and endings, holding the full arc of our lives in His faithful care. From creation to new creation, God reveals Himself as the One who initiates life and gathers all things to Himself. The Psalms reinforce this truth by calling God’s people to remember His faithfulness in both joy and sorrow (Psalm 77:11–12; Psalm 103:2). This rhythm, “beginnings held in hope,” endings held in mercy, becomes the landscape in which grief unfolds. Most of us do not experience beginnings and endings as clean chapters, but as overlapping seasons where hope and sorrow coexist. Grief often brings these seasons to the surface at once, reminding us how closely love and loss are intertwined.

Christian thinkers have long affirmed this pattern. Faith is shaped not only in seasons of stability but also in seasons of disorientation and in the surprising new beginnings that follow. God continues to work within the fragments of our lives, even when we cannot yet see the shape of redemption. Nicholas Wolterstorff, writing after the death of his son, says, “The wound is healed, but it is healed as a scar,” a reminder that resurrection hope transforms sorrow without erasing it. His words echo a deeper truth woven through Scripture itself. Even in the life of Jesus, we see this rhythm—His first public words, His last supper, His first breath after resurrection.

Christian hope does not erase grief or rush us past the ache of endings. Instead, it reframes those endings in the light of the resurrection. The God who meets us in our losses is the same God who brings life from tombs and makes all things new (Psalm 34:18; John 11:25; Revelation 21:5). Hope does not deny the wound; it promises that the wound will not define the whole story. Resurrection hope allows us to grieve honestly while trusting that grief does not have the final word. This is the ground on which we stand as we face our own firsts, lasts, and the new beginnings that follow.

The Firsts

Every life begins with firsts—those early moments that mark the beginning of a story. The first breath, the first smile, the first steps into a world only beginning to be known. These beginnings carry a quiet promise, hints of who a person might become and how a life may unfold. Such firsts often remain untouched by time, markers of where a journey began.

When someone we love dies, these firsts take on a different meaning. They are not idle memories; they shape the emotional landscape of loss, becoming powerful triggers of sorrow. What once felt like simple moments now feels more significant—glimpses of who they were and the life shared with them. They rise in memory with a tenderness that surprises us. They become places the heart returns to, not because they wound us, but because they remind us of the goodness that was there.

Scripture acknowledges this tension. Jesus calls Himself the Alpha and the Omega (Revelation 22:13), assuring us that no beginning is untouched by His presence and no ending falls outside His redeeming care. The firsts we celebrate and the firsts we grieve are held within the same faithful hands.

 

The Lasts We Never Recognize

The lasts are the moments we didn’t realize were final until we look back. They arrive quietly, without ceremony—the last conversation, the last shared meal, the last ordinary moment that felt unremarkable at the time. Most of life’s “lasts” hide in the everyday, unnoticed until grief names them for what they were. What once felt ordinary becomes significant only in hindsight, revealed by the grief that follows.

These endings often come in small ways: a final act of care, a final ordinary task, a final shared moment, a final embrace. Naming them can be painful because it reveals how many there were and how deeply they mattered. The hardest part is that we almost never know when something is happening for the last time. We move through our days unaware that we are standing in moments that will one day carry a deeper ache. Yet even here, grief becomes a teacher—revealing what mattered, what shaped us, and what we now carry forward.

After the lasts are named and the weight of what has ended begins to settle, another landscape slowly emerges—the landscape of new firsts. These are the beginnings we never asked for, arriving after loss and reminding us that life has changed in ways we never imagined, changes we are still learning how to live with.

New Firsts After Loss

After a loss, a new set of firsts emerges—first holiday with an empty chair, first time you reach for your phone to text them, first time you hear their favorite song. These moments confront us with the reality that life has changed, even when part of us longs for what was. The lasts arrive quietly, but the “new firsts” often meet us with a sharper ache, reminding us, sometimes painfully, that time has moved on.

These new firsts sit alongside the sacred lasts, forming the quiet architecture of grief. They carry pain precisely because the old firsts were so full of joy. They carry emotional weight because they force us to face the reality of absence. Yet in time, these new firsts become signs that we are learning to live in a world reshaped by loss. Christian hope does not require us to “move on.” Instead, it invites us to move forward—carrying both the ache of what was lost and the promise of what God is still making new.

Continuing Bonds as a Healthy Part of Grief

Grief does not sever the relationship we had with the one we lost; it reshapes it. Modern grief research echoes what Scripture has long witnessed about love’s endurance. In their landmark work on continuing bonds, Dennis Klass, Phyllis Silverman, and Steven Nickman describe how relationships do not end with death but take on new forms—through memory, ritual, story, and the quiet ways we carry those we love into the life that remains.[1]

These practices—telling stories, keeping meaningful objects, sharing memories, observing anniversaries—become ways of acknowledging that the person we loved continues to shape who we are becoming. Continuing bonds are not signs of being stuck; they are a natural expression of enduring love. They remind us that love is not undone by death; it simply finds new ways to live.

Conclusion: Living the Story Forward

Loss reshapes us, but it does not disqualify us. Grief may change how we see ourselves, but it does not diminish our worth or our place in God’s story. Grief becomes part of the story God is writing in and through us. Christian hope reminds us that every ending is held within God’s larger work of redemption—the God who declares, “Behold, I am making all things new” (Revelation 21:5). The God who meets us in our sorrow is the same God who brings life from tombs and turns endings into new beginnings, the God who says, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25–26). To move the story forward is to trust that grief and grace can coexist. It is to believe that love, even when interrupted by death, still deepens and bears witness to the God who holds every first, every last, and every new beginning.

 

 

 

Chapter 16

The Early Lessons of Grief

The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss… you will learn to live with it. Kübler‑Ross & Kessler

My favorite season is fall. The way the world shifts into color. Fall is full of excitement, from the start of school to crisp fall evenings and approaching holidays. For me, fall signals a new semester and that indescribable feeling of campus in the fall. The season rests in the space between the fullness of summer and the stillness of winter. Fall feels honest, acknowledging that life includes endings, change, and loss, yet it also calls me to slow down and pay attention. For many grieving people, loss can feel like autumn after the leaves have fallen — quiet, stripped down, and honest.

These memories now lie quiet and still, like fallen leaves covering everything I once knew — many of them becoming life‑shaping lessons. I began to understand that grief is not only endured; it instructs. It slows us down, sharpens our awareness, and invites us to see life with a depth we did not have before (James 1:2–4). It teaches us to pay attention to memories and to presence, to the limits of our strength, and to the quiet ways God meets us in our sorrow. This chapter begins with that invitation: to recognize grief not simply as something that happens to us, but as a teacher that shapes and softens us, ultimately leading us toward a deeper, more compassionate way of being.

Grief as a Teacher

As a professor, I have realized I can be the worst student, not out of resistance to learning, but because we forget what it feels like to be taught and the unease that can accompany learning something new. That unease is especially pronounced in lessons on grief. Still, grief offers its own course and curriculum, one we never willingly enrolled in, yet one that demands difficult learning. What follows are some of the lessons this unwelcome teacher has pressed upon my life.

Lesson One: Grief Exposes Our Illusions of Control

Grief challenges the myth that we can manage, predict, or protect our way through life. Loss demolishes the quiet assumptions we carry about safety, stability, and how the world is supposed to work. Most of us live with an unspoken belief that if we plan well and behave wisely, life will unfold in ways we can understand and manage. But grief interrupts that illusion. It reveals how fragile our sense of control truly is.

Many grieving people find themselves replaying conversations or decisions, wishing they could rewrite the story. For many grieving people, it becomes painfully clear how little control we have over outcomes or the people we love. Grief made that truth unavoidable.

Gerald Sittser writes that catastrophic loss “shatters the illusion that life is predictable,” leaving us face‑to‑face with the reality that we are not in charge of the outcomes we most cherish. C. S. Lewis echoes this in A Grief Observed, noting that grief exposes how much of our confidence rested on assumptions we never realized we were making. Tim Keller similarly observes that suffering reveals the “false foundations” on which we often build our sense of security.

This unmaking—this stripping away of what we thought we could control—becomes the beginning of a new kind of wisdom (Proverbs 3:5–6). Henri Nouwen describes this as the moment when we discover that our lives are held not by our own strength but by God’s faithful presence. Grief forces us into a place of surrender, dependence, and humility. It is here, in the place where control slips through our fingers, that we begin to learn what trust means.

The spiritual tension between surrender and fear is real. We want to trust God, yet we also want guarantees. Grief offers none. Instead, it invites us to live honestly with our limitations and to acknowledge that control was never the source of our safety. God was. And in that recognition, a quieter, deeper wisdom begins to take root—one that does not deny fear but learns to walk with God through it.

Lesson Two: How Grief Changes Our Relationships

Grief reshapes the relational landscape in ways we rarely anticipate. It alters not only how we see people but how we experience connection, support, and presence. Loss has a way of revealing the depth, fragility, and complexity of our relationships. It exposes what is genuine, what is limited, and what is unexpectedly life‑giving. In the early months of grief, many people begin to see relational shifts with new clarity. As Megan Devine points out, grief often rearranges our relational world, revealing who can walk with us and who cannot (Romans 12:15). Their intentions may be sincere, but their support may not meet the needs of someone in deep grief. Others, whom we barely knew, carried a quiet strength beside us that was a healing we didn’t know we needed.

Nancy Guthrie captures this beautifully when she reflects on the loss of her two children: One of the unexpected gifts of Hope and Gabe’s lives was the way their story drew new people toward us, creating a depth of connection and an almost immediate closeness that grew out of the intensity of what we were walking through. Her words name what I, too, discovered — that grief forges unexpected bonds with those who are willing and able to enter the ache with us. A supportive community often becomes a surprising source of strength.

Many grieving people discover that some relationships are life‑giving while others lack the capacity to walk with them. Devine writes that grief reveals which relationships are supportive and which are depleting. She names the emotional exhaustion caused by people who lack the capacity to sit with grief, and the life-giving presence of those who can. This insight helped us name what we were experiencing: grief was not only exposing our pain but also revealing the relational landscape around us.

As these patterns became clearer, many grieving people began making different choices about where to invest their limited emotional energy. Grief had already stripped life down to its essentials, and we no longer had the capacity to sustain relationships that consistently drained more than they gave.

As Devine notes, grief often clarifies which relationships are nourishing and which quietly deplete us, revealing who can sit with sorrow and who cannot. Alan Wolfelt makes a similar distinction, observing that only certain people can truly “companion” the grieving, while others—often unintentionally—add to the emotional burden. It is natural to feel frustration or exhaustion when support is uneven. In its quiet way, grief became a guide, helping us discern which relationships were worth nurturing and which we needed to release, at least for a season.

Grief reshapes our relationships by revealing what is real. It teaches us to release unrealistic expectations, to receive kindness wherever it appears, and to hold others’ limitations with compassion rather than resentment. This can be challenging. It widens our understanding of what people can and cannot offer. It also invites us to recognize that every person we meet carries a story we cannot see.

Over time, this new way of relating becomes a form of wisdom. We learn to appreciate small acts of presence. We learn to let go of the need for perfect support. And we learn that grief does not simply change how we see people — it changes how we walk with them in their own moments of sorrow.

Lesson Three: Grief Slows Us Down to What Matters

Grief disrupts our pace and reorders our priorities, teaching us to notice what is truly important. Loss has a way of halting the momentum we once carried so easily. The routines that once defined our days suddenly feel too fast, too crowded, too demanding. In early grief, many people find their pace slowing, their energy limited, and their attention drawn to what feels essential.

This slowing is not a failure of strength — it is a natural response to loss. Nancy Guthrie writes that suffering “strips life down to its barest essentials,” revealing what truly matters and exposing what never did. Her insight captures how grief dismantles our illusions of busyness and control. When everything familiar feels altered, we cannot simply rush forward; we must move slowly enough to notice what has changed within and around us.

Grief clarifies what is essential and exposes what is trivial. Dallas Willard notes that suffering reveals the “false urgencies” that once governed our lives, inviting us into a more intentional way of being. In the quiet that follows loss, we begin to see how much of our former pace was shaped by expectations and pressures that never aligned with what truly mattered. Productivity, efficiency, and constant activity lose their grip. What rises instead is a longing for presence, connection, rest, and meaning.

This reordering is not merely emotional; it is spiritual. Henri Nouwen observed that grief often ushers us into a quieter, more attentive way of living, one in which we become more aware of God’s nearness and our own vulnerability. Slowness becomes a form of grace. It allows us to listen more deeply, to notice the people around us, to honor our limits, and to receive the small gifts that hurried living often overlooks (Isaiah 30:15).

Over time, this slower pace becomes a kind of wisdom. We learn to say no without guilt. We learn to rest without apology. We learn to invest our energy in relationships and practices that nourish rather than drain us. And we learn that life is not measured by speed or productivity. Grief does not simply slow us down; it teaches us how to live differently, with greater clarity and intention.

Closing Reflection

Grief is a harsh teacher, but it is not a pointless one. Its lessons are costly, but they are never wasted. As we look back across these reflections, a quiet truth emerges: grief does not simply break us; it reorients us. It changes how we see people, how we receive care, and how we offer it. It slows us down, sharpens our discernment, and teaches us to live with a tenderness we did not have before. In ways we could not have imagined, sorrow becomes a place where wisdom grows.

That is the strange thing of grief. It does not erase the ache, but it reveals meaning within it. It does not remove the questions, but it deepens our capacity to live with them. And it does not return what was lost, but it forms in us a compassion, humility, and attentiveness that can only be learned through love and suffering intertwined.

As you continue, hold this gently: you are not expected to master these lessons all at once. They unfold slowly, sometimes quietly, sometimes painfully, often unexpectedly (2 Corinthians 4:16–18). They teach us to release what drains us, to cherish what sustains us, and to walk with others in ways that honor both their story and our own. And with these lessons in hand, we now turn to the next chapter, where we explore the long lessons of grief.