Today, my heart is heavy.
I learned today that a friend of our family lost their battle with cancer. I also learned that someone who made an incredible impact on my life took their own life yesterday.
Two different people. Two different circumstances. Two losses that have left me thinking about something every one of us, at some point in our lives, will come face-to-face with.
Grief.
Something we, as people, can grab ahold of and relate to on an individual level.
Learning to deal with grief—or maybe understanding it as a whole—can be a challenge because it presents itself in many different ways. Sometimes it can be stronger in certain instances, although it carries that same initial feeling: a pang to the heart.
Sometimes that pang can correct itself quickly. Other times, that pang may develop into a dull type of pain. There may even be times when it seems it has finally scarred over before being torn open again.
Grief, defined, is the intense emotional, physical, and cognitive suffering that occurs as a natural reaction to a significant loss.
We can feel grief in our teenage years with the loss of a relationship, a friendship, a boyfriend or girlfriend. Those feelings eventually may heal with the addition of new friend groups or even new relationships that are “meant to be.” As you get older, it may seem silly to look back at what grieved us in our younger years, but it was inevitably the same type of feeling.
As you grow older, you experience grief through the loss of life many times.
Initially, you may realize the loss of life through pets. That can cause large levels of grief momentarily. However, it does seem that pain subsides in time and sometimes can be eased with the addition of a new pet to the family. I don’t say this to diminish the life or impact of your previous pet.
Then you get to a position where grief falls into a deeper hole: the loss of life in the context of those you love—grandparents, parents, and, for some, children.
This stings at a deeper level because of the longing to see the person you love again. Missing their face. Their embrace. Their voice.
I know this all too well.
I’m sure some of you reading know exactly what I’m speaking about.
While I feel like it’s inevitable that grief itself, for lack of better words, “levels up” as we grow older, I think the thing that combats it “levels up” also, depending upon the way you position yourself.
The greatest challenge of the Christian faith is the problem of pain and grief.
In a lot of instances, God is only consulted when we believe a favor is warranted. We ask God to move on our behalf while neglecting Him periodically throughout our everyday lives. I’m not saying this is everyone’s story, but it certainly happens, and that’s what shapes the lives of many “believers.”
Then comes the question of why God “allows” bad things to happen.
A natural response is wondering why God allows the bad while forgetting about all the good and blessing. I’ve been a victim of that thought process before. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t.
This isn’t everyone’s story, though.
There are many people who have a deep relationship with the Lord and, despite that deep relationship, still find themselves on the receiving end of grief. Despite prayers being lifted, pleas being made, and fasting, it still feels like it comes up short.
You’re left in a place where you have to decide: Is God really as good as we say?
Or maybe it’s: Does God really care to be involved in our situations?
You can even get yourself into the thought process of wondering whether you didn’t pray or do everything right and, had you done said thing, God would have certainly answered.
God hears the prayers of a righteous man, right?
James 5:16 says, “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.”
Proverbs 15:29 says, “The LORD is far from the wicked, but he hears the prayers of the righteous.”
Maybe I wasn’t as righteous as I could have been.
It’s an interesting place to find yourself because I’ve noticed something:
Grief is searching for answers.
People don’t like uncertainty. We want to pinpoint why something has happened, and a lot of times, simple explanations won’t do.
There must be something more.
I’ve found myself on the receiving end of grief just like many of you, and it has affected me differently on many occasions.
A deep moment of grief I experienced was in 2019.
My wife and I decided to grow our family. We were excited. We desired to be a young family. I was 25, and she was 23.
We were expecting two little boys.
Twins.
There were certainly levels of fear that came with that. You’re expecting one and then get the news of two.
God forgive me, but I even questioned if it were possible for us. It’s hard for me to admit that as a man of God. I still feel some guilt in even having those thoughts.
I remember them haunting me as I’d look in the mirror at myself, wondering if they would have looked like me.
The hardest part was seeing my wife. The pain that she carried.
I felt helpless.
I couldn’t do anything.
I was already a new husband and far from a good one. She had to contend with her pain in loss and then deal with me. In the midst of feeling like a failure to her and feeling the pain of loss, we struggled for years before the Lord blessed us with a son in 2022.
Years of heartbreak, in some ways, found their conclusion through life born years later.
Another instance came in 2020 when we lost someone in our family who took his life.
I’m hesitant to write about it. Sometimes, I feel as if it’s not my story to tell, so I’ll be brief and careful.
I do know the level of grief it brought me.
I had difficulties sleeping at night. I would wake up crying—something I’d never experienced before.
I’d tried to speak into this person before. I’d tried to help with my presentation of Jesus. I’m believing it was grasped at the end.
Nonetheless, I felt like a failure. I felt like I could have helped speak life into them more.
It took me some time to move beyond those thoughts.
I still wrestle with the concept of eternity, but I lean into the grace of Jesus.
If you simply fixate your thoughts on what the world would say—or, dare I say, unqualified leaders—you’d pin yourself in a tough situation with no peace.
Lastly, maybe my most difficult area of grief was the loss of my mom in February of 2025.
I can remember every moment of that day as she lay in her bed. Her breathing was heavy. It was difficult for me to watch.
Over the course of that year, I watched my mom’s health steadily decline. You could see her memory fade as the months went on when I’d go to talk with her. It eventually got to the point where her speaking—a lot of times hallucinations—eventually faded altogether.
I’d go in there at times by myself just to have alone time to pray over her and sing her favorite worship songs.
I truly believed I’d see her stand up out of that bed.
That reality shattered when I watched her take her final breath.
I leaned down with her one last time to pray, and I asked Jesus to hug my mom the same way that I’d hug her.
I still, to this day, think of my mom every single day.
It’s difficult when you lose someone you spoke with every day, someone you realized was really a best friend.
Although I’ve noticed that, while I think of her every day, I don’t find myself in a constant state of depression. That’s not to say I don’t have moments of tears and a desire to see or hear her again.
It just means that in those moments—which aren’t as often as I would have imagined when I was younger—I’ve realized I’ve been fortunate to love someone and be loved by someone that much.
I’ll see my mom again.
The grace, gift, and promise of Jesus tell me that.
So if grief is leveling up as we age, that means our relationship with the Lord should be as well.
It’s by that relationship that you can combat brokenness.
The more I lean into the Lord, the more I learn about the Lord, the more I understand how I can deal with difficulties because He dealt with them as well.
Jesus made Himself a man and chose not to hide from grief.
He felt it.
We know He would have experienced the loss of Joseph, His earthly father. He felt the loss of a close friend in John the Baptist. We watched Him weep at the tomb of Lazarus, albeit if not the death of Lazarus itself, then the unbelief and brokenness of the people surrounding Him.
He felt the rejection of His people whom He sought to bring back, save, and help.
He was repaid evil for His good.
His own friend betrayed Him into the hands of those who wanted to falsely try Him and put Him to death.
We saw Him beforehand in the garden, grieved.
His human nature was on full display as He asked the Father to remove this cup of suffering from Him. Three times He prayed, yet His human will remained perfectly submitted to His divine will and to the will of the Father.
The Bible says drops of blood poured from Him.
He knew grief.
Even as He hung from the cross and cried out to the Father, He felt separation from the very Person who sustains.
In all instances of Jesus’ moments of grief came another day or another moment filled with the mercy and love of God.
How lucky are we to have Someone—to have a God—who experienced the very types of grief and loss that we’ve experienced?
There’s no other God like that.
That’s why our relationship with Him is unique and important. You’re contending with Someone who understands. Someone who has felt.
That should give layers of confidence when you need Someone to help.
The most unique way God conquered grief was not simply by telling us the solution, but by coming down Himself to endure it and overcome it.
The problem with grief isn’t grief itself, but our response to it, because grief is inevitable.
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and the Psalms speak of pain enduring for the night, of pain being present for a moment, but with the realization that joy comes in the morning.
There is joy, and it’s accessible in the presence of God.
That’s exactly how Jesus uplifted Himself, and sometimes we forget that.
Instead of falling back into the arms of the Lord, we keep ourselves at arm’s length from Him because we either believe He caused it or that He doesn’t really care.
My thoughts are this: If He didn’t care, He wouldn’t have taken on the flesh to experience the same thing and ultimately provide the solution.
Jesus wanted to feel what you felt.
He can adequately help you.
He’s unique.
The Christian answer to grief isn’t pretending that the pain isn’t real. It isn’t pretending we won’t miss those we’ve lost. It isn’t denying the tears, the questions, the nights when memories come flooding back, or even the moments when we wonder why God didn’t answer the way we desperately wanted Him to.
Our answer is Jesus.
The same Jesus who wept.
The same Jesus who grieved.
The same Jesus who suffered.
The same Jesus who died.
And the same Jesus who walked out of the grave.
Grief, just like death, was swallowed up by Jesus.
