GOOD GRIEF

“I understand. Take care.” It was the only text my husband sent on the day that I packed my belongings, my babies, and my last bit of strength and left. Life had been so unkind, and somewhere in the waves, he and I lost our grip on the marriage holding us together. Now, standing at a crossroads I never wanted to face, I felt robbed of any option that didn’t include taking the next steps of my journey alone.

It’s been a year now since I welcomed my second son into the world, returned to the hospital due to threats of heart failure, which were later diagnosed as severe preeclampsia, and spiraled into the pit of postpartum depression and PTSD that took months to escape. In the months to follow, my health and mobility were questionable, my finances suffered, my self-worth and identity reduced to ashes, and my marriage came to an end, leaving life uncertain for me and my boys. It’s been a whirlwind—heartbreaking, life-altering, spiritually exhausting, and mentally devastating. Within days—or moments, it seemed—my focus shifted from fighting to recover from what I had endured to begging for scraps of clarity or security from the life I once loved.

Cue the grief.

I’ll start with an admission: if you had asked me a couple of years ago what grief was, I would have given you some fluffed definition based on a vague idea that loss causes this temporary yet heavy state of sadness. It would have been uninformed and unrelatable because I truly didn’t know any better. Stopping to think about it now, it’s not even a term I frequently heard outside the context of death and the loss of loved ones. I can’t pinpoint ever hearing a single sermon, Sunday school lesson, or teaching on its intricacies either—to the point that if I’m overlooking one, it must have been in the body of a eulogy I can’t recall. My lack of a solid reference point honestly never bothered me until my therapist consistently prompted me to intentionally process the heartache the last few years had dealt me. And while I’d love to say that was the start of an awakening of some sort, it wasn’t.

Her prompting was met with confusion, anger, frustration—and tears—so many tears. Let’s not forget the fear. So much fear. Because sadness, heartbreak, and disappointment are familiar to me, I wasn’t initially lost in discussing grief—that deeply stifling sorrow we carry when our hearts and lives experience loss in ways we struggle to comprehend. But grieving is the process. It’s how we make room for ourselves to process grief and hold space for the adjustments it takes to keep living beyond the moment.

But how?

If you are anything like me, you have NEVER had someone show you how to rest so that you don’t burn out. Or how to say no, even when it makes you unreliable and unavailable, because your heart needs more silence today. Or how to acknowledge that how you feel today may be more important than what you need to accomplish. Or how to shamelessly ignore all the calls and clear the whole schedule because you have tears that need crying, screams you must tend to, and a future to mourn. Just blocking off my time for a weekly therapy call was a radical life choice in my eyes, so grieving my losses intentionally this way, seemed like a LOT. As daunting as grief feels, the process of grieving offers a path to healing.

For clarity, I’m a doer, and I do things. I’m not good at it—I’m great at it! What things? All of them. I was raised by two doers in a family of doers who excelled mostly in getting things done. For every problem, there was a solution built on our ability to do whatever it took. Although anchored deeply in our faith, scriptures like “Be still and know…” were an abstract suggestion in my home. Like yes, mentally “be still” and don’t worry about that issue, but also physically DO NOT be still. In fact, you’d probably worry less if you were distracted by working even more! Lol. I kid…but only a little bit. Sorry, Mom.

Then I found myself in a season where grief appeared, shocking all my senses, and the guidance was to actively, intentionally, aggressively REST. Figuring out how to choose me in every moment of that season has not been easy. Granting myself the grace to disconnect when overwhelmed by anger and betrayal has perhaps been the hardest. With a knot in my throat, curses flying in my head, I’ve been desperately trying to find my footing—literally begging for something, ANYTHING, to do. Lonely, abandoned, ashamed, exhausted—trying to retrace my steps to find the point where I became unworthy or unaware—so I can chart a path to fixing all these feelings. I’ve begged God to just show me what to do. The silence has been so loud, and in one of the most unwanted revelations of all my life, I realized that this sorrow can’t be undone. I can’t outrun it, outwork it, or ignore it. I can’t freeze into numbness and wait it out.

I’ve encountered a season where suffering was my portion, and there’s nothing to do that will undo that reality. I’ve been told that the impact of suffering on the very foundation of our belief is a uniquely American problem (that’s a whole different conversation), yet here I am, ashamed of the questions that despair and chaos have made me ask.

“Why don’t I matter anymore? Why don’t you want me?” Questions of a broken believer who has planted churches and preached the gospel and helped win souls for the kingdom, no longer even able to serve because her health won’t allow her to even stand at the door.

“Do I even get to see what you promised me?” Asked by a terrified mom, writing a goodbye letter to her son as she walks into the operating room for a second traumatic birth.

“Why aren’t I EVER enough? Why aren’t I worth the effort”? Cries of a wife facing emotional abandonment.

“Why am I the only one broken?” Just a girl taking inventory of all the pain she absorbed for the sake of keeping the peace that she should have felt in the moment instead of tucking away for years to come.

“God if you’re so good, why isn’t any of this good too?” This one comes back more frequently than I’d like.  

Yet God is faithful. Somehow rest is truly the recipe and giving space to despair actually won’t end you despite feeling that way. Much to my surprise the questions I asked God didn’t make him walk away. I was never scolded or mocked for feeling all the pain. In fact, the wounds of this season dug deep enough to expose the fear down there to light that had never quite reached that far. And it’s upsetting because today I truly believe that there truly wasn’t another way.

Hear me. Divorce is not God’s plan for marriage. Poor health is not his promise to you, and he shows no delight in the fear you face while trying to flow in your measure of faith through the trials of life. But it really is true, that there are some things that valleys teach us that mountain tops just can’t.

This particular valley of grief somehow cleaned wounds I didn’t even know were there. Fear of abandonment is a trending theme in the hardest seasons of my life, but not until I had to go to God, spiritually disheveled and angry and exhausted from a failed marriage did I realize that the reality of abandonment in my marriage was somehow rooted adjacent to a fear of being abandoned by the Lord that I didn’t know was there.

Losing in the area of my life that I had wholeheartedly committed myself to in EVERY way stirred up worries that I would lose in the areas where I had not always been so devoted. Only grief about my perceived failure brought my silent questioning of the efficacy of God’s grace to surface.

The feelings of failure as a mother that latched on to me when postpartum depression made my babies feel like strangers, somehow manifested in a way that bound it to suicidal ideations I had not seen in 15 years but were still there. Unlike before, this time around two little faces made it impossible to run. By intentionally sitting with my PPD and PTSD I allowed disappointment to wash over me, creating space for God to speak to those things and whisper “life is worth living” to my heart at the same time.

Packing my home to relocate for more support drained every bit of composure I had left after weeks of digesting single motherhood. I don’t think I’ll ever forget how much I threw away, lightening the physical load in a way I was desperate to do emotionally but just couldn’t achieve. But somewhere in running up and down those steps with boxes, all alone, dozens of times, with tears on my face, allowed God to remind me that he gives all the strength I need for the day. That if I can’t stand in the morning, I can always rest in him, confident that his love surrounds me wherever he has me.

In a season of struggling to look in a mirror, obediently walking out the door holding whatever I could carry allowed me to catch a glimpse of myself that only He had ever been able to show me. The heartache of change somehow finally made me a bit more recognizable to myself. Like maybe, just maybe, I remember her from somewhere. Maybe I had seen her around. Around strength, around courage, around freedom. Maybe that’s the girl that did the things that terrified her village but saved her soul and set her free. The one who trusted God to show up right in the middle of her broken pieces. She once had something to say that was worth hearing. Something about grace being sufficient and faith being enough and promises in the wilderness and hope in a risen King. I had missed her deeply.

Reflecting on the valleys that have reshaped my faith, I find a kindred spirit in the psalmist's vulnerability in Psalm 77. It’s a chapter that holds space for lament, doubt, and desperate questioning, but also leads us toward a profound recognition of God’s faithfulness. The psalmist begins with a heart heavy with sorrow, much like the burdens I’ve carried in this fragile season, asking, ‘Has God forgotten to be gracious?’ Yet through the course of the psalm, the focus shifts from despair to the remembrance of God’s mighty works. My journey has been the same, encounters where the darkest moments have eventually revealed glimpses of His unwavering hand.

Let me be clear, even as I see the new life beginning to be planted in me, the triggers of the grief come and go as they please – without warning or respect for my schedule. I’m learning still to give sadness the space it needs to bubble up whatever pain is lingering inside me, knowing that when the pain boils over, it surfaces in a place where I can allow God to heal me. I’m amazed at how much healing I’ve obviously missed simply because I didn’t know to ask for it. I could not offer up a wound to the Lord that I wasn’t aware existed. I could not cast a burden on him that I did not know I was carrying.

Nonetheless, there is this duality to the moment that is unavoidably complex. It can be startling, like finally being seen and heard and appreciated but outside of the rooms where you’ve poured out effort to achieve that understanding. It stings. The discomfort of uncovering the worst of yourself and the peace of seeing those places healed all at once like alcohol to an open wound.

The earlier feeling of shame wrecks me more often than I’d like to admit but the Father is aware of all these things, and I was reminded on a Sunday morning driving to church silently pushing away my anxiety of the crowds and their questions when I heard him say:

“Who told you grief was a low place? I draw near to the brokenhearted, so I am close to you, and I am not a lowly God. I am high and lifted up. Any place where I am is a position of power and I am here with you.”

And for the first time in a long time, I exhaled.

I hope you did too.

Here is the truth. Grief was good for me. Sadness touches my heart, frustration touches my mind, shame touches my identity, and they all turn me to God for today. But grief touched my belief. Consequently, it disrupted all the pain across a lifetime that had attached itself there. Somehow this level of sorrow divinely positioned me to grow curious about the validity of my faith and then release the lies that life had planted there right between me and my God.

Imagine for a moment, that the place that you thought was rock bottom was actually more purpose aligned than you had ever been. It’s hard to comprehend. That maybe moments lying on your face in the living room floor soaked by your own tears held heaven’s power more than the stages or the lights or the platforms or the likes. That maybe the disruption of your life is so unfamiliar not because you are worse than ever, or more broken than before, or more guilty than you had ever been, but because your proximity to Gods promises is closer than you’ve ever seen, and you don’t have a reference point for this level of closeness with your King.

Grief, in my life, was a promise kept – to heal, deliver, restore, and strip my life of all the things not like Him. Mourning opened the flood gates to years of traumas past that somehow let the light shine in on the lies that trauma taught me about me in an attempt to invalidate His goodness. This pattern of grieving and healing or grieving and becoming has been so evident for me that I’ve finally began to adjust my perception on whether grieving actually comes first. Walk with me.

Psalm 77: 16-20 reads:

16When the Red Sea saw you, O God,

its waters looked and trembled!

The sea quaked to its very depths.

17The clouds poured down rain;

the thunder rumbled in the sky.

Your arrows of lightning flashed.

18Your thunder roared from the whirlwind;

the lightning lit up the world!

The earth trembled and shook.

19Your road led through the sea,

your pathway through the mighty waters—

a pathway no one knew was there!

20You led your people along that road like a flock of sheep,

with Moses and Aaron as their shepherds.

The psalmists reflects a similar revelation, after describing their grief, that the environment around them, and all creation for that matter, was simply responding to its creator. Looking back now it feels a bit oblivious of me to run to God when my life was turning upside down, asking for his assistance, without considering that the disruption of my life or plans or relationships was actually due to His presence. It feels natural to want to blame someone, including ourselves, for the heartache we’re enduring and in moments of extreme disappointment we often include God in that lineup. And maybe that’s the right answer, but the wrong reasoning.

The lie I told myself many times over in life was that I was facing despair because God did not love me, or maybe he loved me but did not care about this particular concern of my heart. Or maybe I deserved the destruction in my life because I had not been faithful enough, devoted enough, eloquent enough, or focused enough on Him.

I also considered that maybe some of his promises just weren’t for me. Marriage, motherhood, financial stability, friendship, family, or even a future felt like promises for someone else that I just wouldn’t see. None of that was ever true.

Habakkuk 3:10 is relevant here and reads:The mountains saw You and quaked; torrents of water swept by. The deep roared with its voice and lifted its hands on high.

There is an ideal here of all creation, including our lives bowing to God. That the conflict and victory and even the suffering we experience are our lives’ response to a Holy God. What might it look like if not you, but your life, lifted its hands on high?

Maybe it would like my body, ready or not, strong or not, carrying two children that were never meant to be and recovering, no matter how long it took. But maybe it also might look like the absence of people I have desperately held dear that simply do not want to encounter God’s heart in the way that I do.  Maybe it looks like being excluded from rooms I just knew I deserved to be in but where the Holy Spirit was never welcome or the Lord removing, even by force, my devotion to ideals and desires that distract me from Him.

Now, I consider that what I perceived to be the destruction of my life was likely just its response to the nearness of an almighty God. Relationships I held dear weren’t overlooked by a God who didn’t care but crumbled under the weight of his promises of protection. Life plans that felt like they were snatched from right beneath my feet weren’t signs of heaven punishing me, but their makeshift foundations of self-reliance and hard work could not stand in the presence of a God that is truth. Even the sting of rejection—so deeply personal and painful—was not a denial of my worth but a redirection away from places looking to pull my eyes from his throne.

I’ve built so many areas of my life around “doing” and my ability to work myself into the future I want to see. I believed I could work myself into a place of financial security so that I wouldn’t have to trust people (or God honestly) to show up for me here. I thought I could work myself into a place of peace. Even entering therapy, I was confident that for every problem, a professional could simply tell me what to do and I could fix it. I was certain that giving all of my time, and attention, and affection, and capacity to a marriage could hold it together. I believed that because I was physically capable of doing whatever it took to raise my children that I was adequately prepared for motherhood. Then my life, the waters, saw God…and trembled. Which is much different than my assumptions that life fell apart THEN God showed up. Rather, God showed up, just like I asked him to, exactly how he promised me and my life responded, most apparently, at the points of weakness.  

The relief here is that, as verse 19 assures, there is a pathway through but that the Lord’s footprints were not traceable. (An extreme understatement.)  Hidden and unknown to me, but abundantly clear to God, there was a route to wholeness that I’m still traveling, many days reluctantly, that I just can’t see because it lies within the same disrupted waters that are quaking in the presence of a very present savior.

I don’t want to miss here that perception is particularly hard to change in the midst of so much pain. The psalmist references longing for peace, reminiscing on joy that is long gone, feelings of being rejected by God and openly questioning if his promises have in fact failed. He does so before moving on to remembering God’s goodness and holiness and balancing his sorrow with praise. Another admission, that shift did not come as easily for me.

When you are someone living under the belief that you can plan your way though life’s trials, the frustration of those plans falling through can be blinding. (I’m talking about me.) I was blinded by my rage for a moment. Angry with my spouse, myself, some family, some friends, my job, my life, and certainly with God. I spent far too many nights replaying moments that made me feel foolish, wondering how I had ended up where I was and noting how little I would give in the future to avoid being here again. There was an emptiness that came with feeling like I had spent all the faith I had on the family I was building only for it to fail. (A note here: Faith is not spent, it is exercised.) The anger was stifling. And the Lord, faithful and gentle and kind, sat with me in that place and asked:

You asked for healing. I troubled the waters, and you cursed me for it. Will you be healed?

Big sigh

All true. I had asked for healing a million times in a million ways, even more so in the past years when my body was failing, and my heart didn’t have the strength to hold the babies I had created. He had shown up, in the form of truth pouring out in my life forcing me into freedom whether I wanted it or not. I had cursed him. Even more, I had cursed the moments I had devoted to him and the measure of faith he had given me that had already carried me from promise to promise. I cursed my own love for a God that I felt had abandoned me. All true.

Theres this recurring concept of troubled waters here.

Psalm 77:16 – "The waters saw You, O God; the waters saw You and were afraid; the depths also trembled."

This is a poetic image of God’s overwhelming presence. Nature itself recognizes God's power and responds with trembling and awe.

John 5:4 (KJV) – "For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.”

At the Pool of Bethesda, the stirring—or troubling—of the water was seen as a sign of divine intervention. When the water moved, it meant the time had come for healing. The idea is that something beyond human control was breaking into the natural order to bring restoration.

The Parallel:

Both scenes show water responding to the divine—but in different moods and meanings:

• In Psalm 77, the water trembles in fear and awe before God's power.

• In John 5, the water is troubled to bring healing by God’s grace.

In both, God’s presence disrupts the natural state—one to demonstrate His sovereignty, the other to display His mercy. The trembling of the waters in Psalm 77 foreshadows the kind of trembling that brings transformation at Bethesda: the chaos of illness or pain of brokenness being reordered by a divine touch.

So…

If in fact my life, flooded with devastation wasn’t just crumbling because I was so undeserving but was simply, deeply troubled by a mighty God drawing near to me, I had NOT taken the opportunity to step into this stirring knowing that healing was awaiting me. I was sitting beside the pool, tears in hand, angry that this wasn’t the peaceful season I had planned. The emotion of the moment made me painfully unaware that this was precisely what I had prayed for. Healing.

I had prayed for healing, but I failed to recognize that it wouldn’t arrive wrapped in comfort—it would come disguised as disruption, as loss, as the stirring that felt like devastation but was, in fact, God’s nearness shaping me.

But the path is in the waters, in the troubled waters, in the distractions and despair. In the grief and sorrow and disappointment. Amid the frustration, shame, and struggle with self-worth, there was an opportunity for new life—though I couldn’t see it beyond the loss in my hands.

What if heartbreak itself is the opportunity? The moment you’ve been waiting on and praying for and searching for. The spiritual promotion you feel must be long overdue to take you deeper and further and closer to His heart. A powerful posture that reveals God’s nearness and activates a path forward (seen or not) for what you’re experiencing today AND what comes next.

Grieving intentionally is important because some moments aren’t about overcoming, some moments are FOR SURE about hurting. About tears and pain and heartache. Some seasons are about not seeing more than 5 feet in front of your feet and trusting God anyways.

Some are about anger. Righteous rage and what God can do with a battery in your back giving you passion and momentum that you can’t usually tap, even if it comes in the form of an emotion you can’t tame well.

And some moments aren’t about movement at all. Some are about sitting—broken, waiting for a savior to approach and prompt your faith, confirming that He indeed keeps every promise even after you moved on from the moment of request.

In all of these moments it helps me most to remember one thing. God knows.

He knew you would be here in this moment carrying this weight in your chest and these questions in your heart and this tension in your shoulders. He knows every weak point of your life and every lie you hold dear whether you recognize them or not. He knows how the waters react to his presence and that waves terrify you so, and he still draws near. He knew it would hurt. He knew you would fold. He knows, though disheveled and disappointed, you remain in the palm of his hand. He knew what you would need, how low you would feel and that you would question his love in the midst of it all. He knows.

And knowing isn’t just observation. It’s care. It’s presence. It’s the assurance that no broken piece of you has slipped from His sight or His hands. He knows, and He stays. And wherever he is there is freedom.

I pray that this time, you are truly free.

I pray that this grief would be good to you.

-Danielle

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 Father,

Just as you see me you see her too, the weight in her chest, the questions in her soul, and the tears she hasn’t dared to cry. Draw her close in this storm. Let her feel Your nearness, the comfort of Your presence, and the strength of Your hands holding her broken pieces.

Grant her power in her pain, power to press forward even when it hurts, to grow through the sorrow, and to discover Your purpose in the breaking. Teach her patience in the process, trusting that healing doesn’t come all at once, but unfolds beautifully in Your time.

When her path feels lost in chaos, remind her that You are the God who creates a way through troubled waters. Turn her grief into healing and her sorrow into a deeper closeness with You. Show her that even in this pain, she is loved, seen, and never forsaken.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

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Promises to remember:

• "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go." – Joshua 1:9 (ESV)

• "The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit." – Psalm 34:18 (ESV)

• "For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: 'I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.” – Isaiah 57:15

• "The LORD is exalted, for he dwells on high; he will fill Zion with justice and righteousness." - Isaiah 33:5 (ESV).

•   "Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy!" - Psalm 126:5 (ESV).

•   "Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the LORD your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you." - Deuteronomy 31:6 (ESV).

•   "Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap." - Galatians 6:7 (ESV).

• "If we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself." - 2 Timothy 2:13 (ESV).

• "Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand." – Isaiah 41:10 (ESV)