A reader asked if I would write more about grief. What unfolded over the course of our private exchanges was one of the most layered grief stories I have encountered – not because her experience is unusual, but because it is far more common than anyone talks about. This post is for her. And I suspect it is for more of you than any one of us might realize.
Tag Archives: grief
Verse & Vision | May 25, 2026
The soul is not always lost dramatically. Sometimes it just drifts. A long season of difficulty, of pouring out more than is coming in, of caregiving, of grief, of waiting for answers that are slow in coming – and somewhere in the middle of all of it you look up and realize you are far from yourself. Not in crisis exactly. Just depleted. Thin. *Yeshobev nafshi.* He returns the soul. Not fixes it, not replaces it, not upgrades it. Returns it to where it belongs, to who you actually are underneath all of it. You are not taken to the quiet water because you are doing fine. You are taken there because you are a sheep, and sheep do not know how to find it alone, and the shepherd does. He does not restore a better version of you. He restores you.
Science and Spirituality | Body and Mind: Let the Tide Come In
Most of us were only ever taught to manage things. To perform okay. To say “I’m fine” on autopilot until we actually believed it, or at least stopped questioning it. But the body keeps an honest record of everything our mouths agreed to leave behind…
The psychological and the spiritual aren’t competing systems. Together they create a full circuit, either feeding or starving us. The longest-process things on the list of human emotions aren’t longer because they’re more powerful. They’re longer because someone kept interrupting the process.
Eventually, we have to allow the tide to come in.
Verse & Vision | May 22, 2026
The last fifteen years have been a lot. Cancer. Alzheimer’s. Caregiving. Loss after loss – the kind that moves in and stacks up until it pulls you under with it. And layered underneath all of that, my own mess. But He was before all of it. And in Him, somehow, all of it is holding together. Not in spite of the wreckage. Through it. Anything good you see in me is just God. It comes from being dragged by Him through the refiner’s fire, and Him giving my heart the strength to beat at all.
Presence, Not Passage: The Hours We Don’t See | Daily Bread
Everyone I know has said it at least once this year: “Where is the time going?” But I’ve been sitting with a different question lately. Not “where is the time going,” but “when did we stop paying attention to it?” Because I don’t think time is actually disappearing. I think we are.
Sunday Sessions | Mothers
God reaches for motherhood to describe the most tender dimension of His own love toward us. That is not accidental. And yet we live in a time when the nurturing instinct has been systematically taught out of women, traded for hardness and called liberation. What was lost in that exchange is something the world cannot name but feels the absence of everywhere it looks.
The Survival Manual I Almost Overlooked | The Author’s Perspective
I’ve been failing the test lately, with the weight of the world pressing down until it felt like water closing over my head. But God was determined to remind me of the survival manual He left us for times exactly like these. Through a stranger’s words on X, my mother’s “ghost,” and a chain of events that only make sense if He lined every single one up, God showed me how to stop carrying the wrong weight… and how to shift into the one posture that actually changes everything: counting it all joy.
Sunday Sessions | The Book, the Cocoon, and Learning to Hold Intensity Without the Edge (A Personal Sunday Reckoning)
Yesterday morning – again – I read an argument on X before coffee. We know better, but we don’t always do better. In it, two people certain they were the villain-identifiers of history. Both missed the point entirely. I thought about how Scripture named what I was looking at a long time ago, and, inspired, I closed the app, chuckled, and proceeded to gut and rearrange my entire bedroom. What I built instead reminded of something, and changed something. This is that story.
What the Desert Kept: The Unbound Word | My Father’s Questions
Part 2 of What the Desert Kept: The Unbound Word traces the questions my father couldn’t put down — about canon, suppression, and the distance between institutional Christianity and the faith Scripture actually describes. It also traces what those questions cost him, what they planted in me without my knowing, and what it took for me to finally understand the inheritance he left behind. This one got personal. I think it needed to.
Science & Spirituality | The Song Glass Will Never Know: Why Crystal Costs More
Most people don’t know the difference between glass and crystal. They look similar, come from the same basic materials, and you could set them side by side and not immediately know which is which. But the difference in price? Significant. And the reason is not what most people would guess.
The same is true about people. I have been called too sensitive my whole life. Too deep. Too much. People were never wrong that I am sensitive. They were just wrong about what that means.
The Two Graves: When Grace Is Misjudged as Weakness
“Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” I came across this quote recently in response to the tragic death of Austin Metcalf—and the quiet, grace-filled response of his father, Justin Metcalf. In the face of unimaginable loss, this man has become the target of criticism—not for what he’s done, but forContinueContinue reading “The Two Graves: When Grace Is Misjudged as Weakness”
Sunday Sessions | The Ache That Was Never Depression
I actually wrote this last week—but didn’t post it. I am posting it now, late, because God wouldn’t let me keep it buried. I didn’t post it because I was afraid. Genuinely afraid. Not because I didn’t believe it was true, but because I’ve been conditioned to be afraid of my own truth. Conditioned toContinueContinue reading “Sunday Sessions | The Ache That Was Never Depression”
What Caregiving Is Really Like (Series): The Many Layers of Grief in Caregiving
Caregiving is a profound, sacred journey that takes us through various emotional, physical, and spiritual landscapes. Yet, one of the most complex and often misunderstood aspects of caregiving is the grief that caregivers experience. This grief is not just tied to the death of a loved one but begins long before that final loss. AndContinueContinue reading “What Caregiving Is Really Like (Series): The Many Layers of Grief in Caregiving”
What Caregiving Is Really Like (Series): Short-Term vs. Long-Term Caregiving — Two Different Worlds
Caregiving is not a one-size-fits-all experience. It takes many forms, shifts with time, and impacts people in wildly different ways depending on the duration, intensity, and emotional undercurrents involved. While most people have a general understanding of what it means to “be a caregiver,” very few grasp the depth of difference between short-term caregiving andContinueContinue reading “What Caregiving Is Really Like (Series): Short-Term vs. Long-Term Caregiving — Two Different Worlds”
The Purpose of Pain: Where God Meets Us
We come into this world fragile, unknowing, and dependent—and we leave it in much the same way. Along the way, life leaves its marks on us, not in spite of its challenges but because of them. We are shaped, scarred, and softened by the trials we face. Yet so many of us chase an illusion—aContinueContinue reading “The Purpose of Pain: Where God Meets Us”
Grief in the Glitter: Embracing Loss, Honoring Love, and Finding Hope in the Holidays
The holidays can be complicated, especially when grief is part of the equation. As I step into this Christmas season, I’ve been reflecting on how far I’ve come in my own journey with loss and how that journey has shaped my relationship with this time of year. I know I’m not alone in this—so manyContinueContinue reading “Grief in the Glitter: Embracing Loss, Honoring Love, and Finding Hope in the Holidays”
Twin Tree Project 