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Do you ever wish you had a guidebook for navigating the pathway of grief for yourself or for someone you love? Here are 4 paths I’ve followed in my own grief journey:

1. Be Gentle with Yourself

The emotion of grief can show up unexpectedly and can take you by surprise. Whenever you feel out of control of your emotions, you can tend to be hard on yourself, asking things like, “What’s wrong with me?” or “Why am I like this?” or saying, “I should be over this by now!”

When these emotions flare up, it can be a good time to check in with yourself with gentleness. May I invite you to dial back the harshness and ask yourself, “What’s the matter?” or “What do I need right now?”

If you’re a parent, learning to recognize and name your own emotions will help your kids learn to recognize and name their own feelings. For example, you may want to name it when you are feeling happy: “I’m feeling so happy right now! I love being out in the sunshine! What makes you feel happy?” And you may want to name it when you are feeling sad: “I am feeling sad about something, and I could really use a hug.” Even when you are feeling angry, you can name it: “Mommy is feeling angry right now, and I don’t want to say something mean, so I am going to take a deep breath and try to calm down. It’s okay to be angry, but I don’t want my feelings to boss me around!“

Once you name your feelings, you are better equipped to tame your feelings. Lysa Terkeurst writes in her book, Unglued, that feelings are terrible leaders, but they are great indicators. So it’s wise to notice what your feelings are indicating and to identify what you need in the moment.

“Do you need to be Heard, Helped or Hugged?”

Your answer to this simplified question can help you to take the next step to ask for what you need. Sometimes all we need in the moment is space to figure it out, to breathe, to get a new perspective and come back to it. Sometimes even Mommies need a timeout.

The anniversary of my mom’s passing is January 3rd, so a lot of my grief is tied up with Christmas. So after years of being hijacked by depression and deep sadness around Christmas, I have learned to put a reminder on my calendar to “Be tender in December.” I need that reminder to be gentle with myself.

How can you choose to be Gentle with yourself as you navigate grief?

2. Be Full of Grace

As you navigate your own grief or try to support someone in their grief, may I invite you to have grace for yourself and others? Sometimes grief shows up as anger. If you are feeling buried under the weight of not being able to forgive yourself, then it may leak out through uncharacteristic outbursts of anger. If you are feeling disappointment because your people don’t know how to care for you when you are sad or depressed or having a hard time making decisions, it can leak out through resentment or bitterness.

I am guilty of being the person who longs for my people to be able to read my mind. When I was about to turn 44 (the age my mother was when she passed), I had a real crisis of emotions. I was feeling fearful about death, about how to be a mom, about how to be a woman beyond the years that I had seen my mom live. A dark cloud of depression settled in, and I wasn’t sure how to handle it.

My kids were teenagers at the time, so I made sure to talk to them about it the best that I knew how. It was a place to start, even though my emotions felt like a tangled mess. I assured my kids that my sadness had nothing to do with them. I explained what I knew to be true: I was about to turn 44, and my mom had died at 44, and I was just feeling a little lost and sad. I was also realizing how young my mom really was at 44, and I was realizing how much I missed out on by not having my mom around for my young adult years.

And you know how they responded? They met me in my sadness. They snuggled up next to me and asked me what my mom was like. They showed me funny memes on their phones. It didn’t fix my sadness, but it helped me not feel alone in it. And it started with my willingness to try to communicate how I was feeling.

Rather than stuffing it down and trying to protect my people by acting like everything was fine, hoping they would read my mind, I was vulnerable enough to start somewhere by expressing my feelings. It helped me to find grace for myself and grace for others.

I wonder where you can find Grace for yourself and others in this season.

3. Be with God

We connect with God through our emotions.

If your heart is broken, you’ll find God right there; if you’re kicked in the gut, He’ll help you catch your breath. – Psalm 34:18 (MSG)

As a mom, I often had trouble getting my independent children to hold my hand. When we needed to cross a busy parking lot, I would reach out to hold their hand, and they would pull away, self-assured that they could handle it on their own. But they couldn’t see what I could see. And the drivers in the cars couldn’t see my small children. In order to keep them safe, I would say to my kiddos, “Do you want to hold my hand, or do you want me to hold the back of your shirt?” I was communicating that either way, I’m not letting you go; I’m holding on to you.

And I think we can be this way with God sometimes. We think we don’t need His help. We want to be independent and self-assured. We don’t want to be the person who needs to ask for help. Like our small children, we essentially say to God, “I do it myself!” But our gentle, gracious God will never let go of us. He will never stop inviting us to hold His hand.

For I am the Lord your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you. – Isaiah 41:13 (NIV)

4. Be Grateful

Gratitude is not the antidote for Grief, but it can be a helpful Companion.

Gratitude can help us embrace the tension that comes with Grief.

I’m not talking about replacing Grief with Gratitude… “Just be thankful that she’s in Heaven now!” NO – I’m talking about Gratitude as a Companion to Grief.

Just as it is helpful to Notice the emotions of Grief and to Name those emotions, it is also helpful to Notice and Name our Gratitude.

• Look for Signs of Life! Look for Glimmers of Gratitude!
• My mom’s name is Julie, and God keeps giving me friends named Julie.
• One of my closest friends is Julie, and she is so nurturing; she cheers me on; she believes in me; she loves my kids – she just gives off really good mom-energy!
• Another Julie is much younger than me, and she is one of the most encouraging people in my life!
• I have two friends named Julia – one of them inspires a love for creativity, and the other is a safe landing spot for deep spiritual conversations.
• Another sign of life I look for is geraniums. My mom always had geraniums planted in pots on our front porch, so they always remind me of her.
• Shopping was a fun way that I connected with my mom, so that’s one way I honor the anniversary of her passing, and I am so grateful to be able to revisit that memory.

We don’t move on from Grief. We move forward with it.

These are some ways I am moving forward with grief, and I’d love to hear some ways that you have found your pathway forward. You can comment here or send me an email at reneclarkca@gmail.com

There isn’t one right way to navigate grief. There isn’t one right way to talk about grief. I think we often avoid it because it can be painful and tender, and it feels heavy. Whether you’ve lost someone you love or not, we’ve all experienced the pain of loss and grief. And the one right thing to do when grief shows up is to grieve.

Losing My Mom

I lost my mom when I was 19 years old. She was just 44. When we found out my mom had stage 4 colon cancer, I didn’t even know what that meant. I was a Senior in High School with my sites set on dating and college and becoming a teacher. I was a good kid, but I was 17, so I was in a season of slamming doors and rolling my eyes at my mom.

It was a real sobering summer after I graduated from High School. Rather than working at a summer camp, I stayed home and took regular walks around the neighborhood with my mom. We got to talk about heaven and healing. We got to navigate the effects of chemo and radiation. We got to talk and pray about the boy I was dating and my dreams of becoming a school teacher.

In the fall my mom encouraged me to go to college, and after two years of driving home twice a month to help care for her, she became very weak, and she took her last breath on January 3rd, 1990.

My boyfriend had just been at my house the day before to talk with my parents about wanting to marry me, and my mom had whispered with labored breath, “NO.” We all just froze. And then a smile broke out on her face.

I went back to college a month later, and Todd officially asked me to marry him; I called my dad to celebrate. My sister, Lori, helped me plan my wedding, pick out the dress, and choose the cake; Todd and I got married 8 months later. My dad is a pastor, and he officiated our wedding; he cried through a lot of the ceremony.

One of the most joyful days of my life was also one of the saddest days of my life.

The tension between grief and gratitude is real.

A Beautifully Sad Story

There’s this beautifully sad story in the Bible about Jesus navigating grief. It’s found in the Gospel of John, Chapter 11. Jesus is out traveling with His disciples, and He gets the news that his dear friend, Lazarus (Mary & Martha’s brother), is dying. And by the time Jesus and His disciples get there, he’s already gone. Buried in a tomb.

Now if you’ve read this story, you already know that Jesus ends up bringing his friend, Lazarus, back to life. Jesus has the crazy power to be able to do that kind of thing! He can actually do something to FIX this situation.

But before Jesus does anything to FIX IT, He FEELS IT.

In John 11:35, the shortest verse in the Bible, we read, “Jesus wept.” He felt the pain and the loss that Mary and Martha were experiencing. He felt the suffering that his friend had endured leading up to his death. He faced His own pain and sadness at the gravesite of his dear friend, and He wept.

Feeling all the Feelings

Have you ever stopped to consider that Jesus has emotions? He was sad. He was grieved to the point of tears.

Jesus was angry when the temple was overtaken by scammers trying to overcharge people for the temple sacrifice. He was angry enough to flip some tables!

Jesus was deeply distressed and troubled, overwhelmed with sorrow as He was facing His own death on the cross.

Jesus got frustrated with the Pharisees and with His own disciples.

Jesus felt empathy for the sick and joy for the healed!

Jesus felt the feelings of friendship, the emotions of being a son and a brother, and the weariness of being a human.

In her new book, Untangle Your Emotions, Jennie Allen writes about how we tend to measure our emotions as good or bad. But she argues that all emotions are good because our emotions are how we connect with God and with other people.

We connect with God through love and and joy and peace! There is no one who better understands love than Jesus. He is the very best listener; His eyes never glaze over when we repeat a story. He is nurturing and caring and attentive. He gets it. He gets you.

You are never too much for Him!

Becoming a Mom

I became a mom when I was 28 years old. Ruby was our first child, named after my mom, in a way. My mom’s name is Julie, but in the tangle of my grieving emotions I wasn’t sure about naming our little baby girl “Julie.” So we decided on Ruby because on my mom’s headstone is this quote from the book of Proverbs: “She is more valuable than rubies.”

Having a child of my own was healing in some ways and hard in other ways. I’ve never longed to have my mom there more than when I had Ruby. Becoming a mom without my mom was painful.

Ruby was a joy and a handful as a little girl. She was so much fun! She was verbal and on the move, and she always wanted to be in charge – a natural born leader! When we had Cole a few years later, Ruby was delighted to have someone she could boss around!

If you’re a parent, you have probably realized that no one can push your buttons like a toddler can! And when my toddlers pushed my buttons, it pushed out all the grief that I had stuffed down deep inside. But my grief didn’t leak out in the form of tears; it came out in the form of intense anger!

As a young mom I had anger issues. I found myself screaming at my kids over the smallest things. I could see Ruby’s face go numb as I was loudly lecturing her about cleaning up her toys or as I tried to calmly ask Cole not to whine but to USE…HIS…WORDS!!!

I read a great book at the time written just for moms with anger issues called, She’s Gonna Blow by Julie Ann Barnhill. What I learned is that the issue buried under all of my anger was unprocessed grief. I didn’t know what to do with my grief.

• How do I show everyone that I am trusting God and moving on with my life?
• How do I process my grief without getting stuck in the pit of sadness?

There are no easy answers to these questions, and there’s not one right way to process grief. But they say that if you don’t deal with your grief, it will deal with you.

Navigating Mother’s Day & Grief

My grief tends to show up around Mother’s Day. Sometimes it feels like a stomach ache or lower back pain or like a dark, heavy cloud. It can feel like dread – dreading what I may feel like on Mother’s Day or dreading the tension of trying to meet the expectations of others.

I don’t always get this right, but one thing I’ve learned is to communicate with my family:

• Communicate about how you are feeling
• Communicate about what you think you might need as Mother’s Day approaches
• Communicate that you’re not sure what you’ll need
• Remember that they can’t read your mind, but they do want to celebrate you and care for you.

We can also remember that Jesus gets it. He understands our mix of emotions around Mother’s Day and grieving. He is there to listen, to offer space to feel safe, and to feel it with you.

Jesus says in Matthew 5:4 in the Message: “You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.”

I’m not a runner, but I have competed in one race in my lifetime. (Not including the 50-yard dashes of childhood, which I don’t remember winning)

I’m not a runner, but 13 years ago I chased down a new challenge and talked my daughter into doing a 5K race with me on the campus of Pepperdine University, located on a picturesque hillside in Malibu. What I expected to enjoy was the breathtaking view of the Pacific Ocean from the race course at Pepperdine, but what I didn’t expect was a sky full of fog and a starting line full of college students. This 5K had been uniquely designed for the fraternity and sorority students of Pepperdine to compete against one another, to meet the challenges of the hillside campus and to earn the bragging rights of coming in first place. 

Our goal was to finish the race and to do it together, so Ruby and I decided to run the flat portions of the race course and to walk up the hillsides. As the university students ran past us up the hills, we laughed at ourselves for signing up for this particular race. But we finished strong and high-fived each other as we crossed the finish line together. Just a few minutes later, we heard our names being announced as the first place winners in our respective age brackets, and that got us laughing all over again!

I’m not a runner, but this Sunday I am chasing down another challenge and competing in my second 5K race, but this time I’ll be running alongside friends and strangers on the very flat surface of the Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach. I have zero aspirations of coming in first place, even for my age bracket, but I do plan to enjoy the challenge and to be open to laughing at the unexpected. 

Waking up with hives on day 3 of a ten day Alaskan cruise wasn’t exactly what I had planned or hoped for. Out of nowhere, they were everywhere! My body was covered with raised, red blobs that screamed to be scratched. I wasn’t sure what triggered the hives, and it became more and more frustrating when I couldn’t identify a cause.

Over the next few weeks, my hives didn’t go away. Every morning I was greeted with hives in new places, and every morning I would research new information about what might bring some calm to my body.

I wasn’t sure how to pray. I mean, obviously I prayed for God to take them away. But I also prayed for strength to endure. I prayed for the hives to not itch, to not appear on my face, to not keep me from sleeping. I prayed for wisdom in discovering the cause and knowing which medications would work. Who better to ask for help with my body than the One who created and designed it?

I’ve actually been talking with God about bringing calm to my body long before these hives showed up. A few years ago I noticed a slight ringing in my ears when I was trying to fall asleep. Stress really turns up the volume, and the high pitched ringing only increases my anxiety level.

It’s a cycle of irritation that can lead me to wonder if I will actually lose my mind.

Unknowns Start the Cycle:

1. Frustration & Fear

Frustration about this annoying ringing in my ears; Fear about what might be causing it

Frustration about the surprise appearance of hives; Fear about an unknown trigger

2. Research & Reaching Out

Research all things tinnitus; Reach out to specialists

Research foods and medications that may cause allergic reactions; Reach out to doctors about next steps

3. Prayer

“God, please quiet the ringing in my ears. Please show the doctors if there’s anything serious causing it.”

“God, please take away these annoying hives. Please help me find the cause so that I can avoid it.”

4. Frustration & Fear

The cycle repeats when the solutions I’m trying aren’t working.

What Breaks the Cycle?

The only way to Break the Cycle of being Consumed by the Unknowns of life is to Trust God with our Frustrations & Fears. Worry and anxiety might be the first place our minds go when faced with an unknown, but we don’t have to get stuck there.

We can be Concerned without becoming Consumed.

If singing “Let it Go” was a viable solution, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. There are people and problems in this life that we care too deeply about to just let it go. The people we love are often on our minds, and when problems present themselves, our thoughts can run wild with worry. But we have another option: We can be concerned without becoming consumed.

Trusting God is a choice we get to make so that we won’t become consumed by the worries and troubles of this life. Who better to reach out to than the God who created and designed us and the people we love?

We can put our trust in action by changing our prayers from a list of requests to a posture of trust:

“God, I trust you to quiet the ringing in my ears so that I can focus and get to sleep. I trust that you will give me what I need when I need it.”

“God, I trust you to remove my hives, to identify the cause, to calm my worries. I trust that you truly care about me, and you will have new compassions for me in the morning to face whatever comes.”

Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.

Lamentations 3:21-23

In one of my attempts to be Super-Mom, I thought that teaching my kids about gardening would be a Super-Mom kind of thing to do. A lot of yards in Southern California are pretty small, and the only spot we had for a garden was a gravel-covered area behind the storage shed where we stored our large trash cans, and the Super-Mom in me thought, “Perfect!”

After lots of shoveling, raking and whining, we ended up planting a few strawberry seeds with popsicle sticks to identify their precise placement. My husband, who likes to dream big, planted a pomegranate tree alongside our little strawberry patch. Then we got to work watering our little garden, released some ladybugs for good luck, said a little prayer and hoped for the best.

In spite of our efforts, our little teaching garden never ended up producing much fruit.

Can you even call these actual strawberries?

But our teaching garden still had a lesson to teach us:

Preparing the soil is more than just clearing away the gravel, but it’s a good place to start – in the garden and in the heart.

We were all disappointed in our garden’s harvest, but it turns out that I had made a crucial mistake in this teaching garden; I had failed to learn about how to cultivate healthy soil where our little strawberries could have had a better chance of surviving and thriving.

And if we want to grow in our relationships…

• with our family
• with our friends
• with our coworkers
• with Jesus

…then we will need to clear out the gravel and prepare the soil of our hearts for growth. The gravel that needs to be cleared out will be different for each of us. Perhaps you have a negative attitude or stored up bitterness that makes your heart feel hardened toward others. Maybe you need to let go of some unrealistic expectations so that your heart will soften. Or maybe the gravel that needs clearing is your own guilty feelings about how you’re not measuring up to your idea of Super-Mom!

Whatever your gravel looks like, it’s worth making the effort to clear it out of your heart. Your relationships are worth it. You are worth it.

Way back in the beginning, God gave the first woman a body to live in, and He breathed His life into her and called her very good. (Genesis 1:31) But even so, as a woman, I can get caught up in all that I’m being sold as “necessary” to stay looking & feeling young or to anti-age, and I stop seeing myself as “very good.”

My thoughts and self talk can be pretty harsh at times. So I am working on LEVELING UP my thought life.

• God calls me Very Good
• This is a Good Body
• This Body is where I Connect with God

If you’re working on leveling up your thoughts about your body, you may want to read Jess Connolly’s book, Breaking Free from Body Shame