When Grief Changes Everything
By Katie Nelson, Director of Care Ministries
I can easily recall the day my sister called me with the news. It was August 7, 2024, the day after Adelaide died. I heard something different in her voice…heaviness, crisis mode, shock. I walked outside to the back lawn. “Adelaide died,” she said. As the weight of the reality that my 19-year-old niece was no longer alive moved through my brain to process such grave information, my body gave out and I fell to the grass. All I could respond with was, “O God…I’m so, so sorry. It’s not supposed to be this way.”
Indeed, it’s not supposed to be this way. Parents aren’t supposed to lose their children, just as they are ripening into young adulthood or as they battle with cancer in their young bodies. We aren’t supposed to suffer such agonizing loss when we lose our spouses after decades of marriage. Or are we?
Death is such a shock to our systems. It makes us stop, fall to the ground, often cry out “why, God?”, and raises deep questions in our souls, minds and hearts as we grieve our loved ones. Death reminds us that “as for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. “(Psalm 103:15-16). Our lives are brief. Significant and important, but brief. And the grief and pain we feel as the living ones who are still here, ache inside us because we have chosen to love that person beyond ourselves.
C.S. Lewis teaches us about love in his book The Four Loves:
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.
In my experience, the death of Adelaide has reminded me of how loved she was. The grief reminds me that there is a hole in our family that will never be filled this side of heaven.
As a person with deep emotions, I spend a lot of time in the Psalms of Scripture. Psalm 73 is a guide to check that our wounded hearts will not grow bitter and cold…toward God, with ourselves, and with others who have not experienced this story of pain.
The Psalmist lets his emotions be known to God…envy, jealousy, bitterness:
“When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you.” (Psalm 73:21). Sometimes in our pain and grief, when we truly let ourselves be seen by God, we weep, we wail, we curse Him because it hurts so terribly. Let this Psalm invite you into that vulnerability with God. As we express our honest selves to the living God, we, like the psalmist will find comfort and a Presence that will never leave us and who can handle our messy, ugly, brutish feelings.
“Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” (Psalm 73:23-26). My hurting heart can stand on this solid promise.
August 6, 2026, will mark two years since Adelaide died. From my own experience, I want to invite you into a journey of healing if death has come for your family or loved ones this year. Death is the final enemy that our King Jesus will put “under his feet” (1 Cor. 15:26-27) in subjection. Be encouraged by that promise.
And if you are looking for a safe community to process your grief with, Chapel Hill is hosting Grief Share again this fall beginning Sunday, August 30. We have a compassionate team of facilitators who have walked through their own losses and are people who can and do grieve with hope (1 Thess 4.13). Please join us. Register here »
Katie