What might the Babylonian exile of the ancient Jewish people around 2600 years ago have to do with carrying the pain of grief during the holidays?

Christmas is a holiday rooted in the Christian faith. How might the spiritual Christmas message and our relationship with God through Jesus connect with our holiday time grief?

Brian sees a connection with both the Hebrew experience and the Christian faith as we enter a holiday season that includes the pain of loss.

This connection does not mean dismissing or minimizing the sorrows of grief with simplistic religious platitudes. Faith is not intended to provide a quick fix for the deep human pain of loss. Rather, God joins us in the midst of our pain. Jesus comes along side in our loss; walking with us in shared grief.

Psalm 137

1 Beside the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept 

as we remembered Zion 

2 We put away our harps, 

hanging them on the branches of poplar trees. 

3 For our captors demanded a song from us. 

Our tormentors insisted on a joyful hymn: 

“Sing us one of those songs of Jerusalem!” 

4 But how can we sing the songs of the Lord

while in a foreign land?

It can be hard to know how to do things at the holidays when walking through difficult loss. Do you keep it as much the same as possible or do you decide to do things very differently? What will you personally take part in? What will you bow out of? How will you explain your feelings? Will you act strong and joyful in an effort not to dampen the happiness of others? Is it better that you’re there or that you stay away? Will there be anyone who will understand, that you’ll be free to share your sadness with?

Is there a way to keep it special even as we grieve?

Brian offers some ideas, drawn primarily from the work of The Grief Recover Institute and their forty plus years of experience working with thousands of grieving people throughout N.A. and internationally. 

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The Heart of Grief.com

This is part 2 of my conversation with Clarissa Moll. Clarissa is an award-winning writer and podcaster who helps bereaved people find flourishing after loss. Clarissa’s writing appears in Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition, RELEVANT, Modern Loss, Grief Digest and more. She co hosted Christianity Today’s “Surprised by Grief” podcast and is a frequent guest on podcasts and radio shows. 

Clarissa’s debut book, Beyond the Darkness: A Gentle Guide for Living with Grief and Thriving After Loss, was a best-selling release in 2022.

Clarissa's new release, Hurt Help Hope: A Real Conversation about Teen Grief  provides the focus for a conversation Brian had with Clarissa in September 2024. This is part two of our conversation. A significant focus is on the importance of establishing an ongoing, supportive relationship with our grieving teens. Clarissa also shares about how difficult faith questions can be embraced and relationship with God can be nurtured.

https://www.clarissamoll.com/ 

Grief is about emotions, a very difficult and complex combination of feelings. In order to work through our losses well, we need to be able to acknowledge and address those feelings. But most of us have trouble dealing with even the more regular emotions of life. Grief can present what seems an almost insurmountable challenge to our hurting hearts. We need to talk about feelings, what they are, what they are for and what we are to do with them. This episode draws on the writings of the Grief Recovery Institute and other authors to break it all down into understandable ideas and doable actions for tackling the emotions of loss head on.

Feeling Wheel
Debra Fileta: Reset
Cole James: Men Have Feelings Too

Clarissa Moll (MA, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is an award-winning writer and podcaster who helps bereaved people find flourishing after loss. Clarissa’s writing appears in Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition, RELEVANT, Modern Loss, Grief Digest and more. She co hosted Christianity Today’s “Surprised by Grief” podcast and is a frequent guest on podcasts and radio shows. 

Clarissa’s debut book, Beyond the Darkness: A Gentle Guide for Living with Grief and Thriving After Loss, was a best-selling release in 2022.

Clarissa's new release, Hurt Help Hope: A Real Conversation about Teen Grief  provides the focus for a conversation Brian had with Clarissa last month. This is part one of our conversation. We'll finish up this informative look at what makes teenage grief worthy of some unique attention in our November 15/24 session.

https://www.clarissamoll.com/ 

The goal of the Grief Recovery Institute is to reach as many people as possible with life changing help for the struggles of loss.  This is about help that makes a difference not just in a current loss but provides tools that equip people well for facing future losses. One key to accomplishing this is to provide correct guidance for children that will prevent them falling into the same unhelpful ideas that so many of us adults grew up with and now need to unlearn. The institute believes the best way to do this is to help parents and other adult care givers teach the children in their circle. The Helping Children With Loss Program has addressed that. Now we can learn tools that will not only help kids today, but for the rest of their lives. 

Today’s program is a re-broadcasting of our Mar 31, 2024 episode, titled Monkey See, Monkey Do. Modeling Grief for Children.

Helping Children with Loss Program
Related Articles:
1. Children and grief: Hope and Healing after Suicide
2. Children and Grief: A Substance Related Death
3. Children and Grief: After Someone Had Died by Suicide
4. Helping Children Cope with Death - Various topics

Is it OK to tell God how we really feel about a loss or other tragedy that rocks our lives? Many Christians feel they need to focus on thoughts of future comfort and messages of God's good promises. Genuine feelings of sorrow and anger can be overlooked or held in painful silence. In this Questions of Faith episode, Brian argues that God invites us to emotional honesty. Lament is a biblical model for honest, healthy expression of pain and complaint to God. Brian draws from the book Just Be Honest by Clint Watkins, who maintains that "We don't need to pretend or be polite with God." Clint describes a way to relate candidly to God in life's hardest moments.
Just Be Honest, by Clint Watkins
Psalms 42 & 43
RESET, by Debra Fileta
The Grief Recovery Institute
The Heart of Grief.com

Familiarity can be beneficial, providing safety, comfort and enjoyment. It can also become detrimental. In this episode Brian explains how a familiarity bias regarding response to loss can lead to narrow thinking that keeps us stuck in our grief and hinders us from considering better ways.  Healthy grieving can involve taking courageous steps into new ideas that while initially uncomfortable, hold promise for genuine heart-healing. Understanding and breaking away from our familiarity biases is vital for long term recovery following loss.

The Decision Lab: The Mere Exposure Effect Explained
The Grief Recovery Institute: Exploring the F Words -3, Familiarity
The Heart of Grief.com

What do apologies have to do with healthy grieving? In our Grief Recovery Method® programs we recognize that recovery from loss involves identifying and bringing completion to unfinished pieces of emotional business in a relationship that has ended. This includes making apologies for things said or done by us, the grieving person, that have resulted in some hurt or disappointment being felt by the person who has died or the other person in an ended relationship. Failing to offer apologies leaves us burdened with negative emotional energy - disappointment, regret, perhaps guilt. It weights us down emotionally and keeps us from finding the peace we desire. In this Questions of Faith episode, Brian explains the power of apology and how God provides a compelling model for us to follow.
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The Heart of Grief
The Grief Recovery Institute

Dr. Alan Wolfelt: You Are not Crazy, You are Grieving
The Grief Recovery Institute
The Heart of Grief