By Alyson Punzi
How can I help my child process grief? It’s a question I asked as I walked my children through the loss of their dad. After experiencing deep grief and shepherding her preschool daughter through grief, Alyson Punzi discovered the Biblical model of lament and shares today about helping our children grieve through lament.
If you’re reading this, you are probably wondering how you can best love a grieving child in your life. Maybe this is a child in your church or your community. Maybe this child is your own, and your family is grieving a deep loss. Thank you for walking alongside these hurting children, even while your heart aches too.
With these few words, I hope to show you the grace of lament we can give our children and the comfort we can find in crying out to our God who is with us and always hears us.
When my daughter was only a toddler, my husband died of cancer. I remember holding her tiny, squirmy body thinking, I don’t want her to have to outgrow what I say here. I knew that as she grew, this loss was not going to go away. I wanted her to have a hope that would continue to sustain her no matter what other hurts life would hold. I wanted her to grow up knowing how to lament, how to cry out to God about what it feels like to live in a broken world.
Why do our children need lament?
Our children need lament because lament is different than simply giving them language to understand the horrible thing that happened. Lament is even different from teaching them coping skills for their grief. Biblical lament helps us trust in God’s character and promises when life is falling apart. It’s a worshipful response to the pain of this world when we go to God himself with our honest expression of hurt.
Our children need lament because part of our job as parents is to help them know and love God. When life really hurts, we use the language Scripture gives us and show them how to cry out to God, running to their Creator and Savior.
Our children need lament because they will continue to experience brokenness. Until Christ returns and makes all things new, they will face loss and disappointment. Lament is not too big a concept for our children to grasp, and it’s not too small that they’d outgrow it when they become adults.
How can we help our children lament?
Lament is crying out to God about what it feels like to live in a broken world.
We help our children lament by being honest. In most situations where we are trying to explain complex ideas to children, we use clear, honest explanations. In order to lament to God, we have to use honest words to describe how much our hearts deeply ache. When our children express their deep pain, we show them how to cry out to the Lord with that honesty.
We help our children lament by not rushing to answer their questions—especially when there are no answers. Kids ask so many questions. We answer the best we can, but then they ask them over and over again. It makes us feel like we are getting nowhere, so we try answering in better ways. Sometimes we can answer questions in honest, age-appropriate ways. Other times, we need to be mindful not to presume too much about our understanding of how God is working in the world.
As parents, we can be tempted to be like Job’s friends and speak too much of what we don’t really know. It’s okay to say, “I don’t know. Let’s ask God our questions. He always hears us.” We can trust in God’s sovereign providence without trying to answer for the whys behind all the details.
We help our children lament by keeping the big picture in mind. We are raising our kids to know, love, and trust God. How we help them through their hurt is a big part of their discipleship. Walking with them through grief is not separate from everything else we are doing as parents to raise them to love the Lord. If your family is grieving, then lamenting with your children is what faithful parenting looks like right now. We can’t disconnect helping our kids with their grief from discipleship because lament is rooted in gospel hope. It is shaping their hearts to cling to God for comfort.
We help our children lament by weeping with them. When the hurt is really big and the pain is really deep, we hold our little ones close and cry with them. We ask God the same questions they are asking us, and we let the tears flow down our own faces. We model what it looks like to honestly cry out to God about this pain we are feeling.
When our children are hurting, we want them to have a healthy understanding of the situation. We want them to have language to comprehend and articulate the loss they have experienced. We want them to have coping skills to navigate the physical and emotional chaos of grief.
But we also want them to have hope—and lament helps our children to hope in God as they cry out to him in their sorrow because he is with them and he hears their cries.
These psalms of lament will get you started in the Biblical language of lament together. Psalm 13, 22, & 42
Alyson Punzi is an author passionate about discipleship and theology. She became a pastor’s widow when her husband, Frank, died suddenly of leukemia, and she now writes on lament, grief, and single motherhood. She is the author of He Always Hears, a picture book designed to teach children how to lament and rely on God’s promises. Alyson and her daughter, Lois, live in small-town Ohio. Connect with her on Instagram and her newsletter.
