Our culture doesn’t know what to do with grief.
We think grief is something to get over. We’re told it comes in five stages, as if we can check each one off and move on to the next.
Grieving well doesn’t mean forgetting so that we can move on.
Grieving well means learning to live with your love and without your loved one.
Rather than forgetting so that I can somehow move on, I’m learning to carry my husband’s love forward after loss. That first means realizing what I cannot do.
The Proverbs 31 woman today looks a little bit different than she did back in Bible times. Today’s modern woman leads a very different life than this pinnacle of Biblical virtue; is she even relevant today?
After all, it’s unlikely that today’s godly woman is waiting on merchant ships to unload the spices she needs for dinner or spinning the cloth for her clothes. Her handmaids are more likely to be kitchen gadgets than people.
But one things remains the same: the principles of the passage. God’s Word is timeless, unchanging and ever-relevant.
That means that the foundational truths in Proverbs 31 are just as important today as they were in the time they were written. When explaining the Proverbs 31 woman, we need to dive below the surface to what God’s timeless message is.
I know only one place to take a broken heart.
I know only One who can really comfort when we’re grieving.
I must have prayed a thousand prayers in the months after Dan died. And thousands more were prayed for us.
And they made all the difference. Through those prayers God lifted my head, gave me hope, took my fear, steered countless decisions and most of all — comforted me. God didn’t take away the pain, but His strong presence sustained me in it.
So many in my world right now are grieving. Maybe yours too?
Maybe you’re grieving a miscarriage or loss of a baby or the hope that you would have a baby by now.
Maybe you’re grieving your son or daughter and the missing is excruciating.
Perhaps you’re grieving the loss of your mother or father as you parent your own children.
Or maybe, like me, you’re a widow grieving the loss of a spouse gone way too soon.
Today, I offer a prayer for the grieving. You can pray it for yourself or pray it for someone you know who’s grieving.
“I’m going to need some books,” I said to a friend hours after Dan died.
I’d gone to bed happily married and woken up a widow and single mom to 7 kids. I had zero idea of what we were facing. What would grief look like — for me and for my kids? What changes would we encounter and the real question — would we be okay?
Friends began to bring books and others I found in the months following. Honestly, no one book was THE thing that helped us but many played a piece of moving us through grief.
I’ve culled through my own shelves and lists to find the best Christian books on grief and loss. I’ve listed books on the grief process, books for the young widow, books for loss of a child, baby loss and miscarriage and other books that helped us heal.
Why does God allow good people to suffer?
My dear friend’s son was an all-star, starting athlete in high school football, basketball and baseball with outstanding academics to match when a car accident on an ordinary Wednesday in October left him clinging to life for months. God miraculously spared him but the trajectory of his life forever changed that day.
Another young mom friend lost her baby at 39 weeks. Her pregnancy had been textbook until that week when she stopped feeling little kicks and wiggles. Days later, dressed in somber shades of gray and black, we stood around the tiniest casket I’d ever seen. When she got pregnant again, we exhaled relief. Until the 39th week, when she stopped feeling little kicks and wiggles. The unthinkable had happened again and we stood around another tiny casket, brought more casseroles, helplessly unable to fix such tragedy.
Businesses collapse, careers are sidelined, spouses walk out, diagnoses are delivered, those we desperately love die too soon.
And reeling with the unexpected ashes of what we thought life would look like we ask, why does God allow good people to suffer?
And more to the point: God, why are you letting me suffer?
