What to do when you’re overwhelmed by the world’s suffering
By / Aug 22

This past week, I opened my computer and logged in to Facebook. I read an article about a recent shooting, scrolled past a post about a new virus, and read someone’s account of living with long COVID (long-term effects from the infection). Moving on to Twitter, I skimmed through a heated argument about the Dobbs decision, read news about famine and war, and saw several death announcements. I decided not to move on to Instagram. 

I often feel heavy and overwhelmed after spending time online, and I know I’m not alone. Someone recently shared with me how much he had struggled after reading about the Ukraine war. He saw pictures of a family being separated and began to replay these images in his mind. Lying awake at night, he considered what he would do in a similar scenario. 

Another person described her struggle with anxiety and racing thoughts. She had watched a video of a recent school shooting and couldn’t stop thinking about it. She worried about her own children. She grieved the children who were lost. The thoughts would not relent. 

Constant online access has made us daily witnesses to the grief and trauma of millions of people. Each time we open our internet browsers, we encounter news that forces us to consider issues of political conflict, theological disagreement, global suffering, financial stress, illness, and war. Many people feel a sense of tension. We want to stay informed, but too much information can leave us weighed down with thoughts and emotions that feel too heavy to bear. 

What should we do? Should we attempt to carry the sorrows and burdens of the world? Or should we distance ourselves from other peoples’ suffering to protect ourselves? Perhaps it is some of both. 

Remember those who suffer 

Scripture suggests there is something good and holy about remembering other peoples’ suffering, even when they are physically distant from us. Hebrews 13:3 tells us to “remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.” We honor people in their suffering by not forgetting about them. Instead of withdrawing from the world, we bear witness to other peoples’ pain and remember them in the same way we would want to be remembered in similar circumstances. 

Remembering often awakens a sense of compassion, which often leads to a desire to act. It might lead us to pray, give money, volunteer, speak up, or push for change. These are all good things. But too much remembering can lead to racing thoughts and anxiety. Overextending compassion can result in compassion fatigue. Giving to the point of exhaustion can lead to burnout. Absorbing too many stories of other peoples’ trauma can result in secondary trauma. That feeling of tension remains. 

Carry your own load 

We can break out of this tension by balancing wisdom from Hebrews 13:3 with wisdom from Galatians 6:5. A few verses after we are told to carry other peoples’ burdens in Galatians 6:2, we are instructed to each carry our own load. 

Recently, I realized that I was trying to carry someone else’s load. This person was experiencing a heavy struggle, and there were some practical ways I could help to carry her burdens. I could listen and ask good questions. I could sit with her in her grief. But I could not fix the problem. There was a depth to her emotional pain that I could not truly, fully understand. Aspects of her suffering could only be carried between her and God. I had to let go. I had to let her carry her own load. 

As we are inundated with stories of global suffering, we may be tempted to carry loads that do not belong to us. We may hold on to a false sense of responsibility that leads us to overextend ourselves in our care and compassion for other people. We may attempt to fix problems and over identify with burdens that were never given to us to carry. 

Cast your anxiety on the Lord 

The other day, after I closed out of Facebook and Twitter and went to bed, my mind remained filled with thoughts about what I had just read. What if I also get long COVID? What do I think about this or that debate? How should I respond to this person or react to that cause? 

Lying in bed, I used a strategy I often teach people who come to me for counseling. I closed my eyes and began to mentally list my concerns. I gave each concern a name and visualized myself writing it down on a slip of paper. The pandemic and fear of illness went on one slip. Images of hungry, displaced people went on another. A political post that frustrated me, a news article about a school shooting, and several death announcements each got a slip. I took each slip of paper and visualized myself placing them inside a box one at a time. I closed the box and remembered that God was right there with me. I handed him the box and prayed a short prayer, releasing my concerns to him. 

In counseling, this strategy is called containment. In Scripture, we see this idea described in 1 Peter 5:7 as casting our anxieties on the Lord. It is a way to set aside thoughts, feelings, and images that feel upsetting or distressing so we can proceed with our day. The goal of containing our thoughts and giving them to God is not to ignore or downplay important issues. It isn’t being selfish, indifferent, or ignorant in the face of suffering. Instead, it is a way to accept God’s care for us. He invites us to trust him by releasing to him the fears, problems, and concerns we cannot solve. 

What people, causes, local issues, and global concerns weigh on you today? Sit for a moment and honor those who suffer by remembering them. Perhaps choose one or two ways to carry someone else’s burdens. But then, let go. Carry your own load, and let your neighbor do the same. Release your anxieties to God. The world is not yours to carry. 

What to do when your spouse is suffering
By / Jul 11

Your wife feels lonely after two years of COVID-induced isolation. Your husband was recently laid off and feels rejected and insecure. Your wife struggles with depression and is having a particularly rough day. Your husband just lost his father, and his heart is bleeding. Your spouse is emotionally suffering. What do you do? 

In a broken world that only seems to be breaking more with each passing day, the question is important. How do you minister to a suffering spouse who is riddled with heartache, hopelessness, anxiety, angst, disappointment, doubt, or despair? A spouse who is overwhelmed, overworked, or overstressed? A spouse who is battling fear, guilt, shame, exhaustion, grief, or a plethora of other soul-testing emotions? 

What do you do when your spouse is suffering on the inside?

What not to do

First, let me share three things not to do:

1. Fix. Don’t put on your relational tool belt and offer quick fixes. It makes your spouse feel like a problem to be solved, not a person to be loved. It’s dehumanizing. It certainly doesn’t mirror the way that God treats us in our emotional distress. He rarely gives us quick fixes. He meets us in our pain, links arms with us, and walks with us through our suffering. Do the same for your spouse. 

2. Make it about you. It’s easy to make your spouse’s emotional pain about you. How does the pain make you feel? What impact is the pain having on your life? How did you possibly contribute to the pain? STOP. Stop making your spouse’s suffering about you. It’s impossible to love your spouse well when your eyes are fixated on yourself. Adjust your lenses, and focus on your spouse. Not on you. 

3. Make it not about you. It’s also easy to check out when your spouse is hurting inside. Why do we check out? We don’t know what to say. We don’t know what to do. We don’t know how to help. So we walk away. Don’t. Stay connected. You are one flesh with your spouse (Gen. 2:24). Just like shedding a hurting body part is not an option, abandoning your hurting spouse is not an option.

What you should do: BLESS  

So what should you do when your spouse is in emotional distress? Allow me to provide a step-by-step framework. I call it BLESS. It stands for Be, Listen, Empathize, Speak, Solve. Before I explain, I want to share three disclaimers:

First, this is a framework—a rule of thumb. It isn’t a one-size-fits-all formula. Every spouse is different. Every situation is different. People are complex. Life is complex. It won’t work for everybody—just most people in most situations.

Second, order is important. If you go out of order, you may frustrate your spouse at best or cause additional emotional damage at worst. 

Finally, you might only do the first one, two, three, or four steps. That’s okay. Not every situation calls for all five steps. Be prepared to stop at any point in the process.

Be: Sometimes all your spouse needs is your presence. Not your listening ear. Not your words. Not your actions. Your spouse only needs to know that you are there. You are not going anywhere. Your shoulder is there to cry on. Your hand is there to hold. You are there to hug and be hugged if necessary. You. Are. There. 

I suspect this might be tough—to simply be present without saying or doing anything. It is. It requires self-control. It requires patience. It requires you to relinquish control and know that God is God (Ps. 46:10); that his love and sovereignty are ruling and reigning over your spouse in that moment. It requires you to surrender your spouse into Christ’s hands, which are far more capable hands than yours.  

Listen: If your spouse speaks, close your mouth and listen (James 1:19). Concentrate on what is being said; not only the words but also the body language. Don’t think about what you are going to say. Don’t think about how your spouse should feel. Don’t think about how to make the pain go away. Don’t think about anything except what your spouse is saying. Just. Listen.

Empathize: If, and only if, you’ve thoroughly listened to your spouse, you may now open your mouth. What should you say? Precisely what your spouse said—in your own words. In other words, empathize with your spouse. Speak what you heard back in a way that makes your spouse say, “Yes, you get me.” If you aren’t sure what your spouse just said, ask questions to gain clarity. 

Why is empathy important? It makes your spouse feel known—the first half of the core human desire to be fully known and fully loved. It lets your spouse know that you are tracking, that you care, and that you are, once again, 100% present. It’s healing. It’s restorative. It says, “I know you, and you are worthy to be known.”

Speak: If, and only if, you’ve been present, listened, and empathized with your spouse, it may be time to speak words of life into your spouse’s heart (Prov. 18:21). You might share a passage of Scripture. You might offer a nugget of theological truth. You might give a word of encouragement. You might even (and tread lightly here) tell a joke! The point is that your words should be specifically calculated to build up your spouse (Eph. 4:29). They should infuse life. They should revive, refresh, and restore. They should heal your spouse’s heart.

Solve: If, and only if, you’ve been present, listened, empathized, and spoken life-giving words, it may be time to offer advice. Perhaps you suggest a list of action items that will assuage your spouse’s pain. Perhaps you point out ways that your spouse is unknowingly and unintentionally exacerbating the pain. Perhaps you offer a gentle admonishment if you see sin in your spouse’s life. Again, be careful. You don’t want to unintentionally wound your spouse with an ill-timed solution. One helpful tip is to ask if your spouse wants a solution. If the answer is yes, then proceed. If not, put your tool belt back in the closet. 

Conclusion

Be. Listen. Empathize. Speak. Solve. In that order. It’s hard. It’s unnatural. It takes discipline. You might not see immediate results. But that’s okay. It isn’t about results. It’s about love. It’s about incarnating the love of Christ and about being a blessing to your suffering spouse. 

Questions for reflection

  1. Why is it so hard to enter your spouse’s emotional pain without offering solutions? Why is it so hard for you to listen without speaking? What in your heart prevents you from following the sequential steps of BLESS?
  2. Have you ever been in a state of emotional turmoil, and somebody offered you a trite platitude or a quick fix? How did that make you feel? 
  3. Psalm 139 tells us that we are fully known and fully loved by God. He sees and understands us and still loves us. Why is this so healing? What can you do to make your suffering spouse feel this way?

What’s at stake when we brush past death
By / Apr 11

We are emerging from the two deadliest years in our country’s history. Let that sink in. There’s a reason your Facebook feed has been filled with more memorial posts than usual, that your own calendar has beckoned you to attend more funerals than you have in years — if you were even able to be present. Many of us are more than ready to return to the before times, when death was some far-off reality, something we could deal with later. But — as the pandemic gives way to war claiming innocent lives in Ukraine — the Church has a unique opportunity to offer to the world words for what it is enduring. God’s people also have a chance to extend to the grieving a hope that lives even in the face of death. 

No longer running from death

From 2019 to 2020, the death rate in the United States jumped by nearly 19%, and preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates it jumped another 2% in 2021. If you survived the last two years, it’s likely you know someone who didn’t. 

For me, it was my mom. I feared losing her for most of the 20 years since she was first diagnosed with cancer when I was in the seventh grade. But when her death came in 2020, I was surprised by God’s kindness hidden even in the hospice-calling and the funeral-planning. The psalms tell us that the death of each of those who die in faith is “precious in the sight of the Lord” (Psa. 116:15) and that he “is near to the brokenhearted” (Psa. 34:18). I found this to be palpably true. 

God cares for the dying and the grieving, and he wants his people to do this well, too. After trying to ignore and outrun death for years, I was surprised to see that Scripture did neither of these things. God’s Word sat with me in the reality and weight of death, while patiently offering surprising hope in the face of it. It did not rush toward a tidy conclusion about my loved one being in “a better place,” nor did it stew in some dark sadness to which the world tells me I am entitled while grieving. 

That’s because — unlike the counterfeits that offer us temporary reprieve — the hope we have in Christ in the face of death is not one that ignores or waters down its depths. It does not need to. No one acted like Goliath was not that big or menacing in telling the story of David defeating him. And no one needs to pretend the enemy of death that our Savior ultimately conquers is so small a foe. 

To speed past either the anguish that accompanies death or the hope that is dawning on the horizon undermines the very gospel story we claim to believe. And it will not ring true to the realities in which we live.

We do not need to run from discussions of death or to hide what the Bible has to say about it. Rather, a more robust theology of death prepares us to walk well through life in a fallen world — and all the loss it entails. It gives us a category for so much of what we see and grieve in the world, from the natural disasters popping up on our newsfeeds to the wrinkles appearing on our own faces. 

Considering death in light of its inevitability is not masochism; it is wisdom. It teaches us to number our own days, to labor — not in vain — but with eternity in view. Just like it helps to develop a theology of suffering — at least a hazy idea of how God might still be good when all is going wrong — before we dive headlong into it, it serves us to foster a theology of death before we are desperate for one.

So many around us are grieving specific and general losses. For too long, many churches have failed to give us a language and context for such grief and loss, even though the Bible provides each of these in spades. Considering with our churches and in personal study how the Bible views and addresses death gives us courage to enter into the broken places with others. It also prevents us from lobbing clichés at the grief-stricken that don’t align with Scripture and, frankly, do more harm than good. 

Suffering with others

God’s people have a better story to tell in the face of death. Yet, too often, we don’t take the opportunity to tell it because we are uncomfortable with the mysteries inherent in our understanding of it. But I would argue that what the world is looking for, more than our certainty, is our willingness to co-suffer with those who are facing and grieving the reality of death. 

When we attempt to do that, however feebly, we embody to others a Savior who faced death for us and experiences it with us. To that end, here are four practical ways God’s people can begin to better walk with others through death, offering to one another a form of the hope we are desperate for in times like these.

  1. Sit in the ash heap. Trusting God in the midst of our pain and others’ means we don’t have to explain it away. We can hold the truths that he is good and that this hurts in tension. And we can take a page from Job’s friends on those first seven days and just be quiet. The ministry of quiet presence is one of the greatest gifts we can offer to someone in the midst of grief. 
  1. Return to the Word. In sharp contrast to Christian culture at times, the Bible has plenty to say about death and grief. It depicts both in ways that ring true to reality. If you’re in the thick of it or know someone who is, you can start by borrowing the language of lament found throughout the Psalms. Though we think of praise as defining the Psalms, there are more psalms of lament in the Bible than any other type, not to mention an entire book called Lamentations. Lament prayers say at least two things: “I am hurting. And you are a God who hears.”
  1. Remember the dead. The Bible also points us to a rhythm of remembrance that has sustained God’s people across history. It can do the same now as we turn to face death alongside those who can no longer ignore it. Consider regular opportunities to remember the dead and your own mortality, such as Ash Wednesday or even communion. Did someone at your church lose a friend or family member a year ago or five years ago? Rather than wondering “How are you?” try asking, “What was she like?” It’s a story they just might be longing to tell. 
  1. Revive our Hope. Walking through death with others is a gracious reminder that we, too, will one day walk through these waters. Contemplating death allows us to consider Jesus’ words anew: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live” (John 11:25). Consider as we walk through this season of Lent leading up to Easter that the hope is somehow heightened by being willing to face what is hard. It is because we are a people who die that it is good news to sing, “My Redeemer lives.” 

When we grow a greater theology of death, we are also more equipped to offer to the world the kernels of hope it contains. I recently read a New York Magazine article in which an atheist confessed that pandemic losses made her wonder if she should try church again. 

“Mostly I wanted a way to mourn,” Sarah Jones writes, “not just my own loss but the galloping mass death enveloping the world.” 

Jones adds that she was raised to be “a strict conservative Christian” but that she abandoned the evangelicalism that was not, in her experience, “good with mystery, or with death.” Belief in an afterlife felt “too easy.” And yet, she found herself searching for something like it when death took her grandfather and then a friend. 

“I didn’t need answers, not immediately,” she wrote, “but I wanted to know it was possible to find them if I worked hard enough to look . . . I wanted to stretch out my arms to something, even if I couldn’t tell what it was.” 

The apostle Paul thought about death enough to develop a vision for being like Christ in it (Phil. 3:10). What opportunities, I wonder, are we missing if we don’t do the same?

3 ways to help your kids through grief
By / Nov 18

When I was growing up my family had friends with two sons. Both boys had the same genetic disorder, and they were not expected to live a long life. They were constantly in and out of the hospital and back and forth to doctor’s appointments. The oldest, Billy, and I shared a birthday. He presented me with a birthday present every year. 

One particular summer when I was 7 or 8 years old, our family received news that Billy’s younger brother, Stevie, had died. Within the next couple of days we were sitting in pews, remembering my friend.  

I don’t remember having any long conversations with my parents about why Stevie had died or asking them what happens after death. Growing up in church, I was reminded on a weekly basis that we could die in a car accident or Jesus could come back within the hour. I knew that our souls were at stake if we hadn’t trusted Jesus. I was told Stevie was in heaven, and I believed it. 

As a child and young adult, I believed that grief could only be felt because of a physical death. I did not know that grief could also be experienced because of the death of a relationship, lack of expectations being fulfilled, the loss of a job, tragic health diagnosis, or something stripped away that one expected to keep for a long time. In my late 20’s as I experienced more of life’s suffering, I began to experience grief in various ways.

When grief visited our family 

My husband and I have six children. Three of our children have died and gone home to the Lord. Our second son was born prematurely and passed away the day after he was born. My oldest was 2, and he was too young to remember everything that happened. His memories are what we have told him and the pictures we have shown him. As our son has gotten older, he has wondered what it would have been like to have a younger brother closer in age with him, but grieving wasn’t tangible for him until six years ago. 

Six years ago, our youngest son, Boston, was taken home unexpectedly because of a car accident. Boston was 4 years old. He was the bookend to our crew — vibrant, fun, hysterical, and the sweetest 4-year-old on the planet. My older children at the time were 11, 10, and 8. 

The morning of the accident, we all woke up in good moods, ready to face the day. But by the end of the day, our family was beyond devastated, wondering how we would all wake up the next morning. We did wake up the next day, but we awoke to a heavy weight of grief that had replaced our joyful son. 

As the dust settled after Boston’s funeral, my husband and I knew our family was encountering something that none of us knew how to navigate. When our second son passed away, my husband and I were the two grievers in the house. Our two older children were simply too young at the time to recognize what was going on. But now, we had three remaining children who had just experienced a very traumatic event. They’d lost a dear sibling, and we had to figure out how to parent our children in the midst of our own individual grief. 

Grieving as an adult is rarely done well, and often a child experiencing the same grief can get lost. So, how do we care for kids when they are grieving? Here are three encouragements.

First, give them Jesus.

Jesus said, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). Grief is hard. There’s no easy answer to it. My response to grief has been different than my husband’s, and each of our remaining children have had their own unique responses as well. There are no rules when it comes to grief. Grief can rip all the rules away and laugh at them. 

But as believers, we have comfort in our grief — the One who knows it best. Jesus experienced grief when encountering the Father’s wrath on the cross. He experienced grief when his friend Lazarus died. “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3a). In other words, Jesus knows. 

Others know, too. And their experiences and stories — particularly their experiences of Jesus’ comfort — can be a catalyst in helping our children work through grief and suffering. Our kids are not alone. Someone has gone through a similar experience before them. Here is an example of a conversation that can be had between a mother and her daughter after a tragic experience.

. . . Steph looked at her mom and said, “You too? Do you have scary dreams too? You’re afraid of today?!”  Forcing a smile her mom replied, “Oh yes! After losing your brother I’ve constantly battled with being afraid. Everyday I have to remind myself of the truth. Sometimes every hour. One of your tasks at school is to memorize Psalm 23. As you were practicing verse 4, I took a few minutes to listen, then read the words on the page . . .” 

Steph’s mom continued and closed her eyes like she had to remember something before she quietly began to say, “I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff they comfort me. For you are with me.” Steph’s mom sat as the smile grew on her face. The words washed over her again as she was reminded of what they meant. Then, as she slowly opened her eyes, Steph’s mom looked at her and asked, “Who is the “you” in the passage?” Steph thought for a minute, “God? Jesus?” 

In the Bible, we find Jesus in every story — from the Fall to King David to Nehemiah being tasked to rebuild the wall and beyond. Jesus is a constant comforter to his people. I find peace in knowing that he is a consistent Comforter to us and to our children when we adults are a hot mess.

Second, we don’t have to have it all together.

My kids need to know that I struggle too. I struggle deeply and have a lot of hard days. In the midst of those days, I need to ask them to give me grace, but I also need to recognize my children’s pain and not blow it off. It is beneficial for our children to see us grieve, whether it’s the loss of a marriage, a job, a house, a friendship, or a parent or sibling diagnosed with COVID-19. It is okay for our children to see us cry, to see us struggle and to see us wrestle with God. It’s okay for them to see us wonder and ask why. 

Why is it okay for us to not have it all together? It’s okay because our transparency will, in turn, give them the freedom to be honest and wrestle without fearing judgement from parents. We must let our children ask the hard questions. We must be okay when we don’t have the answers, and we must trust that God’s sovereign hand is with them in and through both the joys and the griefs. Let’s think again about Steph and her mother: 

Steph’s mom smiled and said, “Yes. David is scared too. In this psalm, he’s writing to remind himself of who his God is. He’s remembering that his God takes care of him and loves him and comforts him when things are scary — when he’s terrified to go to bed or to wake up the next day. God is with David just as he is with us at night during bad dreams and during the day when we struggle with circumstances that trigger our grief, or with fear when Dad comes home late.”

“The words of this psalm tell us the truth of who God is even when we are struggling to believe. It tells us that he is there to save us. He will use his word to comfort us — you and me. Always. We have nothing to fear because he is with us, even when it is hard to remember that.” 

Steph sat and listened to her mom talk. She realized that her mom probably struggles just as much as she does but hasn’t let on. Her mother lost a son and she lost a brother. It was hard for both of them. They both struggle with fear, and they both need God’s Word to remind them that God protects and comforts them in their moments of fear and doubt.

Notice in the example that when Steph’s mom is honest about her grief, Steph begins to understand that her mother struggles just like she does. That brings us to the next point.

Third, we are in this together.

Our children need to understand that they are not in their grief alone. They need to know we are with them and that we are for them. But most of all, they need to know that Jesus is for them. We need to continually remind them — despite our own grief — that we are there for them when they need to work through their emotions. 

One evening I picked up my daughter from her small group and as she entered the car, I said, “How was it?” She sighed heavily and replied, “A couple of weeks ago, a friend told me that she was grateful that my brother died.” 

Ooof. Even as an adult, those are damaging words to hear. I caught my breath and let her continue without saying anything.

“That really hurt. I know she was trying to be encouraging, because she said something about Jesus working in our lives, but I didn’t really hear that part too well. It just hurt. Why would someone say that!”

I could tell that hot, angry tears were on their way, and I didn’t blame her. Hot tears were filling my eyes as well. Many people don’t know what to say to those who are suffering — just think about all of the missteps Job’s friends made. When it has been years since a death, divorce, or whatever considerable loss you’ve experienced, many folks believe the pain must be gone. However, to the person who has experienced the loss, the memory can be very fresh. A comment like the one my daughter heard can tear a scab off of an old wound and cause the grief to gush freely again. 

My daughter wanted to confront the girl. I told her, 

“Thank you for telling me. You could’ve kept that inside and you didn’t. I understand that you want to respond and tell her how she hurt you. Sometimes being honest with a friend can be a loving way to help them to better care for people who are hurting. But sometimes when we do that, folks don’t always understand where we are coming from. If we’re still feeling hurt and the other person has never experienced something similar, the situation can get worse before it gets better. There have been a lot of times since the accident that people have said really hurtful things to Dad and me. Do you know what we did? We came home and talked to each other, cried with one another, and fled to Jesus. We have to remind ourselves that people sometimes don’t know simply because they have not been in our difficult shoes. I am so glad that you told me this. Do you know why? Because . . .”

My daughter joined me, “We are in this together.” 

We need to remind our children and ourselves that despite what is going on in our lives and our world, Jesus is bigger than the circumstances. He promised us in John 16:33, “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart, I have overcome the world.” Jesus told us that we would suffer with sickness, brokenness, and death. He died for this, and he is sovereign over it. 

As Paul reminds us in I Corinthians 13:12, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” Thankfully, this world is not all there is. Because we have a secure future, we are able to give the gift of hope to our children even as we grieve together. We can remind them (and ourselves) that we will one day see things fully. 

Right now things are fuzzy and out of focus, full of pain and just plain hard, but when we are physically with our Savior, the scales will come off of our eyes, and we will see him, know him, and be fully known. Because we have Jesus, hope remains even in our pain. Let’s believe that he is enough for us and our children as we walk the road of grief with them. 

How widows and widowers can thrive during the holidays
By / Nov 3

Our hearts are never fully prepared for a drastic change. But loss does that to you — it changes your course. Over time, the once raging grief finds a softer place to live, but when special days or holidays approach, those wounds can be reopened. As a widow, that loss and change stings every inch of your life and is certainly amplified during the holiday season. Each date on the calendar and special occasion screams the absence of your loved one. 

Even though it is painful to grieve, it’s not harmful. Grief is the process that leads to healing. We must walk through it, but as believers, our journey is accompanied with certainty and assurance. We have God’s promises to cling to as we grieve. His promises aren’t simply a wistful hope: the promise is Christ. The cross is a constant reminder that we are never forsaken or alone in our grieving. 

I would like to offer some practical advice, first to the widow or widower and then to local churches to help those who have suffered a loss not just survive the holidays, but thrive during them.

To the widow or widower

The loss of a spouse is disorienting and seems impossible to make it through. But the Lord is faithful to walk with you every step of the way. There are several things I’ve learned as I’ve navigated the loss of my husband — especially during the holidays — that have helped me grieve, heal, and grow. 

Carve out time to grieve, privately if needed. Holiday get-togethers are special, but they will be emotionally difficult. It is joy and sorrow hand in hand. It’s joyful to celebrate with family and see one another, but there will always be the backdrop of loss looming. Set aside private time in your schedule to grieve what needs to be grieved. 

Slow your pace. Slow down. Too many activities only add stress. Do whatever you need to in order to reduce extra stress by remembering the holidays are a season, not just a day. Spread out your visits and responsibilities over days.

Communicate. Talk with your family sooner rather than later about the schedule. Let them know you need your pace to be slow and easy. Tell them you may need alone time, and reassure them that your absence will only be temporary. 

God understands. Remember that although no person will truly understand the weight of the significance of your loss, God does. We serve a God who sees and knows every crevice of our hearts. He not only sees it, but his mercies are sufficient to meet our grief with strength. Lean into the grief, and take it to the Lord. You need his Word more than ever, so get into it, and meditate on it. Rediscover the joy of the Lord this holiday season!

To the local churches 

Your fellow brothers and sisters suffering from loss need you. They need the community, care, and comfort God designed you to offer. Though the holidays are busy for you, too, please don’t miss the chance to hold out the hope of Christ. Here are a few ways I was ministered to by the body of Christ.

Engage the bereaved. What an opportunity for ministry. First, know that tears are a gift from God. They help us release emotional grief. Too often, we avoid engaging the bereaved in an effort to help them avoid tears. But not acknowledging the loss of a widow or widower hurts more than crying ever will. So, engage those who are hurting. Isn’t that what Jesus did? Sit down, look that widow in the eye and say, “How are you”? Then, listen. If he or she cries, let them. Remember their loved one together, share stories, and mostly, just listen. There is nothing more Christlike than loving one another, and one of the most loving things you can do is mourn with those who are mourning. 

Encourage with the Word. Time doesn’t heal, but our God does. Send encouragement from the Word. Human words are good, but God’s Word is best. Send cards, texts, or emails of with Scripture. God grows a faith that gives new life by revealing himself in the midst of our deepest, most painful places. And we most often experience him through his Word. Be a life-giving Word-giver this holiday season. I promise it will nourish a broken soul. 

Equip widows or widowers to be ministers. As a widow, I have been entrusted with suffering toward a divine purpose: to minister to others and comfort those who need comfort (2 Corinthians 1:4). Encourage your widows to minister to one another. The goal of grief in God’s hands isn’t healing — it’s holiness. Holiness is healing plus purpose. God can use your widows and widowers to minister in your church like no one else. Remind them of Ephesians 2:10, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Equip them slowly and gently, as they are ready. Don’t be pushy; just watch for where God is working and help them see it too. 

Hebrews 5:8-9 is one of the most profound verses as it relates to suffering. It says this, “Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him.” Christ didn’t need to learn obedience, as if he wasn’t doing something. He willingly submitted to the experience of suffering in the flesh and experienced persevering in obedience. He tasted death on our behalf and made the way for our deliverance. For those who are approaching the holidays under the cover of grief, this gives great hope. Our suffering Savior has made a way for us to hope in the midst of our hurt and minister to those around us. Cling to God’s Word this holiday season and remember the joy of your salvation. I am praying for you.

How do you respond when the worst-case scenario is real?
By / Oct 12

Over the last couple of years, many of a pastor’s worst fears have shown up on the front porch of our churches — conducting funerals for multiple church members who have lost their lives because of a terrible disease and losing other church members due to a convictional stand or a difficult policy decision. Many pastors who believed their positions were secure now worry about losing their jobs. 

Depending on your countenance, you may be more or less prone to fear the worst-case scenario. If you’re a mental prepper — you know, the kind of person for whom giving into anxiety and fear is more of a temptation — you’ve probably played out the situations in your mind. But if you’re less prone to or acquainted with fear, your body, mind, and soul may not understand how to respond. 

My wife, Kaitlyn, fits the first category. She plays out the scenarios in her mind, down to the smallest details. I tend to shrug things off as unlikely, and I’ve tended to view fear as an enemy of the human experience. 

It’s all fine until the situation is real 

In the midst of all of the other pressures of pastoral ministry, Kaitlyn and I have been longing for more children. And expanding our family hasn’t been a quick and easy journey. 

When we find out we are pregnant, the joy is uncontrollable. After praying month after month, we feel like God has finally answered our prayers. Given my wiring, I can live with daily joy and excitement without even the slightest reservations about having a child. Kaitlyn’s joy comes mixed with hesitation. She can’t help but think about the worst possibilities. 

The worst-possible scenario for us was a doctor telling us that our child — the child we’d begged God for — had miscarried. Then it happened. The hardest day imaginable was harder than anything fear could have prepared us for. 

What do you do when your worst possible fear comes true? How do you respond? 

We grieved, and we grieved hard. Friends and family loved us well. People in our lives taught us how to lament and cry out to the Lord in our pain. But days after that doctor’s visit, when Kaitlyn and I were processing what had happened, she spoke what has been a life-altering statement for me. She said, “You know, this is the worst possible scenario I could have imagined, but I’m here, and we are okay.” 

Psalm 34:18 says, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” Even in experiencing hell on earth, God gave us his sustaining presence. Kaitlyn’s heart and emotions said, “Yes, I always fear the worst. Now I’m here, and it hurts. But God is here, too.” God’s unique wiring in my wife, which I can be tempted to be adverse toward, was the gift I needed to endure in this season. Her ability to see the brokenness of the world before the shards of pain got to us was the Lord’s providence in our life to give us hope. 

We’re embracing hope in the Lord, but that doesn’t mean our circumstances aren’t still hard. It’s incredibly hard. Our story has not been wrapped up with a neat little bow. Since that doctor’s visit, there have been more doctor’s visits and procedures. We continue to trust the Lord about our family, but losing our child has honestly stirred up more fears. 

Yet Christ has used suffering to produce hope in us amidst the fear. Sure, we know that more fear will come. Before this life is through, more worst-case scenarios will show up on our front porch. We will suffer loss. We will experience hurt. The hope we have is not wishful thinking nor blind optimism. Our hope instead is rooted in Christ’s sustaining presence. I’m grateful he has used this particular suffering to produce hope in us now and, I pray, again when future difficulties arise.

What about you? 

You may have lost someone to an illness, or you might have lost a job. Like us, you may have endured a miscarriage — unable to bring the child you longed for home. There are no simple answers to grief. Everyone grieves differently, because everyone’s story — everyone’s griefs — are different. But know that in your grief, God is with you. 

Maybe you are prone to fear, play out all of the worst-case scenarios, and try your best to avoid them. Or maybe you’re feeling paralyzed due to the weight of difficult circumstances that you never foresaw. Wherever you are, there’s hope in Jesus. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted. Call upon him in the midst of your fears, amid your difficult circumstances. Let the hope you have in the Lord and his sustaining grace carry you through.

Why we should learn to grieve our losses
By / Sep 30

We have all lost something due to the worldwide pandemic: our health, our sense of safety, the freedom to travel, gathering with family, a job, or a loved one. While we are grieving these losses, we are also trying to maintain a sense of normalcy. As someone who grew up in a family riddled with abuse, addiction, abandonment, and general dysfunction, I am used to dealing with pain and loss. I learned how to grieve what was lost and the importance of moving forward at a young age, and now I help others do the same. 

While I often help women who grew up in a dysfunctional family and want the encouragement and equipping to create a healthy, Christ-centered family of their own, the principle of grieving the past and moving forward into a healthier, more functional future that I share applies to all of us in this present time of uncertainty, tragedy, trauma, and loss. 

Learning to grieve from a movie 

One of my favorite movies when I was growing up was “My Girl,” the coming-of-age story about an 11-year-old girl, Vada Sultenfuss, who is raised in a funeral home by her single dad. Vada is best friends with Thomas J., a bookish boy. Together they ride bikes, climb trees, and try to understand life. Vada also avoids the reality that her widower father is falling in love.

In a tragic accident, Thomas J. dies, leaving Vada to grieve the loss of her only friend. I remember watching the scene where Vada crashes Thomas J.’s funeral. I cried as if I were attending the funeral myself — as if Thomas J. were my own lifelong friend. 

“Come back, Thomas J.! Come back!” Vada cried over the casket. Oh my stars, I can hardly take it, even today. Our deep-feeling heroine turns to poetry to process her feelings, and young Vada writes a poem about the weeping willow she and Thomas J. spent so much time climbing. The funeral, the tears, the poem — all were a part of the grieving process for Vada.

Just as in “My Girl,” there are many reasons to embrace grief and pursue our own journey from denial to acceptance. Pain and loss were never a part of God’s original plan. Just as childhood death was never God’s design, neither was the dysfunction you experienced as a child. God grieves the pain in your past, and he wants you to grieve as well. 

Vada lost her mother and her best friend, and the audience watches a young girl process deep grief. We wonder how God can ever work such grief out for good. Eventually, however, he does. He can take a sad, broken little girl, and teach her that it’s OK to feel. It’s OK to love. It’s OK to open your heart to possibility.

3 things to remember about pain 

It might not seem so in the moment, but just like Vada, we can always look back on our lives and realize that even in the darkest situations, God always works out painful events for our good (Rom. 8:28). If we ever forget this truth, we need only remember Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross as a case in point. 

Another thing to remember as you grieve your past is that pain is a universal experience. You are not alone in your anguish; everyone experiences disappointment, pain, suffering, and loss at some point in their lives — even Jesus felt it. He was despised and forsaken by men, this man of suffering, grief’s patient friend. As if he was a person to avoid, we looked the other way . . . and we took no notice of him (Isa. 53:3). 

Finally, God sanctifies us through our grief. In pain and suffering, we can run from Jesus or we can try to respond like him and in the end look more like him. King Solomon wrote about this principle: “It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this to heart” (Eccl. 7:2).

If we accept the truth that our reality will look nothing like the dreams we’ve conjured up, then we can move forward and grieve the pain, suffering, and lost opportunities — all that should have and could have been — even all that might have been ours. But you won’t be alone with your grief — Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to comfort you. 

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever — the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you (John 14:16-20).

In these times of social distancing, quarantining, isolation, and being separated from loved ones, it’s important to know that you won’t be alone with your grief — Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to comfort you. Take time to process your grief at your own pace. This process is not linear. Rather, it can often feel like a tangled ball of yarn. As you process and grieve your past, you’ll inch your way toward healing in Christ. Then, one day, you’ll find yourself experiencing a hopeful present you never saw coming.

This article contains an adapted excerpt from Mending Broken Branches: When God Reclaims Your Dysfunctional Family Tree.

How to deal with our pandemic grief
By / Jun 9

The pandemic has been difficult, to say the least, and even with reopenings and a sense of normalcy, there is still a fog that hasn’t lifted. These moments can be quite disorienting and discouraging as we try to recognize the reality of our lives without slipping out of hope’s grasp. 

I think a major contribution to this fog is that the grief of the last year goes unrecognized or even minimized. Sometimes this occurs when we compare our grief to another’s or ignore it because it feels too overwhelming to face while still trying to navigate the current life season.

Grief is capable of shocking subtleties. And the reality is that we are actually trapped in grief if we can’t recognize what is worth lamenting. We get stuck when we can’t make sense of what has happened, why, or how it affects and changes our lives.

Grief in our current climate

I recently counseled a couple who worked overseas but had to return to the states for purposes related to COVID-19 restrictions, the death of their unborn child, and the repercussions that a medical threat posed to the wife. Under those circumstances, the marital relationship was quite strained, and it was easy for previous annoyances that had been covered up for years within the marriage to be pointed out. The sudden return to the states also meant a lack of closure with friends and co-workers.

That is a lot to grieve and to begin unpacking and processing. Unfortunately, grief was not a priority to the couple. Instead, one spouse focused on the marital frustrations of family interactions, while the other spouse focused on appeasing the other. Both tried moving around the “annoyances” of grief so they could look into returning to their work. This is avoidance, and it is an unhealthy attempt to deal with reality.

Symptoms of grief

Grief is the sense of loss in one’s life, and it comes in many shapes. We may experience the loss of graduations, celebrations or family gatherings, hugs and kisses with grandkids, a job, a break up, a death, not being able to comfort or communicate with those in the hospital, and being unable to even attend funerals. Although these are all varying degrees of difficult circumstances, the impact is the same: a need to process a sensed loss (i.e., grief). We’ve all experienced losses throughout the pandemic, and many of them often go unnoticed. Our lives of normalcy and predictability have halted, and the byproduct of broken dreams and plans gets mislabeled as unimportant in comparison to the medical tragedies.

Grief can symptomize in many ways, and so can our unhealthy attempts to soothe the pain. There may be a lack of energy or an abundance of activity. We might mask pain through overt use of humor, withdrawing from close friends, or with overcommitted schedules. Perhaps there are angry outbursts that blame loved ones instead of having to deal with the painful emotions within. We may even feel isolated from others or experience guilt.

Honoring what we value through grief

It’s unfortunate that we overlook the necessity to care well for each other and ourselves in the midst of all that we negatively experience in life. Grief doesn’t go away simply by avoiding or being unwilling to admit its existence. It doesn’t even go away by acknowledging there is sorrow. We must come to terms with the new reality. It takes courage to recognize loss because nobody wants grief to be a true experience in life. But the truth is we honor what we value when we can also grieve its loss. Until we can do that, it is just a stuck emotion that is like a lodged cracker in the back of the throat.

The good news is that you’re not the only one who struggles, and it isn’t a sign that you’re going crazy. The psalms show us it’s actually quite normal to experience the human emotions given to us by God. These emotions are necessary for healthy living. You can take ownership of your grief and understand what has happened and how you have been affected. I encourage you to reach out to others whom you trust and know will care for you. As a Christian, you have a compassionate resource built into the local church community. And of course, take your grief to Jesus. He knows your sorrows and cares for you (Rom. 8:16; 1 Pet. 5:7). 

Of course, you may need to process your specific issues with a professional counselor. I have benefitted from this and from talking with good friends and my wife. My encouragement to you is to be courageous and curious enough to deal with the grief that may be stuck and overlooked after the challenges of this pandemic season.

The importance of the church when dealing with disability and grief
By / May 20

The Indispensable Podcast, hosted by Ethan and Michaela Holsteen, is a ministry of the Louisville Regional Baptist Association (LRBA). In the podcast’s second episode, Ethan and Michaela sat down with Robert and Hollie Brookman to hear about their family’s experience regarding the challenges and blessings of navigating special needs and the church. 

The LRBA was kind enough to allow the ERLC to transcribe a portion of that episode below. You can listen to season one of the podcast on their website or Apple Podcasts. Season two will be released soon. 

It’s exciting to be able to highlight a story about one local church’s ministry to a special needs family and also to celebrate how a local association of churches is working toward disability awareness.

Introduction: (00:00)
Grief can be isolating. When we go through loss, we often want to shrink back to put up walls and pull ourselves away from others. However, what we most often need is others around us, helping us to look up from our current situation to see how God is at work and be reminded of what is true, not ignoring the pain, but learning how to walk the path of suffering well while in Christian community.

Ethan Holsteen: (00:40)
In this episode, we had the privilege of sitting down with Robert and Hollie Brookman in their home to talk about their experiences wrestling with an unexpected diagnosis and realizing the value and necessity of the church community.

Michaela Holsteen: (01:04)
Robert and Hollie Brookman have three children. And at the time of this recording, Hannah was 3 1/2, Clara was 18 months, and they had another baby on the way. Hannah has Cri du Chat Syndrome. It’s also called 5p- (Five P Minus), and it’s a rare genetic disorder. According to the Five P Minus Society website, only 50 to 60 babies are born with this syndrome in the United States every year. Can you tell us a little bit more about Cri du Chat? What does that look like?

Hollie Brookman: (01:41)
Yes. So it is a rare genetic condition where she is missing a portion of her fifth chromosome. And really all that means is that it causes some developmental delays, and can cause some health problems too. It is a spectrum disorder. So it’s all over the map. One person with Cri du Chat may or may not have any of the same characteristics or qualities as the next person with Cri du Chat, but it does result in some developmental delays, both physical and cognitive, and for Hannah right now at 3 ½ , it looks like not being able to walk on her own without holding onto something and not being able to communicate verbally right now.

Michaela Holsteen: (02:45)
After Ethan and I heard a little bit more about Hannah’s disability, Hollie and Robert described the season of life before Hannah was born. Early on in pregnancy, physicians told Hollie and Robert that Hannah was developing slowly. At around 15 weeks, the doctors referred them to a high-risk clinic, thinking that Hannah might have had Down syndrome. However, after some noninvasive testing, Hollie and Robert received the news that Hannah likely had 5P-.

Robert Brookman: (03:14)
Results came back, and we got the phone call from the genetic counselor saying, “We think it’s Five P Minus. Our first reaction was to immediately go online and look up everything we could about that. She told us not to, but right off the bat we found a lot of resources from the Five P Minus Society, which is the national support society for families

So, we felt like we were going to wait to follow up with a lot of that stuff until the diagnosis was actually confirmed. But I mean, overall, our first reaction was, I don’t know how you would describe it, but . . . 

Hollie Brookman: (03:59)
Well, the testing that we did was not conclusive testing. I think that’s kind of important for that to be established that it was a screening, and they really couldn’t, say, give us a percentage of how likely it was going to be, but only that it was very possible. And so our reaction was, “Well, let’s just not tell anyone until we know for sure.” It would have been the day that she was born when we would have figured it out. So we had several months where our first reaction was that we’re just going to keep this to ourselves. And we’re not going to tell anyone outside of maybe our parents and siblings. We were just holding onto this on our own and not really sharing it with anyone or trying to reach out or anything like that. And we lasted, how long do you think we lasted?

Robert Brookman: (04:54)
We got that phone call on a Friday, and we said, “You know what, we’re not going to tell anybody; we’re going to keep this to ourselves until we get conclusive results. We’re just going to operate as if that phone call hadn’t happened. And, um, that lasted for a day and a half. I remember on that Friday, we did not want to be alone. We called pretty much everybody in our community group to see if we could go out to dinner with somebody just to get out of our house and stop thinking about it. But you can’t stop thinking about . . .

Robert Brookman: (05:59)
So, I led our family down a very bad path. I know that for a fact. That first day we found out about this thing, it was like, “We we’re just going to . . . I told you, “We’re not going to tell anybody about this. We’re going to hold onto this. We’re not going to talk to anybody about it until we find out.” That was totally the wrong thing to do. Like just totally backward. Then we felt, “We need to tell somebody. We can’t hold on to this. Like we’re already crumbling under it, and it’s been 36 hours.”

Robert Brookman: (06:30)
It finally just hit us that if we are in a community group with a church that keeps saying that community is meant to be a support and to help carry the load and bear a lot of those burdens, and yet we’re not willing to let community do what it’s supposed to do because we’re just going to hang on to this out of our own pride and out of our own, you know . . . It’s our first kid, what do you expect? You just kind of go into it with rose-colored glasses thinking everything’s going to be fine, because that’s most people’s deal. You don’t really ever think, “Oh, the first one’s going to have a genetic disorder.” So, yeah, we made it probably a day and a half before the first people we told, who were our parents.

Robert Brookman: (07:16)
It was something to finally start to unload that. And then, you know, Sunday, obviously, we met with our community group and it was just like, this is going to be difficult to even just tell people this, because of fighting a lot of those feelings of pride and of worry and anxiety and all of it. But you know, people surprise you with how they react to stuff and you think, Oh, well, I’m so focused on how I don’t want to share this that I’ve totally lost sight of how everyone else is going to react in an encouraging way. And that’s all that we received — just encouragement time and time again.

Hollie Brookman: (08:19)
It was several months of ups and downs of emotions. And I was so thankful that we did share with our community group, because I had a lot of women in our group who were pouring into me and pointing me to the truth and reminding me that God is still good in this and that he still has a plan for her life and that it’s to glorify him no matter what she looks like, no matter her genetic makeup, no matter if she can walk or talk. And it was just so important for me to be able to hear that, to hear something that was true rather than what a lot of people’s first reaction is when you tell them something like this: “Oh, well maybe, maybe the test is wrong or, well, maybe she’ll outgrow it, or maybe . . . or, man, that’s really stinks. You do not deserve to have this happen to you.”

Hollie Brookman: (09:15)
And so it was really good that we did share it, because there were people that we trusted who were wise that could be praying for us and could point us to biblical truth throughout those months when we just didn’t know what was going to happen, but we were still processing and mourning what we thought our child was going to be coming to terms with — what God was giving us — which in the end it was still good even though it didn’t necessarily feel good at the time.

… 

Michaela Holsteen: (12:11)
So what were some specific Scriptures or biblical truths that you were clinging to during that season?

Robert Brookman: (12:17)
The one passage that I constantly go back to, that I read very early on during the pregnancy after we found out about 5P- was John 9. It’s Jesus and the disciples walking along, and they come upon a man that was born blind. So, the disciples at the beginning of the chapter lean over and they’re like, “Hey, do you know who sinned, this man or his parents, to make him born blind?” And Jesus’s reaction is, “That’s not the point. The point is not that someone did something that caused this. The point is that God’s strength and power and plan would be shown through this person’s life because he was born blind.” And then, you know, the chapter continues on, but that first five or so verses of that chapter where that interaction happens, there’s so much you can pull from that.

Robert Brookman: (13:10)
I mean, the fact that it’s not the Pharisees that are asking this question, it’s the disciples. It’s the people that you would expect to have the right answer and to know what to say in that moment who are the guys that end up asking just a really ridiculous question. And the fact that Jesus says that the point is not something happened because of something they did. You know, I think some people have the idea that special needs or things that happen like that are born out of some kind of circumstance whether that’s spiritual or otherwise. I don’t think that has anything to do with it. God has predestined people to be born differently than us. And so you know, for us, that was a really huge piece of Scripture. It was just saying that Hannah was going to be born the way she was not because of anything that we did, not because of sin in our lives that caused God’s wrath to come down on us in the form of this special needs child. Instead, it was all about the fact that God wanted this to be a part of our family’s future. And there was a plan behind it all. 

… 

Hollie Brookman: (15:03)
Yeah, it definitely shifted our focus from being internal to asking, “What is the purpose of this?” Ultimately, it’s to glorify God somehow. We might not see it now. We might not be able to conjure up some reason why God would put this in our lives, but it’s to bring him glory. And we’re going to understand that someday. I don’t know when, but we will understand it someday. What helped me in the transition from mourning the idea of what my child, my first child, was going to be like and wrestling with those emotions that come with that but not wanting those emotions to take over and make me feel like I didn’t deserve this and that God was not being good and that God was punishing me for whatever reason was: I kept being pointed to this story that comes out of Mark 9, where there’s a boy with an unclean spirit and the disciples bring this father and the boy to Jesus because the disciples have been unable to cast the spirit out.

Hollie Brookman: (16:05)
And so the man says to Jesus, “If you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” And then Jesus said to him, “If I can? All things are possible for one who believes!” And immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe. Help my unbelief.” And that was something that I had to cry out to the Lord about often when I was in tears and a complete mess —j ust in those spirals of emotions. And at the same time, knowing God is still in control and God is still good, but there’s parts of me that didn’t believe that in those moments. And so just crying that out over and over again was something that I did as we were working through this. And that stuck out to me. And that’s something that a wise woman that I had talked to about what was going on had pointed me to from the beginning. And it’s just something that I clung to throughout the whole season of our life, where we didn’t know what was happening.

Ethan Holsteen: (17:08)
After much anticipation and a challenging delivery, Hannah was born. Her diagnosis was quickly confirmed for Robert and Hollie when they heard their newborn daughter’s unique cat-like cry which is characteristic of Cri du Chat syndrome. Further genetic testing made the diagnosis official. However, instead of feeling the anguish of anxiety upon confirmation of Hannah’s diagnosis, by God’s grace, they felt peace as well as the excitement and joy of finally meeting their daughter.

Michaela Holsteen: (17:39)
Three years later, Robert and Hollie have welcomed another little girl into their family and are awaiting the arrival of a third. Their life is not what they originally expected, but the joy and hope that they have in the faithfulness of Christ is evident. Their days now are filled with lots of laughs, spilled oatmeal, trips to multiple therapies, and filling out endless Medicaid waiver forms, yet they wouldn’t change a thing.

Ethan Holsteen: (18:07)
What does church life look like for your family? Some of the positives, some of the challenges.

Robert Brookman: (18:12)
Yeah, so, our church doesn’t have a ton of special needs individuals in it to begin with. Especially in the kids’ ministry, there’s just not that many kids with special needs. And so, you know, us being the first, as we were looking for that John 9 purpose and asking, “What is the thing that God’s got in store for us as a family? Not only just for Hannah’s life, but for us,” we thought, “Maybe this is part of what God’s wanting us to do — to get our church involved in special needs.” Our whole mentality was leaning into our church family, not away from it. That’s what we did with our community group. I think most people’s first reaction when something hard happens is to lean out. You tend to draw away from church, because of either pride or hurt or feelings of isolation thinking, “I’m the only one dealing with this, so no one else will really understand it.” Our first tendency as people is just to get away from people, but the need is to lean in.

Robert Brookman: (19:58)
And so for us, that meant, “We’re not going to pull out of church or stop serving just because we have this child that’s medically complex, that has a lot more needs. We’re going to make it easy for our church to minister to her. So whether that was educating our leaders; I know we’ve met with our church leaders a bunch of times just to talk about how we as a church can better support special needs individuals. 

Robert Brookman: (20:47)
So we met with them to talk about that stuff. And we met with families that regularly served in Hannah’s classrooms to make sure that. . . . “Hey, I want you to understand that when she’s doing these things, here’s what these things mean.” We put together a book of signs after she had started signing, you know, most people don’t know ASL, “But in case she starts doing something where she needs to communicate with you, we want you to be able to understand what she’s trying to get you to do. And so here’s a little book of what the signs look like.” So for us, it was more about equipping the people that were there to serve us and make it as easy as we could on them so that we could continue to lean in.

… 

Hollie Brookman: (22:59)
People have been super gracious and just really wanting to serve our family in this area. And so that has been really encouraging for us — the way that our community group has come around us and adjusted the way we do things in our community groups so that we can still be involved but also not neglecting the needs of our children. But just that has been really, really encouraging for us, learning what the church body is actually supposed to look like. You know, just in general for me, that has been really helpful. I’ve just learned that, wow, this is what God is talking about when the early church is being formed in Acts and we see them bearing each other’s burdens and helping each other in all these different ways. We’re really experiencing that on a weekly basis.

Michaela Holsteen: (23:57)
Their church’s response could be summed up in two words, understanding and collaboration. First understanding that Hannah’s participation in Sunday school will look different than most and also understanding that she’ll need unique and individualized care when it comes to spiritual formation and discipleship into the future.

Ethan Holsteen: (24:17)
And second, collaboration, not in the form of a support group like Robert and Hollie originally thought but rather church members coming together with pastors to form what Robert described as a spiritual care team, a team of church members working together to help people with disabilities inside their church regarding their individualized needs, inclusion, and spiritual growth.

Ethan Holsteen: (24:41)
What would be one encouragement that you would share with families struggling to find their place in the church with a child with special needs?

… 

Robert Brookman: (25:49)
Sometimes it’s hard to hear, but you’re not a member of a club. You’re a member of a body. You are not meant to go and be a consumer and only be ministered to. The whole point of a church is, yes, you go and learn things and you can be ministered to, but every person in the church serves a different role. You know, some are meant to encourage, some are meant to go, and some are meant to speak. Some are meant to be encouraged and others are meant to be encouragers, but nobody in the church is meant to be an appendix — that part of the body that no one knows what it does. And if you got rid of it, no one would care. As a member of a church, you have a job. And that job is not just, “Oh, well, I serve, I sing on Sunday mornings. Oh, I do this thing.” That job is to be there and be a part of it. And it all comes back to leaning into church and leaning into community versus leaning out. The gut reaction in times of trials and trouble and things like that is to pull away. Emotionally, it’s the first thing you want to do because it protects you. Or at least it feels like it’s going to protect you.

Robert Brookman: (27:18)
We think, “If I pull away, then I don’t have to share the hard stuff. I don’t have to be vulnerable in front of people. I don’t have to have my pride hurt. I don’t have to share my life with anybody. And that all feels really okay in the moment. Then you get down the road a couple of weeks, a couple months, a couple of years. And it’s just like, “Man, why in the world did I pull away from that?” Or worse “Why didn’t they pursue me? Why didn’t they do all this stuff?” And it totally leaves off your responsibility to be a two-way street. Lean in. 

… 

Hollie Brookman: (30:18)
And I think along with that, just being willing to be that awkward person in your community group that starts crying when there’s a bunch of new people there and they have no idea what you’re talking about. But for me, this diagnosis has taught me so much about my own pride before Hannah was born. I didn’t really understand or value the church body or value a community group. And the way that God’s timing worked out is incredible because he got us involved in the community a couple of months before we got pregnant with Hannah, and he just used that whole situation to teach me that everyone is broken and everyone is dealing with something. And he has designed people to need other people, to need the church body and to work together to encourage, and to point one another to truth.

… 

Hollie Brookman: (31:42)
My encouragement to others is just as Robert was saying to lean into it and be willing to experience something that’s uncomfortable for the purpose of experiencing what God intended the church body and community to be. 

Michaela Holsteen: (33:43)
One of the things that I really appreciated about Robert and Hollie was their transparency when it came to their initial reaction to lean away from the community and to work through this on their own. Even in the early stages of finding out that their baby could potentially have a diagnosis and how they very early on realized that they actually needed to press into the community. And they found so much comfort and support, even in surprising ways, ways they didn’t expect it.

Ethan Holsteen: (34:17)
I think once they were in that community and were interacting with the church, the church’s response was what struck me was, “Let’s create a team of people with the parents, with other people from the church to help serve this family well.” And I think that’s a good example that you don’t have to have a special needs ministry, like a formal one, in order to care. Just get with the family and do something.

Michaela Holsteen: (34:45)
Right. And they also talked about using the skill set of members that are already within their church. So if you’re a part of a church, there’s probably going to be nurses there, there might be physical therapists, occupational therapists. There are so many different people that are already members of your church with skills that can be utilized in caring for those with varying needs.

… 

Michaela Holsteen: (36:10)
Thank you for listening to the Indispensable Podcast. For more information about Cri du Chat Syndrome, check out FivePMinus.org.

The world, the flesh, and illusion
By / Feb 17

Over the last several years, it’s become a tradition over the Christmas holidays to take the kids—by which I mean my daughters and all of our nieces and nephews on my wife’s side—to see a superhero movie. Many of us adults love these movies as much as the children. 

This year, we didn’t venture out to the theater. Instead, we crowded into my in-laws’ den and streamed Wonder Woman 1984. And as we watched this latest installment from Warner Bros. and DC, I began to think about how this film does something that’s a bit unusual. It uses the fantasy genre as a way of critiquing our culture’s desire to escape reality. 

WW84’s critique of living in delusion isn’t totally unique. In many ways, the movie’s plot mirrors that of the new television series, WandaVision, from DC’s competitor, Marvel Studios (Warning: From this point forward, this post contains some spoilers for Wonder Woman 1984 and WandaVision, episodes 1–6):

  • WW84 centers around a wish-granting Dreamstone, a “monkey’s paw” created by a powerful trickster god that grants a person’s deepest desires while taking what’s most important—their dignity and identity.
  • In WandaVision, the leading character, Wanda Maximoff, attempts to escape her past by creating an alternate TV-land reality, but dark memories haunt her sitcom dream world.

I love this new theme for both comic book franchises. In a culture that says you can define your own reality, stories that blow holes in that assumption are beautiful. 

Our love affair with illusion

Fantasy is a good thing. The story world of knights and dragons, wizards, and superheroes teach children deep truths about how righteousness triumphs over great evil. As we grow, more complicated stories, like Maleficent for example, can show us the complexity of our own villainy. What’s imparted to us through the best fantasies is moral imagination, a sense of empathy, and—when we identify with those who persevere in the crusade for justice and beauty—perhaps even faith and courage.

Illusion, however, is different. It’s comforting to curl up with a good book or movie on a cold and depressing winter’s day. But the truth is that we’re all tempted not only to escape from life’s harsh realities for a moment’s solace but to attempt to create alternate realities of our own design. 

Our culture is in love with illusions. Influencers carefully manicure their online personas for public adoration while inside they are secretly starving for friendship. Suburbanites amass debt, possessions, and retirement accounts as safety nets that moth and rust will one day destroy. Men spend billions of dollars each year on pornography, building mind palaces for sexual experience while destroying their real relationships. Growing numbers devote their hearts to the conspiracy theories of QAnon, believing secret knowledge is a pathway to political power. Many young people (and some old) are seeking to redefine their gender, believing that rewriting their biological sex will numb social discomfort and pain. 

Each of these world-building exercises is a house of cards—like Wanda’s enchanted town of Westview, they may be elaborate but they are ultimately fragile and impossible to live in. Such illusions simultaneously seek to hide from and are driven by fear, shame, guilt, greed, and grief. But even though our alternate realities are built with strong chaos magic, their foundations ultimately crumble, because they’re constructed on lies. 

Facing down the devil

WW84 alludes to a trickster god behind the Dreamstone without revealing his identity. Marvel fans, meanwhile, have speculated that there’s darker magic from the comic universe at work behind Wanda’s delusions—perhaps the witch Agatha Harkness, the demon Mephisto, or Lethal Legion leader Grim Reaper. But even if the evil in the TV series is only found within Wanda herself, there’s a real devil in the details, hiding in the shadows behind the lies we want to believe. 

The Bible’s testimony prevents us from reducing evil down to impersonal forces and ideologies that stand in opposition to Christian teaching. It’s not even sufficient to name sins like greed, lust, and fleshly hunger for power. These are all real, but behind both sinful systems and individual temptations is a personal devil, our accuser, the archenemy, the evil prince of this present darkness (1 Chron. 21:1; Job 1:6–13; 2:1–7; Zech. 3:1–2; Eph. 2:2). 

After Jesus’s baptism, the Holy Spirit led him into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil (Matt. 4:1–11). There Satan tested Jesus with three particular lies—untruths that still lay at the heart of the illusions within which we’re tempted to live.

The first was the illusion of independence (vv. 2–4). Will we trust in our own desires and abilities or in the Father’s loving care? 

After fasting for 40 days, Jesus was hungry. So the devil prompted Jesus to take care of himself—to break his fast by turning some stones into bread. When we’re living in the illusion of independence, we can delude ourselves like Wanda Maximoff and say, “I have this under control.” But when Satan tempted the Savior to act on his own apart from the Father, Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 8:3: “Man doesn’t live on bread alone but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” 

Moses spoke those words to remind Israel how God had tested them during their 40 years in the desert. God allowed them to be hungry and gave them manna so they might learn that people don’t merely need bread but God’s sustaining care. 

Sometimes we quote the words of Deuteronomy 8:3 as if Jesus was talking about having good theology, knowing the right Bible verses for each and every temptation or circumstance. But Jesus (like Moses before him) wasn’t talking about mere head knowledge; what he expressed was a deep trust in the Father’s goodness no matter his circumstances. The first step toward fighting illusion is trusting that whatever pain or griefs may come in life, God’s every word for us—all he ordains—is loving and good.

Second was the illusion of presumption (vv. 5–7). Will we treat God like a vending machine, thinking that he somehow owes us comfort or protection on our timetable? 

The devil took Jesus to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple: “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down.” This was a temptation to presume upon God’s promises. Satan cited Psalm 91:11–12: “He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up. . . so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.” It’s as if he was saying, “Didn’t God promise to protect you? Let’s test that out.” 

But putting God to the test and presuming that he’ll give according to our standards doesn’t recognize God as God. It attempts instead to paint God in our own image and bribe him to act according to our expectation of how he should or ought to respond. When we presume, we fail to remember that God is the distant and holy one who came to Job in the whirlwind. Jesus knew better, and he answered, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

Last was the illusion of attaining kingdom glory apart from the suffering of the cross (vv. 8–11). Will we worship the lie and the liar or will we embrace our call to suffer for others? 

Satan offered Jesus a shortcut to kingdom glory. He could rule and reign as Messiah over the world’s splendors and even avoid the sufferings of Calvary. There was only one small catch. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” 

The trouble with the devil’s logic was that for Jesus to worship him would have entailed a redefinition of the Savior’s identity. It’s true that Jesus was the Davidic king, but he is also the Lamb of God, the Suffering Servant, who did not come in his first appearance to rule a splendid world (that’s an illusion) but rather to pour himself out for a fallen world, one mired in death and sin.

In the early church, new converts would not only be asked to confess “Jesus is Lord” before baptism but they were also instructed to renounce the devil publicly. If you’re familiar with the old liturgy, you may have heard echoes of it in the “I renounce my wish” refrain at the end of WW84. For me, it was a beautiful reminder that embracing a Christian identity has always involved renouncing the illusions of self and Satan and giving ourselves instead to the Truth—to the Lord who first gave himself for us.

Death and grief expose the lies

For Diana, Wanda, and for us, the truth quite literally hurts. WW84 and WandaVision wrestle with themes of death and grief as both leads attempt to use their reality-shifting power to resurrect lost loves. With Wonder Woman, this begins as an accidental wish to see her lost boyfriend, Steve Trevor. It’s coming to grips with letting Trevor go that teaches Diana how her desire must be limited by the truth. 

Wanda Maximoff’s sitcom reality similarly centers around her relationship with the deceased Avenger, Vision. While it appears—six episodes have been released at the time of writing—that she’ll do anything to protect the illusion of her life with him, it’s also clear that grief over the many losses in her past has never left her.

Facing death ultimately reveals how our fantasies are fleeting. Every year around this time, many Christians, like Jesus in the wilderness, fast 40 days to prepare their hearts for Easter. Though keeping a Lenten fast is less common for Baptists—after all, believers aren’t required to celebrate regular religious festivals (Col. 2:16)—I believe the broader Christian tradition carries with it a helpful reminder that can help us fight temptation and delusion. 

Lent begins with Ash Wednesday—a day that boldly acknowledges that no one gets out of this world alive. On this day, those who gather around the world receive an ashen sign of the cross on their foreheads. This mark is a reminder of our mortality and a call to repentance. Memento mori. Remember, you are going to die; “Dust you are, and to dust, you will return” (Genesis 3:19b). 

So prepare for Easter by preparing for death

Whether you live in the real world or a fictional one, building your life on conspiracies and lies will send you spinning into chaos. But Christians have a better hope than the devil’s illusions, one that allows us to be honest even about life’s starkest realities. 

We can speak the truth when temporary comforts, dreams, expectations, political hopes, and even our bodies are dying.  That’s not where our ultimate hope is found. We instead acknowledge even the hard truth of our death knowing we have a Savior who has already faced down the lies, the liar, and even the grave itself. And here’s the good news: Christ did not give in. On the other side of his long road of temptation and torment, there stands an empty tomb. It’s no illusion.

Brothers and sisters, Easter is coming. So put aside the lies and delusions which you renounced when you were baptized in him. Find in Christ the strength to be honest even about your griefs. And know that one day they will be fully conquered in him.