grief on Motherhood

Thank You, Lord, for the gifts of life, of love and of care that come from You, wrapped in our moms and step-moms, in our grand-moms, great-grandmas, daughters, sisters, and aunts. We’re grateful for...

Since her first grief had brought her fully to birth and wakefulness in this world, an unstinting compassion had moved in her, like a live stream flowing deep underground, by which she knew herself an...

A preaching professor at Harvard University tells the story of the year his 5-year-old son was working on an art project in his kindergarten class. It was made of plaster, resembled nothing in particu...

In an interview discussing her most recent book Hamnet, the novelist Maggie O’Farrell shares a great analogy on grief. It started with research she needed to do on embroidery, an area in which she was...

A good friend of mine lost her child recently. Unspeakable, seismic sadness. When she called, I listened in stunned silence as she told me what had happened. My mind was racing, trying to comprehend t...

Almost a year after our infant son was born dead, a woman at church talked about him, using his name in a conversation, and I almost wept with gratitude! I didn’t realize how much it hurt that everyon...

I think I am beginning to understand why grief feels so much like suspense. It comes from the frustration of so many impulses that have become habitual…I keep on through habit fitting an arrow to the ...

Grief dares us to love once more.

In the midst of grief, all anyone can really do is be with us and make some casseroles. "… I’m here. Don’t be afraid. Let’s eat. ”

Grief fills the room up of my absent child, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, Remembers me of all his gracious parts, Stuffs out his vacant garme...

To fashion an inner story of our pain carries us into the heart of it, which is where rebirth inevitably occurs.

Writer Harriet Sarnoff Schiff has distilled her pain and tragedy in a book called The Bereaved Parent. When her young son died during an operation to correct a congenital heart malfunction, her clergy...

Most who know anything at all about the Oxbridge professor C. S. Lewis know that he wrote two books on pain and sorrow. One is more an apologetic on the nature of suffering, The Problem of Pain, and a...

And time remembered is grief forgotten, And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, And in green underwood and cover Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Back to Bethany The trans-Jordan village of Bethany was the place in which Jesus’ ministry began. It is now the place in which our text...

Everyone can master a grief but he that has it.

Feeling better…I also felt a sense of betrayal of my husband, even though I rationally knew that sustained grief could be morbid. Because grief may become a substitute for the dead one, giving up our ...

Real grief is not healed by time…If time does anything, it deepens our grief. The longer we live, the more fully we become aware of who she was for us, and the more intimately we experience what her l...

In grief nothing “stays put.”

Jesus, Lord—because you took on flesh, You know what it’s like to be us. You know what keeps us awake at night, or yanks us out of sleep in the early morning. You know what it’s like to have good days...

Almighty God–Father, Son and Holy Spirit: You tell us to pray with thanksgiving...and we do; giving thanks for Your daily provision and care, for the birth of a child, for new jobs and new friends, fo...

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Back to Bethany The trans-Jordan village of Bethany was the place in which Jesus’ ministry began. It is now the place in which our text...

Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.

As we feel the pain of our own losses, our grieving hearts open our inner eye to a world in which losses are suffered far beyond our own little world of family, friends, and colleagues. It is the worl...

I sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel; For words, like nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within.

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief, More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring. Comforter, where, where is your comforting? Mary, mother of us, where is your relief? My cri...

And can it be that in a world so full and busy, the loss of one weak creature makes a void in any heart, so wide and deep that nothing but the width and depth of eternity can fill it up!

Context 1 Peter is traditionally attributed to the apostle Peter. It is addressed to Christian communities in diaspora, scattered across Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), who were experiencing social m...

The present moment is significant, not as the bridge between past and future, but by reason of its contents, contents which can fill our emptiness and become ours, if we are capable of receiving them.

Merciful God, we turn away from the pains and cries of our world. Overwhelmed by its brokenness, we ignore the call to engage and love those who are hurting. Father, forgive us, strengthen us, and hel...