I have been talking with thoughtful people for years now on Created in the Image of God—pastors, scholars, scientists, entrepreneurs, writers, survivors. Every so often, though, a guest says something that does not merely interest me. It meets me where I am.
This past Sunday’s show was like that.
She spoke beautifully about faith, desire, time, and the spaciousness of life with God. But what met me most directly was her honesty about grief: the sudden death of her father during college, the later suicide of her brother, and the recognition that she did not fully process those losses in the moment. Life moved on. Responsibilities remained. Only later, through writing, did she begin returning to those griefs and discovering what they had done in her.
That mattered to me because I am in such a season now.
Over a short span of about two years, I lost both of my sisters and my father. Each death came differently. Each left its own questions. Each left its own burden for those who remained.
My older sister, a lifelong smoker, died of cancer. That kind of death carries a bitter clarity. You grieve the person, but also the long arc of choices, consequences, stubbornness, and all the things you could not change.
My younger sister, who struggled with addictions, was killed by a drunk driver. That kind of loss feels not only tragic but violently senseless. Addiction already leaves behind a trail of grief, confusion, and fractured hopes. Add someone else’s recklessness, and the sorrow gets tangled with anger and unanswered questions.
Then there was my father. He had already outlived both daughters and two wives. He died shortly before his 94th birthday, which sounds, on paper, like a long and completed life. But it still surprised everyone who knew him. Some people become so fixed in the landscape of your world that even age does not prepare you for their absence.
Three deaths. Three different griefs.
That is one of the things Jen helped me name, even indirectly: grief is never generic. We use one word for it, but grief changes shape depending on the life, the loss, the history, the regrets, and the responsibilities left behind.
And grief is not just sorrow. It is stewardship.
The dead leave behind more than memories. They leave paperwork, stories, unfinished business, unresolved relationships, warnings, obligations, and silence. The ones left behind inherit all of it.
That is why grief often does not reveal itself fully at first. At first, you survive. You function. You handle what must be handled. You do the next thing. The deeper meanings often come later.
That was Jen’s point, and it rang true to me. Writing became the place where she returned to her losses. Not to indulge them, but to understand what they had formed in her. I know something of that now. There are griefs that do not speak in the first moment. They wait. Then they reappear in prayer, in memory, in a legal document, in a family story, in a random sentence, in an empty chair.
Some pain is immediate. Some pain is delayed. Both are real.
What also stayed with me from Jen was her comment that, over time, she has been learning to become more hospitable to being human.
That is wisdom.
Grief teaches creatureliness whether we welcome the lesson or not. It confronts us with limits we cannot negotiate. It reveals how little we control. It exposes our impatience with mystery. We want explanation, closure, and resolution on demand. Usually grief gives us none of those. It gives us time, memory, and the slow work of bearing what we would never have chosen.
And yet that does not mean God is absent.
Jen spoke of God’s nearness in the valley of the shadow of death. Not above it. Not after it. In it.
That is not a sentimental thought. It is a hard-won one.
I have been thinking a lot lately about the line that Jesus “learned obedience through the things he suffered.” There is mystery in that. But at the very least it means this: to be human is to learn in time, under pressure, through endurance, inside limits. We are not formed only by ideas. We are formed by what we survive, what we carry, and what we finally dare to revisit honestly.
That is why writing matters. It slows the mind enough to hear what the heart has been trying to say. It helps separate grief from noise. It gives shape to what otherwise remains a fog.
Jen’s interview mattered to me because it reminded me that grief does not have to be hurried in order to be faithful. Some grief ripens into understanding only after years. Some losses do not become meaningful all at once. Some truths must be revisited before they can be received.
Not all pain yields wisdom. But pain honestly faced can.
What grief taught the writer, and what it is teaching me, is simple enough to say and difficult enough to live:
You do not always understand your losses when they happen.
Sometimes you understand them only when you return to them.
And sometimes God meets you there.
You are created in the image of God.
So were the ones we have lost.
And those left behind are still called to bear that image with courage, tenderness, and truth.
Sneak Peek: What’s Coming Up on Created in the Image of God
Next on Created in the Image of God:
- Sunday, July 26th at 7 a.m. US Central time: I interview Richard Strilowitch, corporate sage coach and leadership mentor, on treating work as a spiritual journey and how inner wisdom can shape the way we lead, serve, and grow.
- Tuesday, July 28th at 8:00 p.m. Central time: I interview Mark Galli, author, editor, and former editor in chief of Christianity Today, on faith, tradition, worship, holiness, and the enduring pursuit of truth, grace, and spiritual renewal.
As always:
You are created in the image of God, and God loves His cr
