Grief, Loss, and Gratitude in the Christian Life

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Whitney Pipkin
And we have Koinonia fellowship with Him in these dark places that we don’t want to go. And so somehow, inexplicably, you can become grateful for those places, even as you’re in them. You can say, you know, I don’t know what you’re doing, but please don’t waste this. Don’t let me fast forward past and through what you want to do here.

Courtney Doctor
Welcome to the deep dish, a podcast from the gospel coalition where we love having deep conversations about deep truths. I’m Courtney doctor, and I’m joined today by two of my real life friends, Wendy Allsup and Whitney Pipkin, and we’re going to talk about grief, loss and gratitude in the Christian life. So welcome friends. Thank

Wendy Alsup
you. I’m excited to be here. Yeah, thanks for having us. Courtney.

Courtney Doctor
I’m excited about this conversation. Many of you are going to be familiar with both Whitney and Wendy through their writing, but I’ve actually, like I said, they’re real life friends. I’ve actually known Whitney since she was in high school, and she, fairly recently, within the last 18 months, has written a book on the topic that we’re talking about today. It’s called we shall all be changed. The subtitle is how facing death with a loved one transforms us. And I want to talk a little bit more about that title in a little bit, but the book won a TGC Book Award. It’s a It’s a beautifully written, deeply helpful book, and Wendy has written numerous books, including companions and suffering comfort in times of loss and loneliness. And that came out in June of 2020, which was a time that the entire world was facing and reeling from a lot of loss and loneliness, and so I want to start off like I said. We are real life friends, so I actually know a lot of your stories. But would you each tell us about your own experience, especially with grief? Whitney, why don’t you kick us off?

Whitney Pipkin
Yeah, so my own experience with grief feels somewhat ordinary, I guess, in that I lost a parent, which is something we all expect to do. It happened earlier in life than I thought it would. My mom was 63 but she what’s unique, I guess, is that she had cancer for 20 years. So from Middle School on for me, and it was this thing that was shaping my sister and my lives in unique ways that we didn’t really see until in looking back. And so it was this book is the story of grappling with this theology of death that I somewhat lacked, or had kind of wrongly, in a lot of ways, saw death as something to be avoided as much as possible, even though it was the shadow that was sort of chasing us down for many of those years. But it wasn’t until she died that I saw that this valley of the shadow of death really is a place of God’s presence and nearness, a place of meeting with the man of sorrows and a place that leaves us changed and hopefully makes us better, comforters and companions like Wendy writes about as well. I love

Courtney Doctor
that. Did you know that the week your mom was diagnosed was the week we had a women’s retreat that week and that weekend, and I was sharing my testimony, and she and I, she was really the first person I knew that had been diagnosed with cancer, somebody that I knew, that I knew well, but yeah, I just remember that, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s Amazing. And she walked it just so beautifully. But Wendy, what about you?

Wendy Alsup
So a lot of what I write from stems from my husband being diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2012 and that that was a very troubling, destabilizing trial that I had no frame of reference for, and we ended up getting divorced in 2015 and then the next year, as a single mom trying to get my feet back under me, I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and that that secondary trauma on top of the first was particularly pressing pressed you down. And just this last January. So three months ago, my my dad died, and you know, he was 87 years old, and the death of a parent is not an abnormal, especially at the age of 87 but he had stepped in so much into the role for me and my boys. Of you know, he really came through his dad and grandfather, and he was a big source of stability for me. So the the sorrow upon sorrow upon sorrow has been, you know, something pressing and conforming me to the image of Christ, for sure, it’s definitely opened my eyes to the inevitability of suffering in this life. And I used to spend a long time thinking I could avoid suffering, and now. A it’s a whole mental shift. It’s like no suffering, honestly, is the norm in a fallen world. And so I feel like, actually, my dad’s death, on top of some of the other things, has has shifted how I think about it. Even more suffering as a conforming thing, not an abnormal thing. Hmm.

Courtney Doctor
Well, and I think what you just said, the inevitability of suffering, is one reason that it’s It sounds strange to say like we’re excited about this conversation, but it’s because we all need to know how to better suffer as Christians, and we just kind of scratched the surface of this idea that loss really comes in all shapes and sizes, and so I know I’m speaking for all three of us when we want to start off by saying that if you are listening and currently walking through loss, we are just deeply sorry, and we do hope that this conversation offers some help and some comfort as you hear how others have walked through deep sorrow and what what they’ve learned through it. And so Wendy, for you, was there anything that you found surprising about grief when you experienced it firsthand?

Wendy Alsup
I think a lot of it was just the surprise of experiencing it firsthand, like your first really deep round with grief. I think beforehand, maybe you think you’re immune to it. There’s a lot of naivety that I had previous. I thought I had suffered until I really suffered. And also, I don’t mean to say that in a way of comparing or suffering to one another, because all suffering hurts and is real in the moment. But for me, it started off a lot with shock, almost like a concussion. You know, there’s the initial shock of the early circumstances and what, what? What has landed in my life. And you wake up the next morning and you you feel like there’s something weighing over you, but it takes you a little while for you to remember, as you’re coming out of the fog of sleep, then it hits you again. I felt like, you know, there was a sense in which, for months I was walking around almost like a concussion, you know, like my brain just wasn’t working right. But then there’s also the secondary, as the ongoing suffering goes and I think what I didn’t expect in that. I really expected it kind of to get over, it, to move on, and I didn’t expect the lingering nature of it, and, and, and how alienating, that’s the word that keeps coming back for me. I felt very, very alienated in suffering in the early days, you’re surrounded a lot of times by people bringing you meals or whatever. But then as time goes on, the grief doesn’t necessarily dissipate at the same rate that the people showing up at your door, does you know, I

Courtney Doctor
think about that a lot. Wendy, I will actually put it on my calendar, like three months out for somebody that I know has walked through something really hard, and whether or not I reach out, just that reminder to myself to continue to pray for them, because it’s so easy in the beginning to remember to pray and to remember to remember to reach out. But I think that that’s a really important point, that that the grief just so far out lasts, kind of the surrounding. So if you’re listening and you have a friend that has recently walked through some suffering, maybe put some notes on your calendar for 3456, months out, a year out, I marked have a really good friend whose mother died recently, and it’s on my calendar for every year to just remember, you know, I just want to remember to pray for her and to to reach out. Well, Whitney, I have told you multiple times that I love the title of your book. First of all, the cover is absolutely beautiful, but the title of it so the title is taken from First Corinthians 15. And I want to read that first Corinthians 15, starting in verse, 51 says, Listen, I am telling you a mystery. We will not all fall asleep, but we will all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we will all be changed. So Paul says that phrase, we will all be changed twice. And what he’s talking about there is how we will be changed when we’re raised to newness of life. But you have this beautiful double meaning that points to not only how the one who passes from life through death to new life, how they’re changed, but also how we, as we walk with people through that, through their final days on this earth as they move into their eternal life, but through death, which is how we will all pass if, if Jesus does not come first, but, but that will all be changed here, through that process, through that experience. And so what are a few of the ways that you’ve been changed most? And. You walked through your mother’s death.

Whitney Pipkin
So it’s changed. I would say one of the primary ways, in an ongoing way, is it’s changed how my relationship with my body, what it’s for, what its limits are. You know, Psalm 90 is something you can read and but then when you start to embody it by watching what it looks like to have someone reach the end of their numbered days to went for Moses, you know, when he writes that he’s God has just told him you won’t, you’re about to die. You’re not going to make it into the promised land. And he’s writing and relating to God in light of this bookend that I knew theoretically was there is real, and it’s coming. And so to have someone you love die and a walk with them through the actual dying process. It’s more tangible. It’s more real that this will happen. And so it makes some of the things we do around our body, and some of the things you guys have talked about on this podcast about aging, it makes them feel a little bit ridiculous. Because why? You know my body is for something. It’s to give God glory now and into eternity, and for whatever reason, he has designed us, If Christ tarries to go through death to get to the other side, there’s something about it that transforms us in a particular way. It’s a it’s a trial that is part of that, that walking through the waters, and there’s a gift in watching others do it first, and learning what that looks like, learning that sometimes it’s still scary, even if you trust in Christ, learning that death is still the great enemy, and so there are still these phases that you will go through of just raging against it, but also receiving the redemptive qualities that have come with it, because Christ has conquered death, because it is like a king with his thumbs cut off, sitting under the table, and yet we will have to face this enemy. We run in his wake, as you taught at that TGC conference, we run in the wake of the victorious Christ. But death is this defeated enemy. So it’s changed my relationship with death. It’s but one of the surprising ways has it’s changed my relationship with my body and how I view what it’s for and what it what it can do.

Courtney Doctor
So Proverbs is right Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom. It’s so it’s so true. Um, well, just along those lines you were talking about this idea of it can even be scary, or it can be scary even for believers. And so I think sometimes Christians can feel guilty about grieving, and we see it turn into this whole thing about, oh, you know, they’re in a better place, and just set your eyes on, you know, where your treasure is there, your heart will be also. And so what would you say to somebody who both of you, what would you say to somebody who would feel guilty about grieving as a Christian?

Wendy Alsup
Yeah, the first response I would have is, it’s biblical. I mean, we have a whole book called lamentations. The psalms of lament are a major, category. And so God, clearly, in His inspired Word, knew grief and lament would endure that there are multiple seasons where people are spending their entire lives as the children of God in mourning and grief. So and and I really see grief as our resistance to the fall like we’re saying, No, I’m not going to make peace with the fall of man. It’s wrong. Death is wrong. Death is wrong. Death is not what God created us for. Now we have hope, right? We have hope through it. But you know, even as my dad or your mom, Whitney, as their death was approaching, what do we do? We fought it, you know, yeah, and that’s a right, that’s not a sinful response. That’s our resistance to evil, that’s our resistance to the fall. So I but we don’t grieve without hope. You know that’s the difference. We grieve as people who know that death is defeated, right? But you know it’s a it’s right and good for us to resist the sin and suffering in the world.

Courtney Doctor
Yeah, that’s beautifully said. I like you holding the tension of those two things. Whitney, what would you say?

Whitney Pipkin
I think many of us are sort of made to feel guilty by some of the language that snuck into the church, this kind of positivity, this greeting card Christianity, that in our effort to comfort really ourselves, we want to make things really tidy and have this person’s grief, have an expiration date and have a happy conclusion. And we do that, one of the subtle ways I’ve noticed we do it in like a small group setting, is you say this horrible thing that’s happened, you drop this huge bomb of suffering on your small group, and they say, but it’s okay, you know, we got to go to the lake last week. Again, and that was good. We we like have to as though it’s too weighty for people. We don’t let it just, you know, it’s I, I, we don’t need to tie a bow on it. We know that, as you said, we grieve with that, with hope, because of what’s going on in eternity, in the eternal timeline. So it’s not necessarily because my kids soccer game went well, that this loss is okay. We don’t have to even out our day with like a plus and minus when we go around the table and say our goods and badge for the day. It’s a way of sharing and what happened that day. But it’s not to even them out. There’s days you can just say it was just tough and we we we need to sit in that ash heap like Job’s friends did the first few days with people, and get more comfortable with living in the story of Scripture, which we don’t we’re like in a very small part of it, right? And so we don’t need to keep fast forwarding through resurrection like right through Good Friday that didn’t happen, right to resurrection, and live there all the time. There’s a lot of life lived in that Saturday between where we don’t know how God’s going to turn it for good, and yet we repeat the true story to each other of that he did, and he will, even as we don’t know how he’s doing that in our individual stories. I was just

Wendy Alsup
gonna say, I appreciate you saying that, Whitney, because this Saturday, you know, my dad died as the first person I’ve been with as they died. And so this Saturday of Easter weekend was so comforting to me, because I just felt free to be sad, you know, free to remember the the in between. And it’s a sweet day, because you know the resurrection is coming, but you also feel the freedom on that particular day of of just owning the cost and the loss

Courtney Doctor
and the the unknownness that the disciples would have felt the lostness that we feel in those seasons of grief. Well, as we’re talking about that, it’s not just what we say to ourselves, it’s what we say to each other. And Wendy, you talk a lot about that, right? That’s even the subtitle of your book. Is this idea that the companions and the comfort, or as we see in the book of Job, the lack of comfort, like what we say to others in their grief really matters, and what others say to us and our grief really matters. And so I think walking with somebody through seasons of grief can be tough for so many reasons. Sometimes it’s because we don’t know what to say, and sometimes it’s because we’re wanting to maybe move them faster than we should through this grief, because it’s messy for us, it’s hard for us to sit. And when people are grieving, they can be depressed, they can be angry. It comes out in a lot of different ways. And so what advice do you have Wendy for pursuing somebody for for anybody listening, who has a friend or loved one, who’s grieving, that might they might be hard to move towards, they might be hard to love. What would you say to them? How can we walk How can we be better companions and suffering?

Wendy Alsup
I found that the friends who could listen without feeling they had to fix were really the ones who helped me to get to the next step. Like I did, have a lot of anger, particularly at my diagnosis of breast cancer, and then I was also diagnosed with another tumor and my abdomen, and then pre cancerous cells in my uterus, and I just had the string of things on top of dealing with the schizophrenic ex husband who was not being treated at that point, and I did. I had a lot of anger, but I had two friends in particular who had had some pretty tragic loss themselves, and they both did not seem threatened by my anger, and they could listen to me, and it was their safe place of listening so I could be honest about my struggles without fearing that I was going to ruin their faith. I have some folks that I couldn’t be honest with my struggles because it seemed to threaten their faith, but these friends could listen, and it was the very act of me going through these emotions verbally to this person who held faith that actually helped me to move forward in my own and to process some of this anger. And sometimes I’d come to the end of it and I would be like, Wow, repentant. You know, of these things, or when I couldn’t pray for myself, they would pray for me, not with a lecture, but holding on to that faith, praying to God in faith for me, and even those prayers of faith for me when I couldn’t argue. Articulate it for myself, were just a real gift of grace to me in those moments, I love

Courtney Doctor
that, that it was the people that had gone through suffering that were better able to and it’s that we comfort with the comfort that we’ve received. But there can be a negative side to that too, right? Whitney, we were talking earlier just about how if somebody has suffered greatly that went that when they’re the companion to someone else’s suffering, sometimes they come in with maybe too heavily with their own story. So how would you advise people to steward their own story in a way that kind of points them towards what Wendy was saying, but not towards overplaying their story in the midst of someone else’s grief,

Whitney Pipkin
yeah, not over sharing on, you know, trying to one up them inadvertently, right? We want to relate to people, and in that desire to relate, which is good to say, Me too, I’ve been there. You’re safe with me, we can accidentally, and this is the trouble with writing a book on this topic, is that, you know people think you might know the right thing to say, and it is still so hard. Every time somebody I know in real life is going through something, maybe especially when I’ve been through it, it’s like, I don’t, I don’t want to, your experience is still going to be different. It’s going to be very different. And so I think the best word we have is, is how right? When we can sit with people and we say, This is what I see in your situation, I see that this is hard. I see that this is really hard, and it’s not getting any better. And I know that you know that we both know that God is still good, and that he says these incredible things in Scripture. And we have the psalms of lament. David goes from this to this, right? He goes from this is hard to God is good. But to be able to sit in that space in between, and to hold in both hands His goodness and the hardness with people, and to not feel the need to push them into a tidy story in that moment, but to learn to sit with them, I think is it is a big gift. I think I’ve always loved one wonder why there’s something, and someone says, Man, that is really hard, but it’s like, you’re right. It is Yep, and I’m not crazy. That’s why I feel Yeah, and that’s why Google Maps has become suddenly mystifying to me. Is because this thing is going on in my brain feels like a concussion, like you said, Wendy, and so to validate the feelings while still holding on to the truth. I think is a really valuable thing we can give to people instead of just telling our own story and our effort to relate to them.

Courtney Doctor
That’s good. That’s good. Well, we’re going to take a quick break to hear about a resource from our sponsor, crossway, and we will be right back. Well, welcome back. We are continuing to talk about grief, loss and gratitude, which we’re going to talk about that combination here in just a minute. But was there a scripture passage that in particular, you know, Whitney, you were just talking about this idea of holding the holding grief, intention with hope, and the fact that this is hard and God is good, and so are there scripture passages that really ministered to your own soul in the midst of grief? I know, for me, I think a lot about the first three verses of John 14, where Jesus is talking to his disciples, and he’s preparing them to live this life on earth without him, without him being bodily with them. And he says, Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me. He says, and I just the the practicality or the details of this are just astounding to me and the surety of it so Jesus talking in my father’s house, are many rooms, if it were not, so would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and I will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And so when we realize this is Jesus just talking to His disciples like this promise is so sure, and the reality of of what’s to come just feels so clear. And so that is just a passage that ministers greatly to me about the surety of our hope. But what about what about each of you? Wendy, what is a passage that is ministered to you this

Wendy Alsup
last year? You know, my dad died January 16, and it was he was in the hospital for two weeks, and he was upright and active before he went in the hospital. And, you know, even though he was 87 it was a really traumatic two weeks.

Courtney Doctor
It was very up and down. I remember the there was like great hope, and then it was and then it would go bad, and then it got good again. And yeah, it was a very tumultuous two weeks. I remember it

Wendy Alsup
was a very tumultuous two weeks, and at the end, they told him that they were going to have to redo the surgery that started it off to have any hope of him living, and he didn’t want to go through that. And so then it was him asking. Asking if we could hasten his death. And you know, it’s just really, really deeply traumatic. And I was, ended up being with him, alone, by myself, the night he died. And it was interesting to me, because I was going through the book of Psalms, and every day, oh, it was so hard. For two weeks driving up and back from the hospital, the psalm for that day meant so much to me. And then the ending Psalm the night he died, was Psalm 116 the precious in my sight is the death of my loved ones. And I claim that I listen to it over and over again, because David talks about the chains of death, you know, the cords of death wrapped around me, and that’s how I felt, you know, that I’d walk with this person through death, and it just felt like, you know, a vine that you can’t get yourself out of, and you’re trying to, but God’s word about the preciousness of death, like transformed how I thought about it, like, this wasn’t horrible. I mean, it seemed horrible in the moment, but this was precious. And I really, I’ve claimed, like I read I listened to it on the way to work every day, Psalm 116 so at some point I’m going to have to read a little more of the Bible. But right now, Psalms 116, is just meant so much to me as a perspective on death, when death just seems so horrible in the moment

Whitney Pipkin
that’s incredibly specific and beautiful that the Lord met you in His Word in that very specific way. Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s when we know it is he is at work. It is living and active, and it’s him at work in it. Thank you. Yeah, Whitney, what about you? Well, I would, yeah, all the psalms of lament, which are the majority of the Psalms, thankfully, for our real life. But I too. So John 11, which I know you wrote about in your book as well, Wendy, just that, I think often of Jesus’s utterly human pace in that story. I mean the fact that he is not in a hurry when he’s this is when Lazarus is dying, and then has died, Jesus lingers and takes his time going to the sisters. And when they come, he says, If you had been here. They say, if you had been here, our brother would not have died. And that’s so much, especially the way that a lot of illnesses become this, like ongoing, chronic, long thing, where you pray for things for a long time, and you are weary, and you want, if Jesus is going to do something, you want it to go ahead and especially during the dying process, it’s like, let’s just this is long and this is a marathon. Whatever’s next, let’s get through it. Jesus’s posture of just patience with toward them, and the fact that he takes time between they’re begging him to intervene, and his intervention of resurrection, that he takes time in between to weep with them. Really validates the process of grief. To me, it’s like Jesus isn’t in a hurry, like we are to zoom to the the good part. He values the the waiting and the lingering. There’s something he does in us. There’s something he did in those sisters through that process that was intentional, that did not have to happen. And there’s suffering in our lives that we look back we’re like that, that I don’t know why you had to do that. I mean that really you could have not done that. We know that He’s sovereign and powerful, and yet the comfort of seeing Jesus use that and value that process. I also think of first Kings 19, when just the simple picture of Elijah being brought food, drink in a nap and his grief, that’s what I when people are like, what’s the first thing to do? It’s one of those things, give them, if they have kids, take them, let them nap, let them sleep, the way that God validates the needs of the body and how primary they become in seasons of grief that you’re just I mean, the basics are really all you can manage. And so to see that and to meet people there can be a real gift. Well,

Courtney Doctor
we’ve titled this episode, and we’ve kind of been alluding to it a little bit, but I would love for you to each really just say it as explicitly as you can, because I do think it is that tension between this is hard and God is good. But we’ve titled this episode grief, loss and gratitude, which does seem like such a strange trilogy in a way. So why would we include the word and how can we include the word gratitude when talking about grief and loss?

Wendy Alsup
Well, I would say that, you know, my gratitude is that I’ve been pressed into an eternal understanding of life, and I didn’t want it. I didn’t know I didn’t want it. I thought I loved Jesus. I wanted to be in. Heaven, I really thought that I valued the eternal, until you were really pressed into valuing the eternal. This world is not my home. This is not all. There is and suffering does that. Suffering exposes the idol that is comfort and safety and peace in this life we’re promised comfort and safety and peace is just not promised in this life. And so it’s pressed me to value eternity, and that’s a good, good thing for my soul.

Courtney Doctor
Whitney, what about you?

Whitney Pipkin
Yeah, gratitude. When I even that, that combo can be kind of painful for me to think about. When you’re in the thick of it and you feel the need to produce gratitude, or someone else expresses to you, what are you grateful for? What you know the need to express gratitude. I remember at one time feeling like my legs were still broken and God was asking me to get up and walk again. Walk out the faith, walk out the basics that I was like, I really don’t want to do that yet. I want to kind of stew in this a little bit. And it was at that time through one of the prayers of the pilgrims that that God reminded me that joy is a fruit of the Spirit, and it’s one I can ask for, and that I don’t have to produce on my own. I don’t have to sit here and conjure it, and I don’t have I certainly don’t have to do that to prove that I’m a Christian to myself or anyone else I can because that I mean, then you think about joy and that lineup of something that the Spirit produces in you, that’s what I want. I don’t want the stevia version of it, right? I want the real joy that he produces that’s sweeter than honey, that comes from his word, that comes really from fellowshipping with the person of Christ in the place of suffering, which is what Scripture says. That’s where we fellowship is in suffering. He companions us in it. And we have Koinonia fellowship with Him in these dark places that we don’t want to go. And so somehow, inexplicably, you can become grateful for those places, even as you’re in them. You can say, you know, I don’t know what you’re doing, but please don’t waste this. Don’t let me fast forward past and through what you want to do here

Courtney Doctor
that is really good. Would you each please speak a word of encouragement, because I know that there are women listening, people listening right now that are in the acute phases and stages of grief I was sharing with you all at the beginning, that I have a friend who’s just this week walked through really a horrific loss, and I think that that’s a special, a special word that we want to speak to you if, if that is, if you are in the acute phases of grief. And so I would love to hear from both Wendy and Whitney on this, a word of encouragement if you’re, if you’re in the shock phases, the in initial stages of grief. What would you say?

Wendy Alsup
I would just encourage someone that you don’t have to do you can be for as long as you need to be. And think of it like a concussion. You know, if you get a concussion, what do you need to do for a while, if you’ve gotten a shock to your brain and your body, and your brain probably needs to rest, and as long as your brain needs to rest, and in terms of any kind of spiritual formation, you know, sit in the grace and rest that God gives you, and you don’t have to put on a happy face. You don’t have to take care of everybody else’s faith. When your faith is stressed, you can be and be as long as you need to be. And Jesus is the shepherd, and he’s taking responsibility for your faith right now. You know he’s taking he’s he’s got the the shield and the staff, he’s guarding you. And there’s, it’s time for you to be in the emotional and spiritual hospital, laying letting someone else feed you, letting someone else bring you what you need for as long as until your brain is ready to engage again.

Whitney Pipkin
That’s beautiful, yeah. And the gift of getting to that place is that I remember saying this to my mom. I, you know, couple, like a day before she died. This, this right now, when you can’t do anything is when it matters. Believes that Christ’s work is finished. This is when, like, Do we really believe that his work is finished? Or do we believe that I have to get up and read my Bible, or else I’m not a Christian? Like when you are completely debilitated by grief or loss or chronic illness, whatever that looks like. That’s when, when you’re in the pit, and it matters that Jesus not only has spent time in the pit, but that his work on the cross is all that you need to be made, right with God, you do not have to perform. And it’s it can really change. I mean, that’s part of the transformation, is how you emerge from that pit. If you are willing to receive that shaping and that being brought low, can change the way that you relate to God. Of like this, I you know, I really depend, I had to depend on you, and now, therefore, I see how good it is for it, for Christ’s work to be finished, and for me to be a human being, and for all the work I do to flow from that, instead of being upstream of that, which is the Christian story

Courtney Doctor
Wendy and Whitney, you’re both willing to offer us comfort from the comfort that you have received. And so thank you for your willingness to do that for your willingness to come on and be a guest on the deep dish. And normally we ask maybe a little bit more fun question as we wrap up each episode. But what I want to ask you is is to answer a question that is, when you have both been in the season of grief, what is something that someone did for you, that helped you or comforted you and you’ve both again, alluded to this. They’ve they’ve listened to you, they’ve reached out, they’ve met very basic needs, but, but if you could each just say one thing that really stood out, very tangible, very practical, what was that?

Wendy Alsup
You know, some of them the best gifts I received, along with the listening were these ones that kind of encouraged me to sit like people would give me. I just actually recently, after my dad’s death, someone sent me a little box and it had a blanket and a teacup and some teas and just those kind of things, rather than a book, because a book make me feels like something I need to do, but things that encourage me to be were were helpful. Here’s something comforting for you to be, not something for you to do. And you know, even just a soft blanket that you could put your head on. You know, these are simple things that gift of tea, tea in a sweet tea cup. Those are kind of little gifts that, to me, meant a lot because they encouraged me that it’s okay just to be for a while. Yeah,

Courtney Doctor
to curl up. I’ve always said blankets are my love language, and so I’m going to start using that as a way of reaching out to friends and grief that’s really beautiful. Thank you. Wendy Whitney, what about you?

Whitney Pipkin
So something specific came to mind when you asked our friend Susan, who you remember was really present in that season, particularly of anticipatory grief for me. So when I knew my mom was dying, I didn’t know when or how or how to show up, and she said to me, Do what feels urgent. So pay attention to what feels urgent, even though you don’t know why it feels urgent. And I think that going through a particular type of grief you haven’t been through before, and you don’t know where you’re at in the story, and you’re very disoriented. That was a really clarifying question for me, and a way for me to listen to the nudging of the Spirit that was bizarre to me, like was bizarre that God would have me have a conversation that I’ve been terrified to have for 20 years, and that that would feel urgent. It was and yet, looking back, you know, I’m so grateful she gave me permission and language for that, because I couldn’t have told you why, but it was the thing that that felt urgent. Often didn’t make sense. Sometimes it was, it was a nap, which is always something to pay attention to when you’re grieving, but that that language really has helped me. And that’s something I say to people in just crisis now, is, you know, it’s kind of like, do do the next right thing, kind of language. But it’s like, what is it that’s rising up among all these things that you feel like you have to do and your brain is on overload? What’s the one thing to do next? And that language helped me a lot.

Courtney Doctor
Well, friends, we do hope that this has offered comfort and help and hope for you as you’re walking through grief, like you said. Wendy, it is inevitable for all of us that it has helped, maybe prepare you to walk through seasons of grief, and that it has shaped the way you. Will walk with a friend through grief. And so if you have enjoyed or if this episode of the deep dish from the gospel coalition has been helpful, we would encourage you to share it with someone else who might find it helpful. So we will see you next time on the deep dish.