A Personal Story: How Jesus Helps Us Through Deep Tragedy
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How Jesus Helps Us
Hello, and welcome to this week's post. We're going to talk about how Jesus helps us who have experienced deep tragedy. Over the next several weeks, I just want to invite you over for a cup of tea. We're going to sit down, we're going to talk. And I want to share with you the thing that has been the most helpful for me, specifically on my grief journey after child loss.
Now, if therapy has been helpful (which it has), and if church and community have been helpful (which they have), if eating healthy has been helpful, if exercise or reading books or listening to podcasts or journaling or art or anything – if anything has been helpful – it's because Jesus is the most helpful and He's the one who brings hope and healing.
Now, you might be wondering, how does that work? How does Jesus help us really? How does Jesus being the most helpful translate into other things like therapy and exercise being helpful after grief?
Ok, so first, realize Jesus is the Creator of all things, and He is the source of all good things. When describing Jesus in John 1:3, John says, "All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made." Jesus made all things.
And then there's James 1:17, which reminds us that “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of lights, with whom there's no variation or shadow due to change.”
Now, reading the book Heaven by Randy Alcorn really helped me with this perspective. He gives some examples there. I can't even remember the context of this part of the book, but he gives some examples, and it just really stuck with me. He says something like, "Puppies are delightful. Now, it's only because God is delightful. He makes puppies delightful." And I was like, "Wow, that's so interesting."
But think about this: the curse of sin and death is so bad, as us bereaved parents have experienced, that if there is any good left in the world or in our lives, it really is by the grace of God. “The light shines in darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” John 1:5.
How do we get the grace of God? Through Jesus. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:14.
So, we see that everything is dark, everything is broken, but that darkness doesn't overcome the light that Jesus is and brings. And like I said, it's through the grace of God, through Jesus, right? And so, we see that because God loved us, he sent his Son.
And then, you see that any good or helpful thing we experience, especially after deep loss, is because God, who is ultimately good and helpful, has created things like therapy and nourishing food and exercise to also be good and helpful, to actually reflect his goodness and help, and to point us back to Him, who is the source of all that.
So, how does that affect us on our grief journey? Well, it means that we can thank God for these good and helpful things that bring hope and healing after loss. But then, ultimately realize that these things will fall short in bringing the full hope and the full healing that we truly need. Why? Because they are not God. We can thank God for them, we can utilize them, and still find our ultimate hope in God.
Why Jesus?
So, now we've talked about from one perspective how Jesus is the most helpful in bringing hope and healing, but let's now look at really how Jesus brings hope and healing. In other words, why should we look to Jesus for hope and healing after child loss? What’s so great about Jesus?
Trigger Warning
Now, I just want to let you know that this is a possible trigger warning, okay? So, the following story contains a shooting, and if this is not a helpful story to read, please just skip below to the next section, and I'll share some more hope and healing found in Jesus.
So, I want to tell you a story. Now, before we were expecting our son Jack, whom we lost, and even before my first wedding anniversary, I was heading into work for my retail job at the mall. And when I walked in that morning, I felt like I hit an invisible wall. I suddenly stopped, and I was gripped with unexplainable fear. The thought occurred to me, "This is going to be a really hard day." I wondered if I should go home, but God reminded me that he will be with me no matter what happened. So, I continued to the little store I worked in and went on my day.
It was only maybe a few hours into my morning. I was about to go on my break, or just finishing up, I can't remember. I was in the back of the store when – and this is interesting, I almost went to the food court, which I had gone to many times on a break, but that day I decided to just hang out in the back of the store for my break. When all of a sudden, my co-workers and a couple of customers rushed back, and my boss urgently told me, "Get in the back office, because there's a shooting going on."
Oh, my word! I was terrified, and there we were, just huddled in the back office with the store locked down and the office door barricaded. We were all terrified, and my hands were trembling as I texted my husband on my old Razor cell phone (who remembers those?). But we had no idea what was really going on. The only thing we knew was that just a few months prior, there was a terrible mall massacre in Kenya.
And we were all thinking the worst, including one of our customers just happened to be someone who helped rescue people from that Kenya mall massacre. He was prepping us on what to do for x, y, and z in a worst case scenario. Okay, now I may have been trained in first aid, but I was not trained for this.
Then, I started to get texts from friends and family as I was sitting there on the floor: "Remember who God is!” and “You just posted on Facebook about how God is sovereign and in control.” “Proverbs 19:21 - Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.” “He is with you.” “Maybe God has been preparing you for this through your Bible study on His character."
Maybe they were right. Did I still feel sick to my stomach and almost mess my pants? Absolutely. You can't always change your body's natural reaction to terror.
While it was still a horrible day and people died, I know it could have been even worse. It could have been an even more mass tragedy. More people could have died. I could’ve easily been one of them. There is just a whole list of ways where I veered from my normal and somehow avoided being in the part of the mall where the shooting occurred.
Now, over the next few months, I desperately needed counseling and dove into the biography of God Bible study that I was doing. When I finally went back to work in the mall, I had about four 3x5 cards stuffed in my pockets with verses scribbled on them, front and back, to help me fight my panic attacks throughout the day. Was it an overnight success? Absolutely not. While my anxiety was better, a new environment and legit self-defense classes were also needed.
The Biggest Help
Now that almost 10 years have passed, I finally feel free from that anxiety of being in a mall shooting. When I look back, though, the thing that sticks out to me as being the biggest help and the source of everything else that was helpful is Jesus.
Okay, now I know child loss is different from a mall shooting. It is something that will stick with you the rest of your life. I think about my baby boy every day. And that's okay. I share this story for a reason: to show how knowing God personally brings hope and healing.
So, how do we get to know God personally? I get it, like, how is it possible that we would be able to get to know this God we cannot see, right? Now, this God of the universe, the One who created all things.
I heard this recently from a sermon at my church, and it blew my mind. So I have to share it here. Do you think that Macbeth or Romeo and Juliet knew who William Shakespeare was? No, they didn’t, because William Shakespeare didn’t write himself in the story. And just like us, we would be lost; we would have no idea of the Creator of our own story if He didn’t write Himself into our story. So, unless the Author of all things wrote Himself into our story, we would never have hope to know Him.
Oh, but thank God, He did! And He did that through Jesus, the Messiah. The Bible says in John 1:8, "No one has ever seen God, but the unique one [Jesus] who is himself God, is near to the Father's house, and he has revealed God to us."
Now, if Jesus is the Word of God like we saw earlier in John 1:1, "In the beginning, the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God," then we should look to and get to know the Bible, God's Word, so we can get to know this God who wrote Himself into our story through Jesus.
One Method to Really Get to Know God
Now, how do we do that? Okay, I'm asking a lot of how and why questions. Well, one very helpful way I found is to create a biography of God. I'm not original with this, but it is so impactful for my life, I have to share.
It's from Mardi Collier's book, What Do I Know About My God? It's a small little book, and I highly recommend it. I love the method that she shares because it actually creates a resource for you to go back to when you need to be reminded of who God is, and how He interacts with your pain. I can't even tell you the number of times I did this, this my first year of marriage. I have gone back to my notebook that I made countless times. It is such an incredible resource for me, and it's personal, and it means so much, and there are so many memories tied to it of how God worked in my heart with each verse I wrote.
I really want to encourage you to do this as well. Now, you don't have to start from scratch. That could be overwhelming. I highly recommend getting this book because she has a great start. In the back of the book, she lists all these Bible verse references out. I would just recommend when starting to create your biography of God, to look at those references and organize them according to attributes alphabetically.
Now, this is more of a topical study when you first start this, but then as you continue to read Scripture – and maybe you read it more like as a book, like each book individually so you're getting more context – then as you find attributes of God that stick out to you as you read, then you can insert them into your starter of your biography of God. You can expand it and grow it, and write notes and stuff on how God has used this in your life, and how he has met you in your pain as you keep going.
Creating your own biography of God gives you a plethora of Bible verses to pray through as well. When I was creating this resource of Bible Prayers for Bereaved Parents, this was a huge resource for that. If I want to pray and think about how, "My God is able," or "My God is with me," or "My God is my Shepherd, my Good Shepherd," then I went to this resource to know what verses to pray.
Examples from My Biography of God
Now, let me just share some examples to inspire you and get you excited about what's to come in the following weeks, okay? Let me get my book.
So, the first one I have in my book is "My God is able." One of the verses I have in this biography is Daniel 3:17, and it's talking about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego facing the fiery furnace, and this is what they say to King Nebuchadnezzar, "If our God whom we are serving exists, he is able to rescue us from the furnace of the blazing fire, and he will rescue us, O king, from your power as well." So, He's totally able. Now, the context is so powerful, so don't just take things out of context. I absolutely love that story. It's been really impactful for me over the years.
And then, what about "My God is in control," or "My God is sovereign," right? I actually have two sections for this, and here's one that I love: Ecclesiastes 7:13, "Consider the work of God; who can make straight what he has made crooked?" And Psalm 115:3, "Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases."
And now this sovereign God, did you know He's gracious? Under my tab "My God is gracious," I have "The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love," Psalm 145:8. Hmm, these are so good.
I'm just glancing through, and I think, "Wow, I just want to read them all to you." We’re going to go through this, and I'm really excited. So the next one I want to look up is, "My God is a righteous Judge." Psalm 9:4, and 7-8 say, "For you have maintained my just cause; you have sat on the throne giving righteous judgment. But the Lord sits enthroned forever; he has established his throne for justice, and he judges the world with righteousness, he judges the people with uprightness."
My God is merciful, and the Lord knows how much I need mercy. Micah 7:18 says, "Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever because he delights in steadfast love [which is also translated mercy]."
My God is all-powerful, my God is omnipotent – Jeremiah 32:17 and 27, "Oh Lord God, it is you who made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm." And then the Lord said, "Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh; is anything too hard for me?"
Okay, so I have topics like, "My God provides," "My God is the Savior," "My God is the Redeemer," "God works and is with me," "He is my Shepherd," "My God is strong." Oh my goodness, I have so many attributes of God. I just alphabetized it, and I love this resource. I think I would cry if it ever got destroyed or something, although thankfully we have Google. But God has really used this in my life.
Ready to Dive In?
And so, I really want to encourage you to do this as well, okay? So, that's what you get to expect in the coming weeks. Be sure to subscribe to our email list to not miss out. I just want to genuinely, practically take you by the hand, and together let's learn who our incredible God is and how he meets us in our pain.
Summary
As we wrap up this post, I want to circle back to the core: the profound impact Jesus has in our grief journey after child loss. Through this blog, we've seen how Jesus helps us, not just spiritually, but in practical ways too. He's there, enabling the support we find in therapy, community, and our personal care routines. He’s the reason good help exists and works.
The story I've shared here,is a real-life example of the constant support and love Jesus offers. How Jesus helps us, especially as bereaved moms, is by giving us a foundation of faith and strength, helping us rebuild amidst our grief. He brings a comfort that's hard to put into words, a kind of understanding that goes beyond what we usually find.
In creating our personal God biographies, we get to explore and recognize the many ways Jesus meets us in our need and in our pain.
So, as we close this post, let’s keep in mind how Jesus helps us, especially when life is the hardest imaginable. He’s not just a figure in the background; He’s right here with us, offering peace and comfort. Let’s keep sharing and growing in this journey, finding healing and hope in Jesus every step of the way.
Soli Deo Gloria,
Kathy
As a mom who’s suffered the loss of my baby, I know deep heart pain.
I tried to run from God, but he convinced me of his love and comforted my heart with hope and healing in Jesus.
Now, it’s my mission to share this same comfort with others who’ve experienced the pain of child loss.
— Kathy
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