Books for the Grieving

We received books on grief from lots of different people who have walked through different types of grief, loss, or suffering. I wanted to share the ones I have read (some I finished, some I did not) and which I love. And hopefully in sharing these, if you are grieving the loss of a child or know someone who is, here is a resource for you.

A Grief Observed by CS Lewis - a book for all seasons of grief, a book that I will probably return to again and again.

Holding onto Hope by Nancy Guthrie - this book spoke directly to my heart because it’s about child loss. And it walks through the story of Job. I could probably read this every 6 months and it would speak to my heart in a new way each time.

Lament for a Son by Nicholas Wolterstorff - its short and concise, a love letter in some moments and a stream of thoughts on death and grief after the author's adult son dies hiking/climbing. We actually read this in Uganda for an Apprenticeship assignment and I reread it last fall and it obviously had an entire different meaning to me.

Not pictured: How big is your umbrella? by Sheila Wray Gregorie which I read, it is short and practical and I liked that about it! Also, Surviving Sorrow by Kim Erickson which I have not yet started.

I started When the Stars Disappear by Talbot and The Jesus of My Grief by Katie Kelty but didn't finish either. Some of the books on grief start with the author's grief stricken story and sometimes that is a heavy burden to read when you already feel like you are in the midst of your own grief filled story.

I know we received a few others that I am forgetting. I'd love to know if you have a specific book that has spoken to you as you walked through grief.

Comments

Day 32 - How grief changed me

I obviously missed quite a few days - I took about 2 weeks off - turns out blogging about heavy stuff is draining and I probably bit off more than I could chew by aiming to do 35 posts. I have been reflecting on how grief has changed me over the last two years. In many ways, I am not the same person I was when 2021 began. Grief has changed my thought life, my friendships, my work. First - My world got tiny. I often felt myself looking inward (at my usually crappy situation) and feeling a lot of pity, sadness, anger and occasional shame. In those seasons, it’s so hard for me to be an engaged friend. Essentially grief has made me selfish. When you are going through so much stuff, you don’t have capacity to extend yourself to be there for your people. There’s nothing wrong with that - that’s the reality of grief: other people are checking on you for a long time - for good reason. But that’s hard for me- I wasn’t built to be needy, to mope or even be able to answer “...

Day 19 - Joy in the In Between

That phrase makes me roll my eyes sometimes. Joy in the in between. It feels like a quick way to brush off the troubles you are living amidst and force yourself to just "be happy" instead. But, I think I am missing some of the sentiment of the phrase when I let my jaded heart get in the way. When I look back at pictures from the days between Jack's second surgery and when his soul left this earth, I do see joy. I see the faces of my family members who came to see him for the first time. Like my grandparents meeting their first great grandchild. My friends coming to swoon over him even with all of his tubes and unable to hold him. I see photos of us with Jack, holding his hand, enjoying every moment we had with him knowing it was a gift, a miracle. There was pain and sorrow during those days, of course. But essentially joy in the in between is life. We are living right now in the "not yet." We live among pain and sorrow daily (often not as grave in severity...

Day 17 - Joy

Sitting in a hospital is a bit of a time warp. The hours pass slowly some days and other days they fly by. We had a lot of visitors which passed time quickly but only one could come in at a time (COVID rules) and one of us had to leave because only two people could be at the bedside at a time. The rules had actually loosened up about 3 weeks before Jack was born and they tightened back up again at the end of August. The timing was a sweet gift from God. After Jack’s second surgery we did a lot of sitting and waiting. We waited to see if his kidneys would start working again. We waited as the dialysis machine slowly pulled excess fluid out of his body. We waited to see if his heart function would improve after they repaired his arch again. It is an agonizing type of waiting. We were helpless to change the situation. We waited for miracles. We searched for any tiny sign of improvement each day. We eventually were told that Jack’s heart may not ever pump on its own ...

Shickel Family

Search This Blog