In Part 1, I told the story of a thirty-second embrace before a conference session, a couple rushing home to a grieving family, and thirteen words from Colossians 1:17 that turned out to be inscribed inside a stranger's wedding band. Here is what that room taught me.
Read MoreThe energy in the room shifted.
An academic, a professional, an accomplished provider. A wife, a caregiver, a pastoral leader, a friend. A wounded provider. Then she said, "My husband is a pastor, and they've asked him to lead the funeral service."
The embrace and the prayer took on new meaning for me.
Read MoreAnother client, a different session: "I keep waiting for the anxiety to go away before I do the hard thing." I hear a version of this constantly — the assumption that courage is downstream of the fear disappearing first. That safety has to arrive before the valley does, not inside it.
Psalm 23 was written by a shepherd who knew better.
Read MoreA client sits across from me mid-wait — a diagnosis not yet confirmed, a marriage not yet reconciled, a job not yet offered. Nothing has resolved. What's remarkable isn't the circumstance. It's the body. Jaw tight, breath shallow, eyes scanning the room like there's an exit they haven't found yet. They're not remembering a threat. They're bracing for one that hasn't arrived and may never come.
Read MoreScripture named this pattern centuries before "parentification" became a clinical term. A look at what God's Word, forty years of research, and the Christian counselors I trained under actually say — including where they disagree.
Read MoreThere are seasons when loss alters the structure of your entire world.
A death.
A betrayal.
A diagnosis.
A shattered expectation.
Grief is not simply sadness. It is the disruption of love, attachment, identity, and future hope.
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