I recently met Becky Russell at a Bereaved Parents USA gathering. After attending one of her workshops, I knew I wanted to have her on the Grieving Parents Sharing Hope podcast.
Becky and I are both on this road because of the loss of our daughters. Our conversation centered on how faith shapes grief after child loss and why it is important to understand the spiritual foundation we carry with us into our grief.
When Jae Lynn’s Death Shook Becky’s Faith
Becky and her husband adopted their daughter, Jae Lynn, at birth after being childless for several years. Jae was a positive, optimistic and whimsical child who was highly creative and had a gift for making friends.
When Jae was sixteen, she was killed in a car accident, along with two of her friends. Her sudden death left Becky and her entire family devastated and began a grief journey they never could have imagined.
Becky described what happened as a spiritual disorientation. Her faith had always been a steady part of her life, but suddenly she found herself asking questions that she never thought she would ask.
The Spiritual Foundation We Carry into Grief
Becky grew up in a small Southern Baptist church where her father was the song leader (what many churches now call the worship leader). From the time she was in the nursery, she received a steady stream of biblical doctrine and theology.
More importantly, she saw those beliefs lived out at home. Her parents served their church and community, cared for people in need, and helped others even when they did not have much themselves.
Becky was raised with the belief that God is good. She was also taught that faithful people can still have terrible things happen to them. She was not raised with a prosperity gospel mentality that said following God guaranteed an easy life.
Because of that strong spiritual foundation, Becky would have said she had an unshakable faith.
Then Jae Lynn died.
This is part of how faith shapes grief after child loss. The beliefs we carried before our child died affect the questions we ask afterward. They influence what we expect from God and what we reach for when everything familiar has been shaken.
Questions She Never Thought She Would Ask
As the chaos of those first days began to slow down, Becky tried to imagine life without Jae. Her thoughts turned toward questions such as, “How did this happen?” and “Why did this happen?”
She would go to Jae’s grave, look toward heaven, and ask God, “What are You doing? I don’t understand this.”
Because her daughters were adopted, Becky often ended their bedtime prayers by thanking God for their adoption stories and asking Him to help them find their destinies because of it.
After the accident, she wondered, “Was this her destiny? Was this the plan all along? Is this where all the prayers I prayed for this child were going to end?”
Becky does not describe herself as being angry with God, but she was confused and laid low by questions she never expected to face. There were even moments when she wondered, “What if none of this is real?”
But she kept coming back to her faith. It was the only thing that could eventually help her make sense of any of this.
I personally understood that. For me, it was more like, “What else do I have to hold on to?” My faith was the only thing I had to help me get through the intense pain and suffocating darkness.
When we talk about how faith shapes grief after child loss, we are not saying that strong faith keeps us from questioning God. The death of our child can leave even those of us who have walked with Him for years feeling spiritually disoriented.
Faith Is Trust, Not Making Demands
Not every pareavor enters grief with the same spiritual background Becky and I had. Some have been taught that if they say the right words, quote the right Scripture, or have enough faith, God must do what they ask.
I call that presumptuous faith, and I experienced it when my daughter, Becca, was diagnosed with cancer at three years old. She had her leg amputated and went through nine months of chemotherapy.
I thought that the more people I told God was going to heal her, based on Scripture, the more God would have to heal her. When He did not, it sent me on a journey of trying to understand what faith really is.
I eventually came to the conclusion that faith is trust. It is not making demands on God.
When I believe I can make God do what I think He should do, I put Him into my little box or my little genie lamp. A God I can control is not big enough to be God.
Faith is trusting Him through the confusion. It is continuing to move toward Him while working through our questions and even the anger that many grieving parents understandably feel toward Him.
This is an important part of how faith shapes grief after child loss. Our grief may expose whether our faith was based on trusting God or on believing that our faith would protect us from tragedy.
Looking at the Foundation of Our Worldview
As Becky tried to understand what was happening spiritually, she found it helpful to look at four elements of worldview: origin, morality, meaning, and destiny.
We often hear phrases such as Christian worldview, biblical worldview, or secular worldview. Becky had heard those terms throughout her adult life and assumed she had a Christian worldview, but she was not sure she could clearly explain what that meant.
This four-part framework resonated with her because it was simple. We need to keep things simple in our grief. Complex explanations are difficult to process when our minds are already overwhelmed.
Origin: Where Did Life Come From?
The first element is origin. Where did life come from? What is the origin of humanity and creation?
Becky’s foundational belief is that God created life, the heavens, and the earth. She cannot explain scientifically exactly how He did it, but she believes that the complexity of humanity and creation points back to God as Creator.
This belief becomes significant after our child dies. If we believe our child was intentionally created by God, then their life was not an accident. Their identity and value did not begin with us, and they do not end at the grave.
Our beliefs about origin become part of how faith shapes grief after child loss because they provide a foundation through which we understand our child’s life and death.
Morality: How Do We Determine Right and Wrong?
The second element is morality. How do we determine what is right and wrong?
For Becky, morality is based on Scripture. The Ten Commandments provide a foundation, and throughout the Bible we see the results of people’s decisions. We see which choices hurt others and which ones reflect love and obedience to God.
Today, we often hear people talk about living “their truth.” But what happens when your truth and my truth conflict? If everyone defines truth individually, whose truth is actually true?
We also cannot base truth on culture because culture continually changes. What one generation accepts as normal may be rejected by another, and the cultural lines keep moving.
The truth found in God’s Word does not change. Some people see biblical boundaries as restrictive, but those boundaries can bring freedom and peace.
This is another way we see how faith shapes grief after child loss. When our world has been shattered, we need a foundation that is not constantly moving beneath us.
When “God Is Good” Feels Impossible to Say
Most of us are familiar with being in a church congregation when someone says, “God is good,” and everyone responds, “All the time.” Then the leader says, “And all the time,” and the congregation answers, “God is good.”
That is something many pareavors refuse to say after the death of their child because it can be very difficult to believe.
The other day, something came to me that can take the place of that familiar saying when “God is good” feels impossible to speak:
God is with us… all the time. And all the time…God is with us.
That truth is at the heart of how faith shapes grief after child loss. We may be confused. We may have questions we never thought we would ask. We may not recognize this side of God, and we may not understand what He is doing.
Our spiritual foundation may feel as though it has been shattered. But even there, God has not left us. When we cannot make sense of what has happened and do not know what else we believe, we can begin with this:
God is with us all the time. And all the time, God is with us.
In this first part of my conversation with Becky, we focused on origin and morality. Meaning and destiny became part of the second half of our discussion, which will be shared next week.
NOTE: This was partially taken from the Grieving Parents Sharing Hope podcast episode 362. Click here to listen to the full discussion, or look for the Grieving Parents Sharing Hope podcast on your favorite listening app.
Would you like to honor your child by sponsoring a podcast episode on a meaningful week? Click here.
Find out more about The GPS Hope Grief Cruise in October, 2027.
To receive the weekly email of encouragement Laura was referring to click here.
Check out all the GPS Hope resources here.
To support this podcast and, keep it ad-free, and get exclusive content, visit us on Patreon
Download our FREE GUIDE. Rebuilding Your Life: A Gentle Guide Toward Hope and Healing After Child Loss. Discover gentle encouragement for your broken heart, practical support for the days ahead, and hope that meets you right where you are.
AWARD WINNING AUTHOR, LAURA DIEHL, has written several impactful books that provide comfort and guidance to those navigating the painful journey of child loss, after the death of her own daughter in 2011. Her most acclaimed work, When Tragedy Strikes: Rebuilding Your Life with Hope and Healing After the Death of Your Child, has received multiple accolades, including the 2017 Gold Medal Centauri Christian Book Award for Non-Fiction and a Silver Medal in the 2018 Illumination Awards. Several of her other books have won awards as well.
In addition to her writing, Laura is an ordained minister and has an extensive background in international children’s ministry. She is a sought-after speaker and singer at grief conferences and churches, known for her compassionate approach and deep understanding of the grieving process, especially the unique loss of a child. Through her weekly award-winning podcast, her writings, and other resources provided by GPS Hope, Laura and her husband, Dave, continue to provide hope and healing to thousands of parents worldwide, helping them find light in the midst of profound loss and darkness.
For more information about Laura’s award-winning books go to gpshope.org/books.
To find out more about Laura Diehl and the ministry of Grieving Parents Sharing Hope (GPS Hope) visit gpshope.org.
The link to Hope for the Future is an affiliate link, allowing part of the purchase price to go to GPS Hope.
Leave a Reply