If you have ever wondered why trusting God feels so hard after the death of your child, you are not alone. There is something about this kind of loss that doesn’t just break our hearts. It can shake the very foundation of what we believed about God, faith, and how life was supposed to work.
When our child dies, we are not just grieving their absence. We are also trying to make sense of a reality that feels impossible to understand. And somewhere in the middle of that pain, we are left asking questions that we may have never asked before.
Can I still trust God?
Is He really good?
Why didn’t He stop this?
These are not signs of weak faith. They are the honest cries of a shattered heart.
When Life Doesn’t Match What We Believed
For many of us, we have spent years building a foundation of faith. We have read the Scriptures, prayed, believed for healing, and trusted God to move in powerful ways. We know the verses. We know the promises.
And then our child dies.
Suddenly, everything we thought we understood feels uncertain. This is one reason why trusting God feels so hard after the death of your child; because our lived experience doesn’t seem to line up with what we believed should happen.
Scripture tells us that God is our healer. It tells us He is good. It tells us He is powerful. And yet, we are living in a reality where our child is no longer here.
That tension is real. And it can feel unbearable.
What Scripture Actually Says About Suffering
There is a passage that God has taken me back to again and again:
1 Peter 5:10–11 tells us that after we have suffered a while, God Himself will perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle us.
That means something that we don’t always want to acknowledge. Suffering is part of this life.
We live in a fallen world, and because of that, pain and loss are realities we cannot escape. Even Jesus told us that in this world we would have trouble. The Bible does not ignore suffering. In fact, it speaks of it often.
The book of 1 Peter alone mentions suffering multiple times in just a few chapters.
This matters, because if we don’t understand that suffering exists within God’s larger story, then when it touches our lives so deeply, our faith can feel like it’s falling apart.
And that is often why trusting God feels so hard after the death of your child. We weren’t prepared for this kind of pain to be part of our story.
Grace and Glory in the Middle of Pain
What has helped me is understanding that this passage about suffering is not separate from God’s grace and His glory. Instead, it is surrounded by it.
God’s grace is not just unmerited favor. It is His divine empowerment. It is His strength made available to us when we have none of our own.
And His glory is the fullness of His goodness. We see this in Exodus 33. When Moses told the Lord to “show me your glory,” God’s response was, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you.”
So even in suffering, we are not abandoned. We are still within His grace. Still held in His goodness.
That doesn’t take away the pain. But it does remind us that we are not alone in it.
When Faith Feels Like It Failed
There were moments in my own journey when I believed with everything in me for a certain outcome. I trusted God for healing. I prayed with confidence.
And when things did not turn out the way I believed they would, I felt blindsided.
Maybe you know that feeling.
It can make you question everything; your faith, your prayers, even your relationship with God. This is another reason why trusting God feels so hard after the death of your child. It can feel like something didn’t work the way it was supposed to.
But over time, God gently showed me something that changed everything.
My faith was not meant to be in the outcome I was hoping for. My faith (my trust) was meant to be in Him.
Not in what He would do. But in who He is.
Learning to Trust Without Understanding
There is a place we come to in grief where we realize that we may not get the answers we are asking for. At least not on this side of heaven. And that is incredibly hard because we want to understand. We want a reason. We want something that makes this make sense.
But trust is not built on having all the answers. Trust is built on knowing intimately the One we are trusting.
This is where surrender begins.
Not a surrender that says, “This is okay,” because it’s not. The death of your child will never be okay. It is a surrender that says, “God, I don’t understand… but I am choosing to keep coming to You anyway.”
Knowing Him in the Deepest Places
Philippians 3:10 talks about knowing Christ, not only in the power of His resurrection, but also in the fellowship of His sufferings.
Most of us would gladly choose the resurrection power. But the fellowship of suffering is where we come to know Him in a deeper, more intimate way.
Not because suffering is good. But because in our deepest pain, we often encounter God in ways that we never have before.
Still, that does not make it easy. And it does not remove the reality that trusting God feels so hard after the death of your child.
You Are Not Failing
If your trust feels fragile right now, it does not mean that you are failing.
If your prayers feel uncertain, it does not mean that you are doing something wrong.
If you have questions, doubts, or even moments of anger toward God, you are not alone.
You are responding to something that is profoundly painful.
And God is not afraid of your questions. He is not pushing you away because your faith feels shaky.
He is inviting you to come close—even in the middle of it.
A Gentle Step Forward
If all you can do right now is whisper a prayer, that is enough. If all you can do is sit in silence with God, that is enough. If all you can do is say, “I don’t understand,” that is enough.
Because this journey of trusting Him is not about having it all figured out. It is about staying connected to Him, one small step at a time.
And even when trusting God feels so hard after the death of your child, He is still there, steady, present, and holding you through every moment.
Next time, we will continue looking at this same passage in 1 Peter 5:10–11 and begin to explore what God is doing within us through our suffering. How He gently rebuilds, strengthens and establishes us, even when life feels forever changed.
NOTE: This was partially taken from the Grieving Parents Sharing Hope podcast episode 345. Click here to listen to the full discussion, or look for the Grieving Parents Sharing Hope podcast on your favorite listening app.
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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.
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