What’s it like for the grief therapist to lose her teenage son?

Yes, there were a few who asked.

Honestly, I was unprepared for Nathan’s sudden death at sixteen-years young.

Someone posed that question sometime during the first year following his departure.

Grace enables me to forget who.

It was one of those times when I had to ask myself, what just hit me?

Did he really just say that?  No….Yes!…Unbelievable!?!

Grief has a short fuse and mine was lit.  It took a boatload of energy to hold back the flames when I replied . . .

The grief therapist did not lose her son, his mother and father did. 

When Nathan left us, the crazed feelings that accompany grief and loss exponentially exceeded anything I had ever known.

I found myself in an exhausting tug-of-war with reality, asking elephant-sized questions, desperately seeking God, aching for insight, understanding, and meaning.

I tend to think that most things in life can fit fairly well in one of three spaces – My business, God’s business, and their business.   But grief fog has a way of distorting our nice neat little categories and how we perceive life.

We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.

Certain questions kept re-surfacing:  What part do I play, and what part does God play in healing my broken heart?  How will God orchestrate the way through my grief process?

I continue to seek answers related to this question.

My good friend, Paul Young, knew our son, Nathan, on a personal basis.  Now and then our kids hung out together when they were growing up.

Paul is the author of The Shack, a run-away best-selling fiction book. It’s the story about a father whose mourning the loss of his daughter prompts a visit from God.

Paul wrote the story during a painful time in his own life, while doing therapeutic grief work related to traumatic childhood wounds.  The book was designed to be his Christmas present to his children that year.

What started out as a half-dozen print-outs for his kids, went on to sell over 20 million copies, making it one of the best-selling books of all time. A motion picture adaptation was recently released featuring Octavia Spencer and Sam Worthington.

What follows is Part One of a seven-part video series.  Paul openly discusses his painful losses, various facets of grief, and phenomenal life-changing stories from behind the scenes, on the movie set of The Shack.

The discussion will inspire you, trigger moments of awe, and leave you wondering how God might show up as a Redeeming Genius during your own healing journey.

Let’s rally together and be intentional about comforting those who mourn.

You can share this with others by clicking the social media sharing links Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram or Pinterest.

Feel welcome to contact me here for more compassionate guidance, God-graced wisdom, and healing advice.