Books are my love language, or perhaps God’s language of love to me.

To savor and conquer.
To encounter and engage.
To absorb and reflect.
To witness and share.

In this season of grief, they’ve been a lifeline!

When our church’s children’s director handed me the book Raising Giant-Killers: Releasing Your Child's Divine Destiny through Intentional Parenting I was intrigued.

Sadly, while I was reading this legacy book I heard about the passing of Beni Johnson, who wrote it with Bill Johnson. She was one year older than my dad, 67, and died from cancer too.

This precious woman of God, known as "the happy intercessor," invested in her family and God's kingdom for decades through Bethel Church in Redding, California. It felt awkward to share with my husband, as we were driving out to a family day at the lake, that her death was comforting. But he quickly made me feel safe in that strange place.

Like us, their church and family had fought hard for her healing with prayer, worship, fasting, and hope. But just like the rest of us, my dad’s and Beni’s earthly days were numbered (Psalm 90:12). And their new math is infinity!

As I watched Bill Johnson preach a tender sermon three days after her passing I was inspired by his deep trust in God and the grace to carry mystery on this side of eternity.

A few weeks later, as I watched the Johnson children (now middle-aged parents) honour their mom at her celebration of life there was a sense of camaraderie—grieving with hope because of our identity in Christ!

Johnson says:

What an incredible vision, to truly live out who God created you to be and desire that for others! Raising Giant-Killers is a window into practical ways to engage children with intentional spiritual training, inspired by the deep spiritual blessings passed on through five generations. This big-picture, long-term perspective is even more on my mind right now in the early months of grieving my dad’s passing.

My heart aches, my eyes well up, and my soul deeply misses my dad every day, but somehow I’ve also had many beautiful moments with family and friends this summer.

That sacred quote is from A Hole in the World: Finding Hope in Rituals of Grief and Healing, written by Amanda Held Opelt, the sister of the late Rachel Held Evans. As I read her new book this month, I appreciated her unique approach, reviewing how cultures throughout history processed death and expressed grief and how this connects to her story.

Opelt says:

Grief came to her in many forms: losing her grandma while overseas, experiencing miscarriages, and most recently, her older sister dying rather suddenly after getting the flu.

As she investigates past and present practices in death she observes:

For those who may not have the time to read the book, you will appreciate how Opelt succinctly summarizes the grief rituals she weaves throughout her book in the afterward because “rituals have much to offer us.”

-Keening affirms our anguish.
-Covering the mirrors gives us grace for the change.
-Telling the bees invites peace and courage into the precarity.
-Shivah intrudes upon our loneliness with presence.
-Casseroles bring us back into our bodies.
-Photographs help us remember rightly.
-Sympathy cards give us words to express our love.
-Wearing black allows us to be honest about what we are feeling on the inside.
-Tolling the bell summons us to accept the everlasting burden of grief.
-Funeral games make space for joy.
-Decoration Day honors our loved ones and our own stories.

One practice I wish we made more space for in our culture is keening. I wailed in the van and hospital room with my family and sobbed a little bit at the viewing and burial, but mostly it was in the privacy of my home that I released the deep agony of my soul with mournful sounds.

I wonder if shivah (seven-day period of mourning) and keening (wailing) in community would be helpful for some? I think it would have been good for me.

I don’t think casseroles and sympathy cards will ever go out of “style,” and wearing black still feels right, though no longer expected, on the day of someone’s funeral. But how about the Victorian tradition of years of expected and evolving mourning attire to symbolize the timeline of grief? And who knew the “living room” used to be called the “dead room,” because viewings were held in the home before funeral homes?

While learning some rather unusual grief rituals (telling the bees, wearing the deceased’s hair in headpieces, and funeral games), I was moved as this gentle book of history and story holds lines of thoughts and feelings that only one who has been there much too recently can articulate:

As a parent, I want to lead with vulnerability and admire this heart position in any form of leadership. But we can only continue to do this—with all life brings—if we continue to heal. This takes work!

Many have read about my phrase for 2022, to “do the next right thing in love,” (Emily P. Freeman).

My next step is to be part of a Grief Share group.

Even though I’ll miss a number of the group sessions, due to travel and music practices, I know the video resources, workbook materials, and a group of people to witness our stories will be another step towards healing. Yes, “sharing grief” is a practice that needs to stay!

My family reaches another milestone in two weeks, as we remember my dad’s birthday and observe his newly carved headstone—such a strange but fitting birthday gift this year.

Oh, love, so heavy in loss, a burden I carry with honour, just like my dad’s legacy of faith!

Opelt empathizes:

The candidacy for my dad's pastoral position was this summer. This process triggered more grief but also revealed God’s care for my family and our church, as he provided us with a gracious, new lead pastor.

I don’t have grief figured out.

I write just a few steps past the latest wave, tossing a lifeline to whoever needs it.

It is still so early, just over four months, as I begin to learn to live with loss.

Opelt says:

“The life of grief is learning to live with a peace that passes all understanding. It is learning to live with an affliction for which there is no cure. You integrate the wound into your daily life. You learn to live with a gaping hole in the world.”

I wish I could call my dad, like I did every day when he was in the hospital, and talk our way through all of this—cancer, suffering, death.

But this is the mystery Bill Johnson preached about recently, just days after his wife’s passing.

My dad’s childlike faith and trust, right up until his final breath, revealed how he understood his identity in Christ. He didn’t need answers, even though it hurt him deeply to leave so soon, he knew there was a bigger story at play.

One day we will see it all clearly (1 Corinthians 13:12).

For now, I’ll show up each morning, cinnamon-sprinkled coffee in hand, to lead my children into this next season of life and homeschooling and whatever may come.

I aim to launch the giant-killing kind of children that don't just know a lot about Jesus but have experienced God’s LOVE so much so that even in the darkest nights they trust GOODNESS and MERCY will follow them all the days of their lives—until they too dwell in the house of the Lord FOREVER (Psalm 23:6)!

And it will be beyond what we can imagine, right Dad?