S11.02 | Grieving with God: A Christian Woman’s Guide to Navigating Loss and Pain
Grief isn’t a sign of weak faith—it’s a gift from God to help us process the pain of living in a broken world. In this highly requested episode, Carla invites you to stop carrying grief alone and start grieving with God.
Carla shares biblical truths, practical tools, and her own journey of navigating loss—from broken dreams to childhood trauma—to encourage Christian women to bring their pain into God’s presence.
If you’ve ever felt pressure to “get over it” or wondered where God is in your sorrow, this episode will remind you: He is near to the brokenhearted, and He wants to comfort you—not rush you..
Did you know that Carla is a Christian Mental Health coach?
See if working with her is what you need in your current season.
Book a discovery call today!
Key Takeaways
Grief isn’t a sign of weak faith.
God isn’t asking you to “get over it.” He’s asking you to bring your pain to Him so He can comfort you..
2. The presence of pain doesn’t mean the absence of God.
God sees you, hears you, and draws near to you in your sorrow (Psalm 34:18).
3. You can hold sorrow and hope together.
It’s not either/or—real healing means learning to carry both grief and gratitude with God’s help..
.
Register for the Who Told You That? Webinar here
Book a FREE Discovery call to explore working 1:1 with Carla
Connect With Carla:
Foundations to Healing—-> https://www.carlaarges.com/foundations-of-healing
Inquire about 1:1 coaching ---> Book a FREE Discovery call
Come hangout on IG with me @carlaarges
Check out the blog
Resources:
5 Steps to Building Resiliency
Affirming Truths Facebook Community
5 Tips for Overcoming a Negative Body Image
Who You Say I Am Biblical Affirmation Cards
TRANSCRIPT
0:02
So hello friends, and welcome to episode two of season 11. This episode is coming to you based on outpouring of requests to speak on the subject of grief. And I know I've talked about grief before, but this is something that we are, I would say, as part of the human experience. It experience constantly coming up against, and grief shows up in different forms, right? It can be
0:34
broken dreams. I know that was a big area of grief. I had to grieve the future I thought it was going to have versus what my limitations with Borderline and bipolar would allow me to have.
0:50
I had to grieve my past, the childhood and trauma. Maybe you have to grieve a lost relationship. Maybe you're grieving the loss of a loved one through death, and that can be really hard to reconcile, especially when we feel like they were taken from the earth too soon, or grappled with a challenging road to death.
1:18
Today's episode is not about rushing through grief at all. I'm not going to give you some quick five step process to get through grief quickly, but what I do want to encourage you in this episode is how to grieve with God instead of apart from him.
1:37
Okay, so grief is not a sign of weak faith. I think sometimes when we look to the word and when we look at what other Christians say, and when we look at church sermons, there can be this emphasis on Christian joy. The joy of the Lord is our strength, and that is absolutely true. The joy of the Lord is our strength, but the joy found in God is a joy that transcends circumstance and is not meant to Trump or silence the other emotions God is giving us grief and the ability to use grief to process pain has been given to us by God. And if we trust God with our grief, if we trust him to see us and love us and not chastise us for not getting over it sooner, we are able to find better and deeper rest in his arms. Listen, the Bible is full of examples of grief. David had so many honest laments in the Psalms, we see him crying out to Lord in grief and anguish time and time again. There's a whole book of the Bible dedicated to lamenting.
3:06
Jesus Himself wept and grieved at Lazarus tomb.
3:13
Grief is not the enemy.
3:19
Grief is a gift of God in a broken world, to allow us to process the pain that we feel that comes from living in a broken world, because all the things that we grieve are a result of a fallen world, death, broken dreams, lost relationships, trauma, those are all things that evil and the enemy and sin has brought into the world, and God is giving us the emotion of grief to be able to process through that pain so we don't stay stuck in that pain, So we don't stay overwhelmed in that pain.
4:02
Grief is not a sign of weak faith. Grief is not a bad thing. Grief is what allows us to move through pain.
4:17
And here's some truths that we have about grieving with God, I'm going to give you four truths, okay? And while my podcast episodes tend to be short, you know, between 10 and 15 minutes. That is not to imply that the grief process is short. You grieve for however long it takes you. There is no timetable on the appropriate amount of time to grieve? Do we want to pitch a tent in our grief and decide to live there for the rest of our life? No, in that case, you actually aren't going through the grief process. In that case, you're being stuck. Grief is a process that takes us from pain to healing. Do.
5:00
Now that doesn't mean we still don't feel loss. I heard someone say grief is not so much about
5:09
processing. Grief isn't so much about shrinking the grief, but learning to expand your life around the grief. If you've lost someone you love that will always feel like a loss. But you don't always have to stay suck in sadness or depression or despair if you allow grief to take the to take process. Grief is a process. It's not a problem to be fixed.
5:36
Grief is not a problem to be fixed. It is an emotion that we allow to process.
5:44
We even hear. Blessed are those who mourn in Matthew five, four, yes, who mourn for the sin in their life, who mourn for the sin in the world. Like I said, all of these things that we grieve is a result of sin. Blessed are those who mourn. They will be comforted. God has promised to comfort you.
6:08
God is not offended by your tears or your questions. You can pour your heart out before Him. We read that in Psalm 62, eight.
6:20
He's not offended by your tears. He's not wondering, why aren't you joyful? I went to the cross for you. You should be happy always. That's not God's heart. God's heart for you is to comfort you. God knew that you would have trials. God knew that you would go through grief like we said. Jesus experienced it himself. What's important is that we take it to God, that we pour our hearts out before him, even the questions of, why did this happen? I don't understand. I'm confused. I'm angry. This is causing me to have doubt we can bring that all before God. He is not offended. He welcomes he welcomes your tears. He welcomes your questions, because he wants you to draw close to Him where you can feel his heartbeat for you.
7:16
The third thing I want you to remember as you're grieving is that the presence of pain does not equal the absence of God. I'm
7:27
going to say that again, the presence of pain does not mean the absence of God.
7:37
Everyone in the Bible, followers of God, followers of Jesus, who experience pain, were still met by God.
7:52
We're still held by God. We're still seen by God.
7:59
We see Hagar in the desert, in pain, grieving her situation, thinking that she's going to get the god die. And God comes to her, and he sees her.
8:12
God sees you in your pain,
8:16
and he longs to comfort you, not to rush you through it, but to hold your hand as you walk through it.
8:26
The other thing I want you to remember about grieving with God is that you can hold sorrow and hope together.
8:35
Holding on to hope and joy is not discrediting or taking away from the pain of the sorrow
8:45
and holding on to the grief and the sorrow doesn't mean you still can't have joy in God's fingerprints in your life and hope for the future that God has promised you.
8:57
You can hold these two things together, and I know that may seem hard, and I know that may seem difficult, we tend to have black or white thinking it's either all joy or all grief, all hope or all despair, all faith or all doubt, when really the human experience is holding a multitude of emotions at once and wrestling through that,
9:27
and we can wrestle with God through that.
9:32
And there are some practical ways to grieve with God. If you're wondering, well, what does it look like to grieve with God? There's a few things that I can suggest to you. I find breath prayer really effective because it combines
9:50
the mind, the body and the spirit. You see when we grieve, when we're working with trauma, when we're dealing with our.
10:00
Health, we hold these emotions in our body, as well as in our spirit, in our mind. And a breath, prayer is a wonderful way to tend to our nervous system, the body that's holding the grief as well as speaking life and hope and comfort to our spirit and over our mind. And a breath. Here is breath. Prayer is simply inhaling slowly and exhaling slowly while saying the truth and the promises of God. So for example, I can inhale,
10:36
I will fear no evil and exhale, for God is with me. I can inhale.
10:45
God has promised to never leave me or forsake me, and I can exhale.
10:51
So I find peace in his arms. Breath. Prayer is so effective, I like to put a hand over my belly and a hand over my heart while I say that slowly,
11:03
feeling it in your body, feeling it in your spirit, igniting hope.
11:10
Another great way to grieve with God is to really read the Psalms and really, you know, connect with David, who is such a good example of holding sorrow and hope together. If you look at a lot of the Psalms, they start off with lament, and then they end with hope, with praise, with joy, and what a great way to practice what it looks like to hold those things together. So reading the Psalms out loud so your spirit hears it can be so powerful and a practical way to grieve with God.
11:51
Another way to grieve with God is keeping a grief and gratitude journal.
11:57
If you have been to any of my courses live taught. If you've ever worked with me in any of my one on one coaching, you know that I'm big on journaling, paper to paper and pen, not on your phone, not on your computer, not voice noting it, but actually writing it out, because it impacts the brain differently, and keeping a great grief and gratitude journal is another way where we hold sorrow and hope together, where we lay out, what am I grieving right now, but also laying out, where do I have gratitude in The grief? Not to whitewash over the grief, but to show that you hold too so for example, I grieve that I have borderline that I have to deal with every day. Borderline is something that I have to work through every day, and I grieve that, but I am so grateful for how God shows up and equips me to walk that journey. I am so grateful for while he has allowed that thorn, he has given me grace in navigating it so I can hold two of those things at the same time. I'm not grateful for my borderline that grieves me, but I am grateful for how God shows up in the midst of it.
13:33
And of course, Grief can always be
13:37
you can always partner with someone in processing your grief, so talking to someone who is trusted, but also not just your best friend trusted, but also experienced in helping you navigate grief. So that might be a coach, that might be a counselor, that might be your pastor. Just know that all pastors are not equipped to be,
14:02
you know,
14:03
therapists, that's not their training. Their training is on a lot more to do with spiritual formation,
14:10
but they can maybe even recommend someone in your church that works with grief counseling.
14:18
And you know, before we get into the affirming Truth for Today, I want to give you a reflective prompt that can start you in some of your journaling, in processing the grief. I'm going to leave you with two questions to ask yourself and to journal on.
14:37
Where are you grieving right now that you've been trying to carry alone,
14:44
like have you been trying to grieve alone? Have you been carrying this alone, or have you been turning it over to God? And secondly, what would it look like to invite God into that place of grief today? What.
15:00
Would that look like? What would you need to do, practically or in terms of heart posture, what would it look like to invite God into that place today?
15:12
And my affirming truth for you today is that I can grieve with God and enjoy his comfort without rush
15:22
and my anchoring scripture for you is from Psalm 3418
15:27
that God is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crush in spirit. He is He is close to you. He is near to you. Speak this verse over yourself. Encourage your spirit with you.
15:43
Now, before we go, I have to tell you about something that's happening that's very powerful. On July 22 I'm hosting a live workshop called Who told you that, and it's all about reclaiming our identity after trauma. It is going to be a place where we learn to practically replace the lies that you believe that say that you're not enough, or you're hard to love or your past is going to define your future. What you believe to be true about yourself at a visceral level determines on how you show up in life. And if you believe any of these lies, you are not showing up fully in who Christ wants you to be. And so we need to break the power of those lies. We need to break the bondage of those lies. And in this workshop, I'm going to show you how I'll put the link in the show notes, it is $27
16:44
not because I'm making money off this workshop, but because I need you to have skin in the game. So you take this seriously, because it is transformational. And I have found that when people don't have skin in the game, they don't necessarily show up. They don't watch the replay, they don't take action where they need to take action. And so you're going to draw a line in the sand and say, No, I'm taking action. I'm not going to be stuck being less than Christ has called me to be
17:16
alright. So look for that link in the bio or on my Instagram page, it's there. And I just pray that you're blessed this coming week and where you're holding grief in your heart, I pray that you're also able to hold the peace and the rest and the comfort that the Holy Spirit wants to give you.
17:38
Alright, friends, I'll talk to you next time bye. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai