Of the many images that capture the poignancy of my ministry in Waukon is this photo taken on the south lawn of Oakland Cemetery. That’s me and my friend Chrissy Good from Martin funeral home leading the procession that carried the body of longtime member Brad Krambeer to its place of earthly rest until the day of resurrection.
A retired letter carrier and avid sports fan, Brad also enjoyed playing euchre, caring for the yard, and detailing his cars. He liked having fun in the sun and spending time on the river and its sand bars. Above all, Brad cherished spending time with family. So perhaps that’s why his daughter Carly still uses this image as the cover photo of her Facebook page. Brad died in 2017, but the loss of a parent or other cherished loved one fuels the kind of grief that is not easily forgotten or quickly healed.
One of the observations I often hear about funerals and their varied rituals is their ability to bring “closure.” Though said with good intention, describing the ability of a funeral to “bring closure” oftentimes feels cruel and hurtful to the bereaved. It seems to suggest that a funeral closes the book and that those left behind to mourn can simply move on – that wrestling with one’s grief follows a neat-and-tidy path of limited time and duration, and that one best-not linger too long in sorrow. Personal and pastoral experience tells me otherwise.
At best grief is not something that you “get over.” It is a heavy blanket of raw, prickly emotions with which you learn to live: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Denial – the understandable struggle to accept one’s loss, an instinctive defense mechanism that temporarily buffers pain.
Anger – a natural response to the pain and injustice of loss. It’s an emotion that even the most faithful of Christ’s disciples can and do experience.
And of course, bargaining – the making of deals or promises in an attempt to regain control, mitigate loss, or avoid suffering.
Then depression sets in as the full weight of the loss becomes fully apparent. It’s a period of deep sorrow and reflection.
And finally, maybe, acceptance, where you come to terms with your loss and find new ways of living. It doesn’t mean forgetting or minimizing the pain but rather discovering a sense of peace – harnessing the Holy Spirit’s strength and courage to move forward.
However accurately this model understands grief and loss, it needs some perspective. First, remember that grief isn’t linear. Mourning is not a tidy progression of sequential phases through which we cleanly move. Grief more typically is a messy mix of multiple emotions, some conflicting, through which we cycle – oftentimes, over and over in a seemingly endless loop.
Second, remember that everyone grieves differently. And what feels healthy and healing for one isn’t always transferrable to another. To presume that everyone experiences the five stages of grief is one-dimensional and inaccurate. Some never experience anger, for example. “Relief” that a loved one’s physical suffering has mercifully ended sometimes comes instead.
Third, remember that grief impacts the entirety of your being. Your grief response depends on an enormous range of emotional, biological, mental, relational, circumstantial, and spiritual factors that don’t follow a prescriptive order. Grief shows up physically in our sleeping, eating, energy level, immune system, and response to stress. It manifests mentally in a grief-ly “brain fog” that hinders memory, focus, and decision-making.
Fourth, remember that grief is more than grieving someone who died. You can grieve something that died (like your health, a career, or a marriage) or someone who’s still alive but is lost to addiction, estrangement, or dementia. Don’t be surprised, as my retirement date draws closer, if you feel the emotions of grief that my departure will bring. And trust that I’m grieving, too.
Fifth, remember that grief doesn’t end. While the raw ache of fresh grief softens as you process your pain, grief doesn’t end. You don’t complete each stage, graduate, and move on. How do you stop missing your child who died? Just when does one stop grieving the loss of a spouse, parent, or sibling? While God promises to heal the broken-hearted – and indeed God does, our hearts will not be fully healed and made whole until heaven.
Which is why you cannot leave out God from your grief. Such intense misery is too much for one to bear alone. We weren’t made for death, and disease, and devastation. Either you turn to God or you turn away, and your response makes all the difference – not only in how you work through your grief but also in allowing God to redeem it. The Lord can and does use all things for our good and heaven’s glory when we turn it all over to him.
Let me suggest, then, a tripod of faith: Learning to live with grief is like a three-legged stool.
The first leg is “honesty of emotion.” Be honest with yourself, and with your supporters, about your sadness, fear, loneliness, longing, regret, anger, indifference, confusion, disbelief, etc., etc. They occur as a mix, not sequentially, and have mental and physical impacts. And feel free to ask the hard questions about what happened: the nature of suffering, the nature of life; the nature of God and the contours heaven and life in the next. Strong emotions fuel these weighty questions, so where do you go with all of it? Scripture reveals that you unburden your heart and give it all over to God. The psalmists of the Old Testament well put our groans into words. This, for example, is Psalm 6 –
O LORD, do not rebuke me in your anger, or discipline me in your wrath.
Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am languishing; O LORD, heal me, for my bones are shaking with terror.
My soul also is struck with terror, while you, O LORD – how long?
Turn, O LORD, save my life; deliver me for the sake of your steadfast love.
For in death there is no remembrance of you; in the pit, who can give you praise?
I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weeping.
My eyes waste away because of grief; they grow weak because of all my foes.
Depart from me, all you workers of evil, for the LORD has heard the sound of my weeping.
The LORD has heard my supplication; the LORD accepts my prayer.
All my enemies shall be ashamed and struck with terror; they shall turn back, and in a moment be put to shame. (Psalm 6:1-10)
The first leg: honesty of emotion. The second, risky trust. Even as you unburden your heavy emotions to God and wrestle your questions about God, you also take the risk of re-staking your trust in God. The hard emotions of loss will try tricking you into believing that everything good is behind us, that we will always labor under heavy sorrow, and that we have every reason to fear the future. The questions that come fast and furious in loss sift and winnow our faith, and idols like control, ease, prosperity, and entitlement quite easily overcome. It is essential, as you make space for your emotions and questions, that you declare your trust in God. The Old Testament prophet Isaiah offers this –
I will wait for the LORD, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him. See, I and the children whom the LORD has given me are signs and portents in Israel from the LORD of hosts, who dwells on Mount Zion.
Now if people say to you, “Consult the ghosts and the familiar spirits that chirp and mutter; should not a people consult their gods, the dead on behalf of the living, for teaching and for instruction?” Surely, those who speak like this will have no dawn! They will pass through the land, greatly distressed and hungry; when they are hungry, they will be enraged and will curse their king and their gods. They will turn their faces upward, or they will look to the earth, but will see only distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish; and they will be thrust into thick darkness.
[But as for me, I will wait for the Lord.] (Isaiah 8:17-22)
The leg of honest emotion; the leg of risky trust. And finally, the leg of abiding in hope.
Hope in God is always based on who God is and what God has promised. In the excruciating pain of grief, you may abide in hope, because God promises to heal the brokenhearted. In the lonely moments of loss, you cling to hope, because God’s grace is sufficient. When it seems like everything good is in your rear-view mirror, you hold fast to hope, because God’s goodness is unchangeable and never-ending. God’s goodness just is. And hope held in God’s goodness means this world of suffering is not all there is. Death is defeated; we will see our loved ones again, and the glory of God will shine through the darkness of your affliction and loss. The apostle Paul, no stranger to suffering, explains it like this –
Therefore, since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart. For we do not proclaim ourselves. We proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’s sake. For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.
For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’s sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life is in you. Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.
So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:5-12, 15-18)
For a disciple of Christ, grief is all three legs of the stool all at once. Just as a stool cannot stand when any leg is missing, you cannot work through and move through your grief without each of these three legs. Though you still grieve deeply and feel the pain of loss acutely, you continually offload the agony to God; you trust God when you don’t understand; you anchor your hope in God’s presence and character, in God’s promises of compassionate healing, sustaining grace, eternal provision, and sure restoration.
How firm a foundation: Solace and strength for our journey!
The Word of the Lord! Thanks be to God!
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message in worship on Sunday, June 28, 2026, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Lisa Appelo, Jody Burkeen, and Elisabeth Kübler-Ross inform the message.