In time, this will be big resource. For now, it is a growing resource.
griefpacket.com – a one page resource for thinking about grief
joincake.com – “The largest end-of-life platform on the Internet.”
Kate Bowler. No Cure for Being Human: (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) (2021)
Kate Bowler. Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved (2019)
Tish Harrison Warren. Prayer in the Night (2021)
Neurosurgeon faces cancer in others and death in his own family.
In I’ve Seen the End of You, Dr. Lee Warren takes us inside his head and heart as he wrestles with these questions. It’s as if we get to see in real time how a physician, father, and follower of Jesus tests his faith, his training and his experience against each other. Which do we use to make sense of what is happening in front of us? And, by the end of the book, we are able to see one person’s well-reflected answers to the question of hope in really hard places.
Miscarriage and Stillbirth
Kristen and Patrick Riecke. No Matter How Small: Understanding Miscarriage and Stillbirth. (Fort Wayne, Emerald Hope Publishing House, 2020). Kristen and Patrick draw on their own experience and their work with parents to offer support and explanation and encouragement.
How to talk to other people about grief and finding meaning
Patrick Riecke, How to Talk With Sick, Dying, and Grieving People: When There Are No Magic Words to Say. (Fort Wayne, Emerald Hope Publishing House, 2018).
Patrick Riecke, How to Find Meaning in Your Life Before it Ends. (Fort Wayne, Emerald Hope Publishing House, 2019).
The Art of Dying: Living Fully into the Life to Come. Rob Moll. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books. 2010.
Rob was a journalist who spent time working as a hospice volunteer and as an intern at a funeral home. At the core of his book is what he calls the Christian art of dying. If our theology says that death is part of life and is not the end of living, how might that inform how we approach the idea of death? This is the best written exploration of how to have conversations about death with those we love, about how to approach a Christian funeral, about how to think through grief and resurrection.
What makes this book particularly poignant is Moll’s death at age 41 in a 2019 climbing accident. His obituary reads, in part, “After graduating from Cedarville University in 2001, Rob dedicated the next 18 years of his professional career to advancing the Church’s mission to walk in the way of Christ.”
Learning from nature
Jason Kissel, How Trees Deal With Loss. Fort Wayne. 2017. This short, illustrated book from a tree guy shows us how trees deal with the loss of another tree, and can help us understand our own loss.
Personal stories
Listening and watching people talk about their own journey and those of others can be incredibly helpful.
Podcast: “Surprised by Grief” with Clarissa Moll and Daniel Harrell. This podcast is from a Christian perspective. Each of the hosts lost a spouse in 2019. Clarissa’s husband, Rob, died in a climbing accident. Daniel’s wife died with pancreatic cancer. But these two had already thought about life and death more than most people. Rob wrote a book, The Art of Dying, several years before his death, and Daniel was working as a pastor. They talk about their own experiences and the work they are doing with others, and invite us into the conversation. The content is often hard, but listening to them interact is remarkably helpful.
Podcast: Everything Happens: A podcast by Kate Bowler
Video: Nora McIerney, We don’t “move on” from grief. We move forward with it, TED, 4/9/2019. In a few weeks, Nora McIerney lost her dad, her husband, and her unborn child. She writes and podcasts about grief, loss, and living. This video is key to understanding the idea of moving forward.
Book: C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed. HarperOne, 2009. With a foreword by Madeleine L’Engle. C.S. Lewis is know for writing about faith and about Narnia. This is like reading a journal in the days after his wife’s death. It captures the waves of grief. The foreword by Madeleine, also a writer, talks about the loss of her husband, and illustrates that each loss is different.
Research
Finding words in hard times 