Why am I writing about grief and the church? Why would I care about how the church could grow? Why on earth would I stay or seek to help when I’ve been hurt by their lack of care?

These are questions I have been asking myself, and asking God. I’m sure the answers are layered and complicated, and I don’t feel the need to dig frantically for the answers. But I do think there is a key part of the story that needs to be told.

The church was home for me. I found a sense of belonging, of community, of doing life together like I had not known before. I found acceptance and love. I was challenged to grow and learn and make mistakes. We supported each other like family. We worshiped Jesus together. I taught the Bible and served in various capacities for fifteen years. My husband was serving as a lay elder. Our kids knew that if we had time to spare, we were usually volunteering in some way with our church. It has never been perfect, but it has been home.

Then Mom died. And I discovered what others had already been discovering ahead of me. I couldn’t bring my broken heart to church. They didn’t know what to do with grief and loss. The community I once rejoiced with could not weep with me. Myself and others were being missed, hurt, burdened, ignored, overlooked. It was clear that many cared about us. They showed up in droves to support us practically with meals, rides and childcare while I was caring for Mom. Then when she died, when our needs became more emotional and spiritual, the care ended. A precious few showed up, a few who also knew grief and were walking the same path. But we received radio silence from the church. We began grieving not just our loss, but the loss of our church family in the darkest season of our lives. And our church wasn’t alone. I began meeting person after person who experienced similar rejection of their broken heart, the lack of care, and the lack of lament in their churches.

It was confusing, disorienting, and disturbing as the months turned into years. I learned through Scripture and through other Jesus followers that God welcomes my broken heart, hurt, raw screams of agony, complaints, anger, fear, and doubts. None of those scare him away. I learned that our God laments, and knows a broken heart intimately. I saw the laments all over Scripture that I had not noticed before. Thanks to the wisdom of fellow grievers and God’s word, I began to learn how to turn to God in my grief. I began to discover, as Eugene Peterson says, some of “the glories of wilderness and cross”. But the church, operating in Jesus’ name, told me to leave any painful emotion at the door. “Faith in Jesus looks like a smile in the face of your worst nightmare.” It was never clearly said but clearly reinforced over and over. God was telling me one thing; church was telling me another. And the struggle began. Why isn’t the church a place where grief is welcomed? Why isn’t there room for struggle and process? Why aren’t we teaching about death, loss and grief? Why aren’t seminaries preparing pastors for actually caring for hurting people? Why aren’t we learning to lament together? Why don’t we preach the lament sections of the Bible more than a few times a year? Shouldn’t the church be an outpost, an imperfect likeness, of course, but one pursuing resemblance to Christ in our suffering? Are we not his body? Should we not seek to help each other walk through pain, grief, and loss, since we will all go through it?

With these discoveries, in the midst of my grief over losing my mom and my grief over church, I saw something else.

I saw how I was part of the problem.

In my years of ministry, of being part of our church, in my ignorance and immaturity, I missed it. I contributed to this church culture that avoids pain and uses spirituality and Jesus’ name to do so.

If you are reading this, and you are deeply hurting and not found the care and support you’ve needed from your church, I want to apologize. I know I’m not responsible for others, but I want to apologize on behalf of those of us who didn’t get it. I have a role in the damage. All the reasons why I have failed you (like the aforementioned ignorance or immaturity), may be understandable, but they do not erase the pain I heaped on top of your pain. I have avoided you. I have given lip service only to your pain but have not entered it with you as God does. I have helped lead one-dimensional worship through music, avoiding the necessary and valuable part of worship called lament. I have said, “We see you,” on Mother’s Day to the brokenhearted, but I didn’t actually see you. I recognized you were hurting from afar, but I didn’t draw close. I didn’t listen. I didn’t let myself hurt with you. I acknowledged you on a theoretical level, not a heart level. I didn’t check in with you the other 364 days when you were bearing your pain.

No, I didn’t know what to do. I recognize a lot of us don’t know what to do. Many have never been taught. God gives us grace for that. But his grace also doesn’t erase the damage. God sees you and your pain. He sees how many of us have missed you. He gives grace to us who fumble through your suffering, and he also hates the extra pain we’ve given you. All the pain I am now experiencing, I have also caused. I am so sorry. I’m sorry for the ways I’ve increased your burden, failed to weep with you, minimized your pain, avoided you, gave you platitudes instead of presence, asked you for a smile instead of welcoming you just as you are. I’m sorry I left you alone when you needed the body to surround you.

I see it now. I get it better than I ever have. This is not how God treats us in our pain, and not how he would have us treat each other. He is changing me, and I am learning. I ask for your forgiveness. I don’t deserve it, and will not demand it. I want you to know, as I write these blog posts, as I seek to help the problem I was contributing to, I do it with the recognition of what it’s like to be on the other side. I feel what it must have felt like for you. Being missed. Being hurt by the ones who are supposed to help. You know it’s not intentional, but in grief, you don’t have the energy to explain (or they don’t have ears to hear), so you stop sharing your pain. I know some of you have left the church. Some of you have stopped expecting the church to help you or change. And some of you have believed the “spiritualized” message to minimize your pain using Jesus’ resurrection hope as the tool, and stuffed your pain, not having a safe space to bring it to the light.

I understand.

This is part of why I am choosing to invest my energy into helping. I helped further the problem. Now I want to help further the solution.

One of the keys we need to change is humility to recognize where we have contributed to the problem. We need the courage to name it and the damage caused to us and by us. We need strength to hurt with each other. We need many other things, but this is a good start.

Michael Card says this in his book, A Sacred Sorrow. “The degree to which I am willing to enter into the suffering of another person reveals the level of my commitment and love for them. If I am not interested in your hurts, I am not really interested in you. Neither am I willing to suffer to know you nor to be known by you. Jesus’ example makes these truths come alive in our hearts. He is the One who suffered to know us, who then suffered for us on the cross. In all this, He revealed the hesed of His Father.”

Jesus suffered to know us. In his suffering, he revealed the steadfast love of God. When he tells us in John 15:17 to “love each other”, this is the kind of love he’s talking about. The kind that is willing to enter the suffering of another person.

Change starts small, with me and you. Change starts internally, invisible, unnoticed at first. Like faith. Like a mustard seed. As we realize to a deeper extent the love of our Father, then we may be empowered by the Holy Spirit to suffer to know and love others and be known and loved by them.