FamilyLife Today®

Ron Deal: Western culture says you can master grief. Grief is an illness, it's a problem, and you need to master it and get over it. That is the language we use and the assumptions we have about grief in our lives. I think the church has adopted that without even realizing it.

Ann Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Ann Wilson.

Dave Wilson: And I’m Dave Wilson. You can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

We did a show earlier this year with Mark Vroegop.

Ann Wilson: It was one of my favorite interviews. He talked about lament. His book was called Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, and the subtitle is How to Reconcile a Good God with a Hard Life. It was so real, so raw, but there was also so much application. I just resonated with his heart, and he was very honest.

Dave Wilson: I remember I walked into a church in Kentucky and this woman saw me. She said, "I just listened to you this morning with Mark Vroegop. That was one of the best shows I've ever heard." I asked if she had gone through a deep valley. She said she was in one right now. It was very helpful.

Ann Wilson: At some point in life, all of us will face some dark clouds and deep valleys. We have some guests with us today.

Dave Wilson: They’re probably thinking, "Oh great, they’re going to introduce us as the guests that know about dark clouds and deep valleys." And it’s sort of true. Ron and Nan Deal are with us, the directors of our blended ministry at FamilyLife. We are glad to have them on.

Nan Deal: Thank you guys. It's good to be here.

Ron Deal: Always good to be here.

Dave Wilson: A lot of people at FamilyLife know your story. Give us some thoughts as you think through Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, and even how that affects marriages and families. Where would you start?

Nan Deal: I love Mark’s work. It is so important in the grieving community. I’ve been on this path with the loss of our son, Connor. It’ll be 17 years, and truly it has been the hardest work I’ve ever done and continues to be my dark cloud, deep mercy.

Jerry Sittser wrote a book, A Grace Disguised, which when you talk amongst grieving people, especially grieving parents, that’s their favorite. He lost his mom, his wife, and his daughter in a car accident. In that book, Sittser gave us permission to grieve. He gave voice to it.

Let me read this quote: "I did not get over the loss of my loved ones; rather, I absorbed the loss into my life, like soil receives decaying matter, until it became a part of who I am. Sorrow took up permanent residence in my soul, and it enlarged it." You don't get over it. You carry it, you learn to live with it, and it is a part of you.

What Mark has done now—and it is now the second favorite amongst parents when we sit with them—is he’s shown us a way to grieve. He’s shown us a way to grieve healthfully. I’m so grateful for this work because churches, evangelical people, and Western civilization just don’t know how to grieve. We don’t know how to sit alongside people grieving.

Some losses just take a little bit more time than others. Jerry said, "Yes, you can be a griever," and Mark is saying, "Let me show you a way to lament and hand it to God."

Dave Wilson: Why do you think that statement is true? We don't know how to grieve. Is it because we’ve taught it poorly in church? Church can often be the place where you hide and put on a smiley face even when you’re going through a valley.

Ron Deal: Ironically, I think our church theology and practice is more informed by Western culture than actually theology. Lament is all over the Scriptures. That’s Mark’s whole point of his book. Lament is there; it’s God’s way of telling us how to move through our grief.

Western culture says you can master grief. Grief is an illness, it’s a problem, and you need to master it and get over it. That is the language we use and the assumptions we have. I think the church has adopted that without even realizing it. We expect people to get over stuff.

We expect people to not bring it up again. We expect people to not let sadness and sorrow reoccur on birthdays, holidays, or milestone moment days. At some point, you should be over this, right? That’s the sense of mastery we tell ourselves in our Western culture because we’re a control-oriented culture. We think we can bootstrap this thing and beat it. That is not the way grief works, especially deep, intense grief.

Ann Wilson: You guys have been working with blended families. Ron, as you’ve talked to couples who have gone through divorce, couples who have lost a spouse, couples who are merging and blending into these great new families, is the sense of grief and lament different or similar to losing a child?

Ron Deal: There are commonalities between all types of grief. Certain things are similar. It’s the intensity of it, the depth of it, and how massive it is that varies. That has implications for how far-reaching it is throughout our lives.

We’ve used the analogy before about the earthquake of Connor passing away at age 12. Then there are the aftershocks that come after that. All of those are things that are ripples because of the earthquake. We’re 17 years out and the aftershocks are still continuing in our life.

We wake up and we have a grandson, and he gets Connor’s middle name. It’s beautiful and sweet and horrible all at the same time. There’s another aftershock that comes just with the passage of time and the growth of our family.

Other kinds of loss—divorce, death of a spouse, unwanted departure of a partner—they all come with aftershocks. They vary from situation to situation, but what’s similar is that we have to lament that stuff. Not only the initial earthquake, but we have to then continue to lament the ongoing aftershocks and the repercussions.

Dave Wilson: How common is it that the aftershocks in a blended family or divorced family are a result of the initial trauma? I’m thinking of my situation. My little brother dies when I’m seven and it was probably months and Mom and Dad are divorced.

Part of it was they had a bad marriage anyway. I’m a little boy, so I don’t really know like I would if I was a teenager. My sister and my brother could tell you it was already bad. But the percentage of marriages that don’t make it after that kind of trauma is pretty high. I’m watching my brother die and now I’ve got a Mom and Dad split up and I don’t have a Dad anymore. Is that common?

Ron Deal: Hardship leads to hardship, and difficulty to more difficulty. It’s just true. Different kinds of family configurations have advantages and disadvantages, strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, that just means when things are hard, they sometimes get harder for people.

Ann Wilson: I like that word aftershocks. Dave’s mom used to talk about it all the time. After Dave’s little brother died, which was in October, every October Dave was sick. Every October. Even as an adult, he has very few memories of his little brother, but the aftershocks remain in your body.

It’s crazy. Then I think of his mom dealing with the death of a child and also seeing her son who is still there, just a few years older, suffering through it. That’s just hard. His mom ended up not dealing with it in a healthy way. That’s when she started her drinking battle because it’s so painful. Nan, you’ve talked very openly about how sometimes it’s just hard to trust God in the midst of it.

Nan Deal: Numbing is a pretty common thing in the grieving community. It’s an easy quick fix to a horrific pain that you just don’t want to carry. It’s relentless at the beginning. It’s relentless for a year or two.

We think after the funeral and a few weeks you'll be fine. No, it just keeps going and going. Sometimes people just don't understand those yearly times. We talk to parents all the time where they say, "The end of October is here and I’m feeling anxious."

You’re feeling anxious because the holidays are upon you again. You’ve got family-oriented holidays back-to-back and then "Happy New Year," and you’re entering a new year without your child moving with you. It’s just a lot.

Ron Deal: There’s another kind of grief that families who go through death or divorce of a parent go through later. There's a developmental grief. I was talking to a couple not too long ago who were both widowed at a pretty young age. They married and had a bunch of kids.

The kids adapted pretty quickly into the blended family experience. But fast forward 10 years and all of a sudden somebody’s graduating high school and Dad’s not there for that child. Or a child goes on to college, gets the degree they’ve always dreamed of, and on graduation day Mom’s not there.

Weddings and births of grandchildren—every one of those developmental milestone moments is another aftershock. It's another season where children who were maybe four when Mom passed away and don’t really have a lot of memories and didn’t really know how to process it, now they’re adults and they really do have an imagination where they can imagine what life would be like if Mom or Dad were still around.

That’s why we help prepare people for it. It’s a developmental process. It’s not a one-and-done. It’s not going to just roll and you’re going to move past it and life is free and clear. It’s going to resurrect itself over and over again, and you just get prepared to enter into that grief whenever that time comes.

Dave Wilson: Help our listeners understand how to navigate the pain, the lament, the valley, and the clouds as a couple. You’ve had to do that. We all have to do it in some sense, but there’s the nuance of "I’m not the only one grieving."

My spouse is grieving in a totally different way. There are times when I think, "You should be over it by now," or "You shouldn’t be over it by now." It isn't just one person; it’s a marriage. What can you say to help them?

Nan Deal: A tremendous amount of grace. Grace for yourself where you’re at and all those seasons that come, and a tremendous amount of grace for that other person. I will never forget I was walking into the house with our youngest son, Brennan, who at the time was 10 when Connor passed, and our older son, Braden, was 14.

I’m with the 10-year-old. He’s with the 14-year-old. I had gone out to get Brennan something for school. I came in, and he and Braden are on the couch watching a TV show. You have to understand our son was in the hospital for 10 days, hooked up to everything. He was in a coma, then he was on ECMO. I had 10 days of hospital trauma.

They’re sitting on the couch watching House, a medical show. There’s somebody intubated and hooked up. All I wanted to do was throw something at both of them and go, "We’ve just been through this!" But the Holy Spirit just said, "Look at them. They’re together. They’re bonding. This obviously is something they need."

Brennan and I went into our bedroom, turned on the TV, and we watched Food Network because that worked for us. I could have gotten really angry and mad and thought, "I have been through so much, how dare you?" But they did that for months. Brennan and I did food for months, and by the way, he is a very good cook these days. But we had to extend each other grace and we had to give ourselves grace for what we needed.

Ron Deal: We’re just going to do it different sometimes. You’ve got to create space for that and do some self-care when the other person does, like Nan did. But at the same time, you’re also looking to connect with one another around the things you can. That reminds me of what Mark shared with you guys on that program: the four-step process for lament that really is reflected in the Scriptures.

You can even reflect on how you do this as a couple or as an individual: turn, complain, ask, and trust. It was so rich. Turning is about choosing to talk to God in the pain. This is what tethers you to God. Talking to God about your pain—ironically and interestingly—you may be mad at God in your pain, but you’re still tethering yourself to him. That’s a very subtle but very powerful thing to do when you don’t know how to trust him, but at least talking to him keeps you in his presence.

Ann Wilson: Did you guys ever struggle with that? When my sister passed away at 45 and I was 39, I could barely pray. I could not even describe why my heart was so grieving and I would pray things like, "I'm mad at you, God. I don't get what you're doing." I couldn't find the words at that time.

I would go to worship, which felt great, but I couldn't even contain myself because I would cry the entire time. I remember one time just saying, "God, I submit. I think it's the dumbest thing that you took her. I think it's the dumbest thing that this happened. It's ridiculous to me based on her four surviving children and her struggling marriage. I don't even get it, but all I could pray was, but I trust you."

Ron Deal: I think you were turning and choosing to talk to God about your pain, even though you didn’t have a lot of words. You were giving the words you had. And you said, "I didn't have words to share." That’s what Romans 8 is about, where the Spirit is grieving on behalf of creation back to God. "This isn't right." He’s the one who gives words for us when we don’t have the words. There’s a great lament aspect to Romans 8 that we miss sometimes. You bring what you have.

Nan Deal: I think now that I’ve learned to truly lament—like after that day on Connor’s birthday this past year—I was crying, I was weeping, I was lamenting, I was complaining, I was asking.

Then I surrendered the pain to God and said, "I don’t want this, and I don’t want to carry this anymore, but I want to trust you with it." I felt his comfort saying, "I just am so sad for you too. I see how much you miss your boy. This has been long."

I just felt comforted by him that day. I felt this, "I see you, and I need you to hold on, and one of these days it’ll be eternity, but I see that you’re suffering and I know this has been a long, lonely, isolating road." I felt comforted that day.

Dave Wilson: It does seem that God’s comfort comes when we get honest. When we complain, when we don’t hold in what we’re feeling. We go to church and we just cover it up and nobody is there to be honest, and so you leave church and you think, "It was nice, but I don't feel like my soul was touched."

We had a phrase in our green room at the church that I started 35 years ago that as the artists, the worship leaders, and the pastors, before we walked on a stage, we’d always see this sentence: "Never underestimate the pain in the room."

There’s a tendency to walk out there and sometimes you’re doing a happy worship song, and that’s good, there’s nothing wrong with that. But even when you set that up, we always remind ourselves, "Hey, God is good. We’re going to talk about that today, but hey, let me just say this. If you walked in today and he doesn’t feel good or you’re in a valley right now, we understand and this song can feel this way to you, but still sometimes it’s good to sing even when you’re in that valley."

Ron Deal: Dave, I love that. Let me tell you how good God is with lament. Mark’s right, this is sort of the equation that laments: turn, complain, then ask, which is that posture of humility—"Okay Lord, you're God, I'm not"—and then you’re going to trust in him to show up.

But did you know that there’s one lament where there is no ask and there is no trust statement? There is no moment where the shift takes place. And it’s Psalm 88.

The reason I love it so much is because it’s just an outpouring, it’s just a complaint, and there’s no resolution whatsoever. This is how good God is. He wants us to know that it’s okay that on certain days you just can’t find the words to say, "Yet will I trust you." It’s okay. He’s alright with that. He’s even given us a model of how to do that in the ugliness of pain and sorrow.

There are other times where you will be able to turn a corner and you will be able to trust in him. But I think he is so good he wants us to know we don’t have to be perfect in this grief journey. It is messy stuff and he’s okay with that.

Ann Wilson: This is so helpful. The thing that keeps going through my mind, it’s a conviction actually, is we need to allow our kids to grieve as well and to lament. Because I know even with adult sons, when they’re really struggling and they’re sad, I don’t want them to be sad.

And yet sometimes they are. So I feel like this is good for parents to listen to, too, to allow their kids to lament and be sad and to grieve alongside them and turn them back to "it’s okay to be sad." But to teach them to go to the Father in those things and go through all the things that we talked about. It’s okay to complain. But in the end, tell him everything. "Tell me more" is the phrase I like to use with my boys. "Tell me more about that."

Ron Deal: If we don’t steward our pain, we don’t grow up into Jesus. Our faith doesn’t deepen. If somebody else is always rescuing us from our pain, then we really don’t grow up. So yes, it’s coming alongside, it’s saying "tell me more," it’s being there with them, but at the end of the day, it’s allowing them the space they need to steward their own sorrow and for God to work.

Dave Wilson: Ron, you have an event coming up in April. You want to tell us about it?

Ron Deal: Every year our Blended and Blessed livestream is designed specifically for couples in blended families. It’s free. In 2026, it’s free unless you just happen to be in the live audience in Oklahoma City, then we’re going to charge you 10 bucks for your lunch.

But other than that, you can livestream from anywhere in the world for free. Your church can host it for you and a bunch of couples. As many people as you can put in the room for free. We are so excited. We've got some great speakers lined up this year. We’re going to be talking about hope in the journey. I hope folks will join us. BlendedAndBlessed.com or just look in the show notes.

Dave Wilson: Thanks, guys. I’ll end with this. If you want to hear the interview we did with Mark Vroegop, you can go to FamilyLifeToday.com, click on the link in the show notes.

And I will add this: there’s a lot of pain in our marriages that we don’t know how to navigate, that sometimes are just the marriage pain. Ron and Nan have a book that has been out for a while now, but we’re going to put it in the show notes as well, The Mindful Marriage. If you’re struggling in your marriage, this will help you navigate that pain. I don't know of a book better. So go to FamilyLifeToday.com, click on the link in the show notes and get either of those or both.

Ann Wilson: Thanks, Ron and Nan. We always love being with you guys.

Nan Deal: Thank you guys. Good to be with you.

Ann Wilson: If something on today’s episode clicked with you, we just want you to know you are not alone. Because every single marriage has its share of highs, but lows too.

Dave Wilson: The question is, where do you go for help? That was always our question. We are so thankful that you listened today and we want to share one of our favorite resources. It’s a free guide filled with helpful marriage wisdom from real-life couples who have been right where you are.

Ann Wilson: And you can grab your copy today at FamilyLife.com/MarriageHelp. Again, go to FamilyLife.com/MarriageHelp for your free guide that’s full of marriage tips.

Dave Wilson: FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife, a Cru ministry. 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.