Patrick Regan has an excellent series on TBN television: Kintsugi hope. This is our conversation about the grief process in times of long-term uncertainty.

Patrick Regan has an excellent series on TBN television: Kintsugi hope. This is our conversation about the grief process in times of long-term uncertainty.
Grief does not work to our timetable. Grief comes in waves and bursts. There is a season for laughter, but there are also seasons for crying, and everything in its season.
My NEW article for The London Institute Of Contemporary Christianity is for all those who are grieving or unsettled, and all those who have lost things that should always have remained.
Have you noticed that the Church often talks about grief in the same way that we often talk about illness and other forms of suffering? We expect people to just “get over it,” that if they believe hard enough, all will be well.
[Jesus] has appeared to me, again and again, in spit-up and poopy diapers, in weepy eyes and runny noses. He has appeared in the mess and the tiredness of it all, and said, Here, touch me. Put your hand in my side.
God doesn’t solve every problem. The sick person doesn’t always get healed. The dead person doesn’t always rise from the grave.
There had to be more to God than I’d experienced. There was something bigger, deeper, more mysterious going on which I didn’t understand.
When the grief of chronic illness strikes, I am Adam and Eve, homesick for Eden, looking at the angel barring the way back. My sickness is part of the metaphor that reminds me of the brokenness of the world. When I am paddling in the clear Mediterranean, I am John in Patmos, with a glimpse of heaven and the riches of eternal life with the Creator.
Eventually I sob out to a few friends on Voxer: Who am I? What am I doing with my life? – and it feels good to have released something. My friend Sarah replies, and says that in lots of cultures around the world, the women, particularly the mothers, are the archivists. They record the memories, take the photos, write the stories.