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You’re tired.
Not just physically; though yeah, that too.
You’re tired in your bones. In your soul.
Trying to be a steady husband, an intentional dad, a man of God… but deep down, you feel like you’re falling short. Like you’re carrying more than you know how to hold.
Dad Tired is a podcast for men who are ready to stop pretending and start healing.
Not with self-help tips or religious platitudes, but by anchoring their lives in something (and Someone) stronger.
Hosted by Jerrad Lopes, a husband, dad of four, and fellow struggler, this show is a weekly invitation to find rest for your soul, clarity for your calling, and the courage to lead your family well.
Through honest stories, biblical truth, and deep conversations you’ll be reminded:
You’re not alone. You’re not too far gone. And the man you want to be is only found in Jesus.
This isn’t about trying harder.
It’s about coming home.
Hey y'all, and welcome back to the Dad Tired podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by Dwell. If you've ever tried to read the Bible in a year, you know it's a challenge. Life gets busy and falling behind can feel inevitable. That's why we're excited to share about the Dwell app. Dwell makes it easy to engage with scripture by listening.
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All right guys. Excited to be with you and with Pastor John on wwa. Um, talking about Grief Man, I think it's really important to kind of touch some of these subjects around the holidays. John, I'm, uh, a local pastor too, and Greece's always a thing in this season and. Even for me to like, have some tools and, um, get my mind spinning on how to help people process grief, think about grief is really, really big and so excited to be with you, man.
How you doing today? Yeah. Oh man. I'm doing well. Can't complain at all. How are things for you, are things crazy right now around the holidays? Uh, kind of right. Just in terms of like, yo the, the year winds down. Mm-hmm. And I mean, um, it's, uh. Yeah, my wife is leaving to go to her grandmother's funeral today.
Oh gosh. Right. Gotcha. And, and so it's been that kind of stuff, right? Like it's, uh, yeah, yeah. There's never really a opportune time to work through other stuff, so Yeah. You, you know, school's getting ready to shut down. My daughter's got an end of the year performance. Yeah. Life is just rolling. Life is life, right?
Just rolling. Yeah. Um, I don't remember. I, I guess Tim Keller used to talk some about like, the idea of holidays and. Going home is like, we all have this like, big expectation for what the Christmas season would be, what holidays, and then there's always some like let down and life is a little more real than that.
Like high expectation. A hundred percent. So, so strange. Um, alright. Talking about grief some man. Um, John, do you mind sharing some of like, alright, what, what put you on this path of thinking about grief? Um, writing about grief? Yeah. How'd you, how'd you get where you are today? Yeah, so. Man, we were, um, it was April 14th, 2015.
And, um, I was, you know, funny that you brought up Tim Keller. Uh, I was, uh, getting ready to speak at a gospel coalition conference on heaven. Right. That, yeah, Tim and the rest of the crew are put on. And I'm at dinner that night with a pastor friend of mine that spoke that. Morning, and this is six weeks before my, um, church starts, before we launch this church plant.
And then on that Tuesday evening at like 5:00 PM I get a phone call and my mom's trying to get a hold of my brother and she asked me to call around. I call around and I find out that my brother passed suddenly. And so I had to call my mom and my dad and my three brothers and. Sisters and relay to them that, yeah, my brother had passed and I don't remember if it was harder hearing the news or relaying the news.
Right. Um, and uh, man, I was like 30 years old. I was a month away from turning 31 and I thought that the good like Christian thing to do was just to, Hey, we, we, we. We don't grieve as the world grieves. And so in my mind it was like, well, let's not grieve. Let's talk about the hope. And I just kind of tried to push through.
And, um, the next year was the worst year of my entire life. Uh, yeah, my life just, you know, spiraled outta control in so many ways. And, um, yeah. By the top of the next year, Caleb, I found myself. In a parking lot in Atlanta, getting ready to take back a pair of sneakers after doing chapel for the Texas a and m men's basketball team.
And me and the coach were friends. He asked me to talk about grief and hope 'cause he knew what my past year had been and I did. And I thought I did a great job. And I'm like, man, I really moved through my grief fast and. A group of kids took my parking spot and I crashed out and like cussed out these kids.
And so I find myself, man, Saturday, but before I'm getting ready to preach the next day, calling my wife and my best friends and I'm just like, yo, something's wrong with me. Like I'm not, oh, okay. And they said, uh. Oh yeah, we know that you're not okay. We're just waiting on you to say that you're not okay.
And um, yeah, they grinned me a sabbatical and they were just like, man, we feel like you helping people put their lives together has been this anesthesia that has numbed your heart to the fact that yours is falling apart. Right? Like, take some time off and. Um, yeah, and so I did, and I read Ecclesiastes of all books and found the most hope in that book.
And the more that I started to talk about my grief and not hide it, the more I found that a bunch of folks said, thank you. Like you gave me words when I thought that there were none. And so I've just kept on trying to talk about it. Yeah. That's so good. Yeah, I was, um. I was looking at something Chesterton wrote this morning on, um, he was talking to a reporter.
This is in, in Orthodoxy. He's talking to a reporter and the reporter says something, or not a reporter, a publisher. And the publisher says something like, uh, this young guy's gonna get along. He believes in himself. He believes himself, so he'll be fine. Chesterton responds, like everybody believes in themselves in insane asylum because, because we're way, like, we're way more.
Emotionally nuanced and right. Weak. And, and I think that like some of what you're getting into is, I can only imagine you as a, a pa like my pastoral responsibilities I don't think have ever been like yours are Right. But the, the responsibility of trying to hold it all together Yeah. For everyone around you, like that feels nuts.
Um. Yeah. Emotionally, how, how was your marriage? Like, how was your communication with your wife? Where did your head spin to some dark places? What was that like? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it, so when I say it was the worst year of my life, it was the worst year of my life all around. And if it was not for. The people in my li like, this is not a story of man, things were so hard, but eventually I got myself to together.
It's like, no, things were so hard and by the grace of God, I had people around me to make sure that I didn't completely crash out, right? Mm-hmm. So, man, things were, my wife were hard, right? We were, um. Four days before my brother died, we were in Hilton Head South. Really? Carolina. That's such a strange connection.
We were there because we were, um, we were there from the fifth through the ninth, and on the 10th, my daughter and I were supposed to meet the baby girl that we've been trying to adopt, uh, wow. For a year. The evening of the ninth, we get a phone call that the adoption was off. There was nothing that they could do.
So it's like we, yeah, grieved that. And so, man, it was like eight years of unexplained infertility plus this, plus the church launch and my, my wife. She did the best that she could. I was just on the wrong side of every door. Right. So it's like she would ask me how I was and I would be like, yo, you're just trying to fix me.
Just let me be. Right. Then she wouldn't ask me how I was and I'd be like, so you don't care anymore? Right. And so it was like, like that we're so emotional. This is what I'm saying. Yeah. So it was like that. And then, um, man. I remember there was this one day, Caleb, where we got into the biggest fight of our marriage, right?
Mm-hmm. What was it about? Like, I don't even remember. 'cause the fight is never really about the thing and, um. It was just one day where she's like, uh, it's, it's just so hard and I don't know what to do. And I'm like, if it's so hard, then why don't you just leave, like, pack your bags? And it, it was just weird.
And so as soon as she like, just kind of goes out of the front door in frustration, I'm like, what, what did I do? And granted, I'm at the lowest place I've ever been in my life before or since. And, um. Man, the only thing I could think to do was just to text, right? Like two of my closest friends that had lived close by, there were guys that I pastored this church with.
They'd been, they've been my best friends for 20 plus years, and we all chose to live in the same neighborhood and let's go. This was where it was, it changed it forever for me that it was a. Um, I don't think I was suicidal before that time or since that time, but in that moment it was the worst point in my life and my mind just went places that mm-hmm.
Terrified me. But after I texted them four minutes later, they were all at my front door. And that was like when I realized, oh, like when, when you're really that low, the difference between it taking somebody. You know, four minutes to come to your front door or 34 minutes to come to your front door could be the difference between, you know, just suicidal thoughts and an attempt.
Yeah. And that was for me, like I, I don't know what this looks like. Housing prices are crazy, but we're constantly gonna live within four minute drives of the closest people. Right. And it was, yeah. So life was just, yeah. Incredibly hard. Not just for me, but especially. For my wife that going through what you were going through on top of infertility Yeah.
Um, for, for our wives can be so hard and so, and I know for, for us too can be emotional. Yeah. Um, but I can't imagine the like compounded Yeah. Grief and emotion and, yeah. That's a lot. Tell me about your sabbatical, like when you took some time off, what did that look like? What did it look like to say to yourself, alright.
Like, I need to process this. Yeah. And what are the steps you took or, yeah. What was that journey? Yeah, so there was a few things, right? So it's like right now I'm sitting in my shed, you know, it's a. 200 square foot shed. The back spot right there. It looks a lot like where you are. Kind of, yeah. A water wall with books.
And for me it was a, what, this was 2016, no kids, no responsibility. My wife was still working and so I would kind of come out and just like sit and think and pray. Part of it was, uh, I felt like, like do. Do you re remember? Like when you were a kid and you like fell down and you just got the wind knocked outta you and you were going to cry.
You had every intention on it, but you just needed those first. Like, yo, I just gotta catch my breath. Part of the first part was like, ah, I know that there's work that I need to do. I, I know there's some stuff, but it's like I just need to catch my breath. So the first part was. Um, I was sitting in a dark room watching a lot of Netflix because it was very, very hard for me to process.
Right. I tried reading my Bible and granted, like, I just lost my brother. So I'm reading and I'm like, yo, let me just start from the beginning and by the fourth chapter. Right. I read about a brother murdering your brother, and I felt like I wanted to throw up, and so it was like, man, it's even hard to like.
Read this stuff. And, um, so, uh, uh, I got a therapist. There was somebody at our church that specialized in trauma, grief counseling and, and the nine, and I've Yeah. Walked with them, um, for the past nine years. Right. So they've stayed in my life. Um, man, uh, I opened up the book of Ecclesiastes. And I, yeah. You shared this before.
Those opening words were some of the most hopeful for me. Right. Because it was like, um, yeah. I mean the book starts off, you know, meaningless. Meaningless. Everything is meaningless. Yeah. And it resonated with me because I was in this like deep valley where I felt like I've lost one of the most important relationships of my life and I, I felt like I.
Lost it all. And here was somebody who wrote this book who didn't write that from a valley. He wrote it from a mountaintop. Right? He had it all. And so for me, like it was hopeful because I felt like, well, wait a minute. If I can be depressed in a valley and he can be depressed on a mountaintop, then maybe depression isn't necessarily circumstantial.
And if depression isn't circumstantial, maybe hope and joy isn't. Either, and that just kind of felt like right when you go to the doctor and you've been frustrated because stuff has AED you and you're like, I feel like I'm the only person in the world that has this. And they, you walk out with a prescription and I just left out this, like, I, I still feel just as bad as I do, but at least I have some hope that maybe I'm not gonna feel this way.
Forever. So I think my sabbatical was full of Netflix, reading Ecclesiastes, going back to the gym, starting to work out with friends. And at the end of the day, I don't think it cured much except for the, um, despondent belief that I had, that the way that I felt then I was gonna feel that way for the rest of my life.
Mm-hmm. When, that was one of my questions for you. What, what passages of scripture, so Ecclesiastes, were there any other texts that really jump out at you or that marked you in that season? Yeah. Um, I think First Thessalonians four, first Corinthians 15. Mm-hmm. Acts one, like every place that I read the resurrection popped out.
Mm-hmm. It was just a. Right. I was talking to somebody else about this last week. I feel like after the death of my brother, I had a, a type of second conversion and that it completely changed the way that I looked at the world. Like I knew the resurrection was important. I knew the resurrection was central, but it was like.
After his death. Like I could not in church sing about the resurrection without, I mean, breaking out into like ugly tears and ugly crying because it's like, oh no, like this is actually, this is the only. A thing that I can hold onto that any of what we do here matters. And so every text about the resurrection, um mm-hmm.
Yeah. Has held me down for these past nine years. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So good. Yeah. Um, and I was thinking about a, a, um, a Martin Lloyd Jones quote where he said, um, that. Um, when the church is discouraged, she doesn't need encouragement. She needs doctrine. Mm. And that, like, that idea there of doctrine being the doctrine of the resurrection.
Yeah. Being so meaningful in your brokenness is really beautiful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like, man, it's interesting, right? Like, so yeah. Since that time, right? I've, yeah. In the past nine years, you know, I've read. So many books on grief and death and loss from. You know, Christians to mystics, to Buddhists, to all these folks, and you'll get some folks that are just like, yo, death is a natural part of life.
So the goal is you need to detach, let go, and as soon as you let go, then you can hold onto these things. And that just feels like that it falls so flat because even though death is expected at every funeral or when people mourn, like ambiguous loss, right? The death of marriages, right? The death of their dreams, the death of their health.
Um, people feel, even if they won't say it, they feel like. This, this is wrong. Like this is bad. Like I don't need to release, I need like to, to, to be rescued from this. Right. And, um, there's this, um, scholar, spiritualist, uh, uh, name. Uh. Francis Weller. And so everybody in this grief world like highly re, re respects his work.
And he's got this book called The Wild Edge of Sorrow, where his thing is, um, man Grief isn't an event that we jump past. Grief is really this entrance into an ongoing conversation that we're gonna have for the rest of our lives. And the opening words of that conversation is this, uh, everything in this world that you love, you will lose, period.
And I think the sobriety that he brings is that no, the world has wrestled with the fact everything in this world that you love, you will lose. You're gonna have it for short amount of time, and you're going to realize that there's gonna be a time when it's no more. And this was where the hope of the resurrection kind of.
Changed it for me in that nobody on earth could solve that problem. The best they could do is to tell you to detach and to be grateful for the time that you had, but Jesus dying and then raising from the dead. It's like when he gets up from the grave. He becomes this divine copy editor where he says, ah, I'm actually gonna change the period at the end of that sentence to a common no, no.
Everything in this world that you love, yeah, you will lose. However, there is a way to get back more than what you lost, like, and that is the thing that's constantly driven me. To hope, right. That, yeah. Death is not a period. Death, death is a comma for those of us that believe in the Lord Jesus. Yeah. I feel like I, I was looking at, um, some of your stuff online and just trying to, you know, get a, a grip on what you're doing and talking about it, but it felt like you talked a bit about honesty and hope, like those two things not being inconsistent or against each other.
Can you open that up a little bit? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's a, um. Uh, when you start to talk about grief and the hard things in life, I think people tend to default toward a particular like poll, if you will, right? Like there's some folks that are like. Yo, I'm honest about how bad things are, right? Things are bad.
I don't wanna skirt that. I just have to tell the facts, tell the truth. Things are really, really bad and if you try to insert hope in there, right? They feel like I don't rush me to hope. I just need to talk about how bad things are. But then you have folks that may lean towards the, ah, I don't wanna be depressed.
Yeah, things are bad, but look at how far we've come or look on the bright side of things and people tend to kind of lead lean towards one. Um, and I feel like most people tend to treat honesty and hope like they're. Parallel streets, right? Like you gotta be on one and the goal is to get off one and get to the next when, whereas I found like, nah, honesty and hope are perpendicular, right?
There's streets that intersect, and the dope thing about standing at an intersection is that if somebody asks you, which street are you on? You're like, no, I'm on. I'm on both. Right. And this is where, um, I do think that, um, yeah, the, the Christian faith uniquely e equips folks to say, oh, no, no, no. Look, I can sit down and talk about how bad things are and I can even one up you and say, no, no, no.
Things are actually much worse than you think. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So people are gonna talk about grief and they're gonna say, oh yeah. Time heals all wounds. And what I say is, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait. No, no, no, no. Grief is actually much worse than you think. There is no earthly expiration date to this thing called grief, right?
Like my daughter took her first breath two years to the day that my brother took his last breath, and April 14th is an incredibly wonderful and terrible day. That is filled, filled with tears of joy, tears of sorrow, sorrow. Every time my daughter takes a milestone, I grieve the fact that my brother never met her.
So it's like, yeah, no, no, no. Grief is actually much worse than you think. However, once you embrace how bad things are, like right, we, we have the ability to be honest, uh, about how bad things are because. We've got a deeper hope, right? Like when anybody else buries their hope six feet deep, that's the end of it.
And what we're saying is, no, no, no. Like Jesus was buried. And he rose from the most hopeless place, so that at the end of the day, I can feel hopeless and my feelings are very much real. However, my feelings aren't reality. Right. I can never actually be hopeless if I believe that there is a resurrection.
That is certain. Yeah. Yeah. It, the, it feels like some of what you're saying is, um, this might be a bad analogy, but, um, my context is, uh. Uh, charismatic church. Mm-hmm. A pastor of charismatic church and mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, was, was kind of trained in classic Pentecostalism and so Right. Praying for healing, like all of that is very normal.
Um, but there are settings where there is a denial. Right. And I think, oh, shoot, without throwing stones too much, but like word of faith denial of Yeah. Like, I'm not sick. I'm not sick. And it's like, yeah, no, people came to Jesus going like, I'm really sick. You know what I mean? I'm desperately sick. Yeah. Um, but for me, man, I, um.
You know, I had a weird upbringing, uh, fatherlessness, like the, kind of the classic, uh, I grew up in, uh, Pensacola, deep south. Yeah. Um, and was, uh, ated with on for depression really early. Like I was on antidepressants all through my teens. On and off and off was bad. Right. But yeah, being able to say that as someone who does believe in healing and like I pray for people to be healed in faith and, but to also say like, but, but.
Like the breaks here are like, sickness is real. Depression has been a major part of my life. Right. Um, there's a theological shallowness, a doctrinal like shallowness that people just wanna pressure you out of having to face the real garbage that like is sometimes Yeah. It feels like that some of what you're saying is like, no, like I'm allowed to be honest.
About and my honesty is not Antifa. Absolutely. And I think that, like, for me, as a big part of my life and I had to wrestle and, you know, my setting is a bit unique. I had to wrestle being able to stand in front of people and say like, no, I'm depressed and I take a, I take a pill every day. Yeah. Um, in my context, that was, that was a no-no.
To say that out loud. Yeah. But, but yeah, that, like, I think what, what you're drawing outta Ecclesiastes too is like, how. Much Solomon is doing that. Yeah. Like, is wrestling with vanity and brokenness and, and I was reading that as a teenager dude, going like, because I'm, I'm already spiraling and spinning and Yeah.
You know, my brain's not even developed and I'm having suicidal ideation and Right. I was, I don't even know that I was saved. And I'm reading Ecclesiastes going like, I need help. I need. Right, right. So I feel like some of what you're doing is cool, is like, like now like. We are, we are highly emotional, like strange beings.
Like, we need to talk about this and yeah. Be honest about this. And I love you talking about crashing out in a parking lot. Oh fuck. And like just dude his life, man. And yeah, there's gotta be an honesty, but that's what, so one of the things that you were saying that. I think about a lot is like how meaningful your friends were in that season.
Oh, man. Uh, and being close. And how much friendship is gospel 1 0 1. Like I always, I think holiness and friendship are very intertwined, like find a holy man in history and he's got close friends, I promise you. Um, oh, so I was wondering that, like how much were your friends to help in that season and what do you think like, would it.
If we, our friends are going through grief, like what does being a friend look like? And yeah. How's that helpful? Oh, nah. Yeah. So it's like, yeah, my, my life is a story of friendship. Mm. Like I don't, um, everything that I've done, every single thing that I've done that has been of any consequence or significance has come in large part because of friends and the people that.
I've been blessed to be surrounded by, right. I can't even say that I surrounded myself with, because even the way that we met and kept up was providential and, um, yeah, it's, it's a, uh, uh, I mean, you, you go to the pages of. Scripture. And when you think about like, man, people tend to, this is the main thing, right?
People tend to live as if, um, life would be okay if we just got rid of all the imperfections, right? Mm-hmm. Like let's just kind of get rid of tragedy and everybody lives their life trying to improve their life to a point where they can kinda avoid or outrun tragedy. And I think like. E uh, Ecclesiastes sets this, right?
It's like, man, what game does anybody have for their work? And he's like, oh, knowledge. And he's like, ah. But the more that you learn, the more you lament, right? Mm-hmm. Um, pleasure. It's such a strange principle. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, he's like, yo, I've learned more. And I thought that that would solve, but at the end of the day, I have more questions and frustrations and so then, then it's like, pleasure.
And, and so it's like, ah, man, I, I, I could have every earthly pleasure, even paradise, but I'm still like left an empty person. Jim Carey says, I wish that everybody could be rich and famous so that they would realize that. It's not what you think that it's Right. And then it goes on to like work. And man, I could make all of this money, but one day I'm gonna die.
And there's no guarantee that the person that I leave it to isn't going to squander it all on crypto. Right. And just kind of on and on and on. And then the turning point in the book comes from this where he's like, oh, like. Man, there's a time to be born. There's a time to die. There's a time like I'm not in control.
I am not. Tragedy is going to come. You can't outrun it any more than a dog can outrun its tail. Once you learn to accept imperfection in life, you realize that the biggest fight that you're gonna fight is not against imperfection. The biggest fight that you're gonna fight in this life is against isolation, right?
And it is. Scripture starts off that way, and we miss it, right? As folks that talk a whole lot about sin and how it messed up the world and all of that stuff, which it is true. Um, that's in Genesis three. The very first time that God says something is not good is in Genesis two, when Adam is by himself, right?
So you have this isolation being, this threat to enjoying life as it should be. And, and that's where I, I feel like, man, um. I think we spend so much time and as you talk through, right, like we don't want to admit or to be honest about how things are because we think tragedy ruins people or will ruin, ruin us.
And what I've learned is this, no tragedy doesn't ruin anybody. Um, hopelessness does though, right? And it's people that surround us that help us. Hold on to that. Hope so. Yeah. My story has been, I've been hopeless and the friends that I'm with have kind of, yeah, grabbed my hands and helped me to hold on to hope.
I think I've, I've been thinking about this a bit, but I, I. Um, part of church growth strategy, um, becoming small group centered, like I think we looked at small groups and said small groups made church just grow in the eighties. And one of the things we did, I think that is actually detrimental to the larger body is we've made small groups about how much the church could grow if we met together and it became really formulated and it's like, no, we actually missed the entire underflow of community and life and like looking each other in the face and talking about.
My brokenness and my sorrow and my, yeah, my hope. And even celebrating. And I think for me, that's one of the things I'm grieved by is, um, community has become a church growth tool and not a, something that flows out of our, you know, kind of rich understanding of what Jesus did. Yeah. Like the, the night be before he is sitting at a table and talking about.
Sharing life with each other as we come to communion and, right. Yeah. So anyway, that's something that's, yeah. That's creeped me lately and I've wanting to help people with is like, no, like life to some extent is knowing people and walking with people and Oh yeah. It, it's, it's a, um, yeah, like your favorite song is your favorite song, and there's a particular joy that you have in it.
Not just in being able to enjoy it, but being able to share it. Share it, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That it's. My wife's Cajun and from south Louisiana, and it, that's food, dude. Like, come on. You have to share. Like, oh, listen, dude, I, I, I've, I've always struggled with my weight. I can get fat real quick. Come on. When we first got married, she'd be like, uh, I need you to try this.
And I'm like, I'm, I'm okay. Dude's offended. She's all out offended if you don't try her. Like if you don't. Share the food. Oh, listen, but that's dude, yeah, that's life. It's culture sharing food and being together and Yeah. So interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It multiplies, right? It's just like a Yeah. Like, yeah.
Um, yeah. Friendships don't shrink when you add more to the mix. Right. They grow. Yeah. And that's, yeah, that, that if people kind of, yeah. Just wishing that people. Saw that and enjoyed it more and realized like it, so I think what the sub, like what, what grief can do at times is it sobers us up to remind us what life is all about.
Right? Yeah. Like, uh, whenever I'm like sitting on the couch and ignoring my daughter mm-hmm. Just doom scrolling away on the phone. Like, grief has this waiter. You know, climb up your spine and just whisper in your ear. Everything in this world that you love, you'll lose what's more valuable, doom scrolling these memes or connecting with your thought.
And so it's that right? Grief can be a teacher to constantly pull us back to what matters most. That's so good. Yeah. What, um, outside of, uh, like. Death as you've studied and thought and talked about this, like what are the other major grieving points for people in the church right now? This is, uh, this is great.
Just be because it's like a, um. I think the most helpful thing to think of when it comes to grief is like, you know, metaphors matter, right? Mm-hmm. And I think they don't just help us grasp concepts. They help us n navigate through life. And the most predominant metaphor that people think of when they think of grief is, oh, journey, right?
The grief journey. The problem with that is that journeys start and journeys have ends. Grief doesn't really have an earthly end. And so if you have folks think that it's a journey, then they run fast and hard to chasing some light at the end of a closed tunnel, and they leave to press. Frustrated. But when you think of grief, not as a journey, but a language, right?
And the goal of a language is to become fluent and to connect. You realize that when it does come to grief, there are different dialects. Tangible grief is right. The death of a loved one, funeral casket, shoulders to cry on ambiguous grief is one that. Uh, people don't know that they have, but everybody has it, right?
Ambiguous loss or grief is Yeah. The death of a dream life is not what I thought it would be. And you think in the church, right? Like, yeah. Marriage, friendships, uh, kids, people like grieving. The fact that. This is a very good thing. God has not provided me this good thing, health. Right? This past year I was, uh, diagnosed with an autoimmune disease.
It affects my thyroid. And I like, was like, man, I'm like tired all the time. My mood is off. My metabolism don't quite work like it. Uh. Used to like all of this stuff, and I thought it was just because I was turning 40, but I found out it's like, oh nah, it is your body turning against you and right, like you, you grieve that stuff.
Health, um, think of like chronic illness or the diagnosis of a parent with Alzheimer's or dementia where they're still here, but you. Talk about them with past tense verbs, right? So you grieve the fact that there is somebody physically present, but mentally and emotionally absent, right? The same thing with like broken friendships, and you just think about all the, the hurt and abuse and things like that that can go on in church.
The loss of a jot, right? I say all these things on and on and on, because. People don't think of those things as grief, but what you learn is that, um, the grieving brain does not know the difference between an ambiguous loss and a tangible loss. So you can have somebody that has had this ambiguous grief, grieving the death of chronic illness, grieving the death of an abusive or abandoned parent, and.
They are just as despondent and sad, and they're like, why am I sad all the time? Where if you, if your dad dies, people come to you and shoulders to cry on casseroles, all types of su su support. If you have an ambiguous loss, the death of a 20 year friendship, people are like, ah. It's not like anybody died like.
You'll be okay. And, um, I, I really think that if the church realized how much that. Um, yeah. Jesus never necessarily wrote these words, but he understood ambiguous loss to the point that the Bible would call him a man of sorrows. Mm-hmm. Acquainted with grief, or fluent with grief. That's why it was people flocked to him because they're like, finally, like somebody who.
Right. Sits with me in my despair, right. Come meet a man who told me all about me, but he didn't like, put his thumb down on me and make me feel, he let me know that he was there to walk with me. And I think, uh, people often underestimate, um, just how much, like yeah, presence. Presence matters. Um. Um, yeah. And they underestimate just how much, um, it's important not for us to say the right words, but to give people time to share their stories of Yeah.
Pain and loss and hurt, and just have somebody else sit there and say, yeah, that is the worst. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I, uh. My wife and I foster. Mm-hmm. And we had a, uh, two, um, teenagers who they, they just went to be with a biological family member Oh. On Monday. But we had 'em for a couple months and yeah, they got to us because their mom passed unexpectedly.
Oh man. And, um, but yeah, man, so many times where, uh, they're looking at. Us like crying in the room, but they don't have words and Right. I don't have words. You know what I'm saying? Like, I, I didn't know your mom. Right. I didn't know your family. I'm just here. Yeah. Um, and so yeah, that idea of grief being a language and to some extent life being, learning Yeah.
How to speak it, how to, yeah. Um, man, those, those situations are hard. And I, as a pastor too, sometimes all you can do is just. Yeah. Just sit there. Yeah. And embrace the awkwardness. Yeah. Um, and that's where, for me, a lot of times I'm just telling like, you know, how you self-talk. I'm just embrace the awkwardness, Caleb.
Yep. Just embrace it, dude. Yeah. Yeah. There's this one, sort two of my best friends in the world that I've learned so much about grief and hope from, um, Jordan and Jessica Rice. Uh, they pastor a church in Harlem. Um. They're 43 and 42 years old, respectively, and both of them, they've been married 10 years I think, but both of them, it's their second marriage.
Because they were both tragically widowed in Oh wow. Their twenties. Jessica lost jarron to a motorcycle accident two and a half months into marriage. Um, Jordan's wife, Danielle was diagnosed with a rare and incurable form of brain cancer 10 months into their marriage. And so it was just, I mean, the worst.
In between their spouses dying and them meeting each other, they dated other people, and as they did, there would be times where they would wanna share and talk about their spouse. And for somebody that didn't know what to do, it became awkward and uncomfortable. And I'm here now, like, let's kind of move past this.
And so the relationships could go deep, but they became. At some point it's like, we just really can't move on. So they broke up. Then they, they found each other and one of the things that they found was this, um, everybody else would just say, sorry for your loss. And, and the conversation would stop there.
And then they're like, ah, let's kind of wait some time and then let's move on to talk about the things we talked through when they met each other. It moved from, sorry about your loss to Hey. Would you use your language to tell me a story about your love? That if I'm ever really gonna know you, I know that what you lost is more than just the grave.
There was a whole life and I wanna hear about that life. And the more that they started to tell stories about their love, like far from. Distancing themselves. Like it brought them closer to where now. Yeah. Jordan and Jess, they cannot tell their grief story without a love story. Mm-hmm. And they can't tell their love story without a grief story.
And I feel like their lives are the perfect embodiment of honesty and hope. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. If some of the things I, I feel like you're saying are, um. Walking with people through grief is not necessarily about having solutions as much as it's about giving space for people to explore. Yeah. Language and tell stories and Yeah.
Maybe laughing with and crying. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That isn't that like wonderfully Christian too, to love people enough to like sit in the middle of stuff with them. This is what I'm saying. I miss Jesus. Right. Yeah. You on the, you know, the greatest hope in sharing stories and allowing people to share theirs right story is this like act of narrative love where mm-hmm.
We don't tell the story. In order to solve folks grief, we tell stories to remind them that their story is an incomplete one. Mm-hmm. So it hasn't come to the end. There's still time for things to turn around and the best stories they like turn around at the last minute or the most unexpected time. So just because.
Like people tend to feel in loss. My story's done. This is the end of the road. And what we say is, oh, no, no, no, no. Every story feels like it's the end of the road until, yeah, the cul-de-sac becomes this through street and we find that there's more to the story and we are just trying to help folks remember there's more to the story.
So cool. Yeah. We're getting close to to time, but tell me, okay. Tell me about the tour. Okay. Um, yeah, so a few years ago we put, we decided to, um, create a space where people could feel all of this, right? That it was, uh. In all the stuff that I read and worked on, on grief, I, I, I, I mean, yeah, it was the focus of my doctorate.
So I read, I listened, I write, wrote, and I worked. Um, I saw that there were two pre predominant things. One was. Clinical, right? So therapists, counselors, people that are bringing in science and that is helpful and I love all of that stuff. Read so much of it. And then you have like stories and they were memoirs.
I. Um, which was great. The problem was if I didn't relate to the particular loss that you had, there were things that I could pull on, but it was hard for me to get on to this on-ramp. And then there was some Christian stuff that sometimes skirted over honesty on the way to hope. But as I looked kind of out in the world, I saw everybody talk about grief.
But they did it artistically. So, movies, songs, uh, people think Ted Lasso was a show about football. Ted Lasso was a show about fatherhood. Every major character was either celebrating or grieving something that their dad did. And they were entirely shaped by what went, went, went, went on with their dad. So everybody in the world is artistically.
Um, engaging grief in a way that they were trying to engage folks', imaginations and emotions. So it was a, alright, what if we could put together an evening to remind folks that this right, if your life was a restaurant, when your grieving grief would convince you that it has a standing reservation at every table.
And it doesn't, grief can sit down with joy, with laughter. And so we created a evening of, um, music, um, and film storytelling, comedy conversation. I. And, um, we were just like, all right, let's create this space. Let's bring folks into this space where they don't just hear, but they feel right. The fact, honesty and hope can coexist.
Tragedy doesn't ruin anybody. Hopelessness does. And so in 2022, it was small rooms, five cities, Atlanta, la, dc, Houston, Dallas. Last year it was, um. You know, 20, or it was 13 cities, 27 days, coast to coast. And then this year it'll be, yeah, close to 30 series or 30 cities and just rooms of people that come in.
And it is an evening to engage with grief in a. Hopeful way that doesn't skirt over the sadness of it. And so yeah, you'll hear laugh, you'll hear cry, sing, and our aim was just how do we demonstrate the hope that we think that our faith provides and that that info's on what, which, which website? Uh, so online, if you go to, we go on tour.
Dot com. It's all, there we go on tour, on Instagram, Facebook, the whole nine. And the book you wrote that kind of sparked this as we go on, we go on. Yeah. Yeah. If you guys wanna check that out. Yeah. Oh man, John, it was so good to talk. I could talk with you all day. Yeah. I feel like we've known each other forever, but we Right.
But we, oh man, this is great. Yeah, man. Well, God bless you and guys, check him out. Check. We go out and we go on tour and the book we go on, um, especially around the season, people are struggling if you're struggling and we love you. Talk to you soon, guys. Alright.