Over time, I’ve thought about how I might condense grief into just a few words. This is really quite impossible. There’s just too much with grief. Grief is never a nice linear progression from one stage to the next. Nope, it’s a shift back and forth through a whole bunch of emotions and feelings. Because grief is so unique for each person, doling out hard-and-fast interpretations are risky.   Yet sometimes thinking of something in easy-to-remember terms is so helpful. That’

Grief. It’s personal to me. In fact, I recently published a book about grief. How grief is more of a part of our lives than we often realize.   Now, try to imagine being a kid and experiencing huge amounts of grief. Like being a child or teen a losing a parent. A sibling. A significant person in their lives. Loss so big it’s impossible to begin to wrap one’s little arms around it.

Life often takes us down unexpected paths, and for Dianne, that includes becoming both a pastor and an author. In her upcoming book Unraveling Together: Sharing the Threads of Grief, she opens up about her personal journey with loss and healing, and invites readers to join her in exploring how grief and gratitude can coexist.

Failure is a part of life, yet it’s often something we struggle to accept. Through lessons from Abraham Lincoln, the Apostle Paul, and even Jesus Himself, this reflection reminds us that being OK with failure allows us to find true strength in God and grow through our weaknesses.

After years of starts, stops, and stacks of papers on the kitchen island, Dianne finally nears completion of her second book, Unraveling Together: Sharing the Threads of Grief. In this heartfelt post, she reflects on the long, faith-filled journey of writing about grief, the people who inspired it, and the importance of community and perseverance when God calls you to unexpected work.