I lost my partner and my grandmother in the same year. So when I tell you that grief and faith can sit in the same room, I am not repeating something I read. I am telling you what I lived. There were weeks when I believed God was near and still could not stop crying in the car. Both of those things were true at once, and nobody had prepared me for that.

If you are searching for a Christian grief workbook, you are probably living some version of that too. You have not lost your faith. You have lost a person, and you need somewhere to put what that is doing to you. Here is what I want you to know.

Grief does not follow the neat stages

You have probably heard about the stages of grief. Real grief rarely files through them in order. It loops. It ambushes you in the grocery store over a brand of coffee. It goes quiet for a month and comes back on an ordinary Tuesday. A good grief workbook does not hand you a schedule. It gives you somewhere to stand on whichever day shows up.

Lament is a biblical language

Somewhere along the way, many of us absorbed the idea that strong faith means a quick recovery, and that too much sadness means too little trust. Scripture simply does not agree. Nearly a third of the Psalms are laments. Job sat in ashes. Jesus wept at a tomb he was about to open, which tells me the tears were not a failure of faith even when hope was standing right there. You do not have to perform wellness for God. He can hold the honest version of you.

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.Psalm 34:18

Why writing helps when praying feels impossible

Almost every grieving woman I talk to confesses the same thing in a lowered voice. She cannot pray like she used to. The words will not come. Friend, the page can be the prayer. Writing slows the swirl down to the speed of a pen. It gets the unsayable things out of your chest and into the light where God already sees them anyway. Some of the most honest prayers I have ever prayed were written in a workbook with a shaking hand.

What to look for in a grief workbook

Look for permission before prompts. The early pages should let you tell the truth about how bad it is, not rush you toward silver linings. Look for Scripture that sits with you rather than Scripture deployed to hurry you up. Look for room to remember the person, because love does not end at the funeral and the workbook should know that. And look for gentle structure, short practices you can do in ten minutes, because grief steals concentration and a demanding book will just sit on the nightstand making you feel guilty.

Why I wrote The Healing Girl

The Healing Girl is the book I needed in my year of two funerals and could not find. It pairs Scripture with guided practices for the hardest seasons, grief and loss among them, and it never once asks you to be further along than you are. Women tell me they finished it, and that stops me every time, because grieving women rarely finish things. I think they finish it because it does not fight them.

Whatever you choose, please hear this. You are not grieving wrong. You are not behind. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and that is not a greeting card. It is an address.

With you on the journey,
Autumn