Surprised by Grief

This sponsored episode of Surprised by Grief is brought to you by CT Creative Studio in partnership with Inheritance of Hope. When Andrea Hansen was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2019, she knew her family would need help charting a course through her illness and beyond. She and her husband Brian turned to Inheritance of Hope, a North Carolina-based nonprofit that offers faith-base

Time doesn’t heal all wounds. But if you’ve lost a loved one, you learn that time and experience reshape you. As the months and years pass, you’re faced with the task of embracing the new you while honoring the bonds you shared with your person who is gone. How do you find a life you can love again? What does that transformation look like? When do you know whether to take off

Grieving people often say that loss clarifies what’s important in life. An encounter with death can help us reorient our priorities, reorder our affections, and restore our sense of purpose. Grief offers us the opportunity to release our reliance on structured programs and embrace messy, embodied presence as the real gift we offer one another in the valley of the shadow. In this

When a loved one dies, local churches often mobilize to provide meals and funeral services. But spiritually rich grief care is more than printing bulletins and delivering casseroles. Death invites each of us to acknowledge our finitude and recognize the depth of God’s kindness to us in Christ Jesus. How can these lessons we learn from loss shape our church culture? What can churc

After the death of a loved one, we often feel compelled to say something. But, what to say? Lacking rich words of consolation, we fall back on platitudes, motivational quotes, and spiritual soundbytes only to discover our words ring hollow. Nothing, it seems, lessens the pain. In this episode, Christianity Today’s editor-in-chief Daniel Harrell and author Clarissa Moll discuss ho

Chances are, a child in your care at Sunday school, on the baseball diamond, or in the classroom has lost someone they loved. Research estimates that 1.5 million children in the U.S. will lose one or both parents by the age of 15. Almost 8 percent of children will lose a sibling during their childhood. Children suffer the loss of loved ones—parents, grandparents, siblings, classm

The death of a loved one indelibly marks our lives. Whether you’ve lost a spouse or child or friend, grief transforms you into a different person. How do you tell others about your loss? How do you process shifting relationships after loss? How do you meet and welcome this new you as you seek flourishing in the face of death?On this episode of Surprised by Grief, Christianity Tod

In 2021, 1.8 million people will be diagnosed with cancer, and 600,000 will die of the disease in the United States alone. But what does it look like when cancer comes to live in your home, when you’re told that your life will become one of those statistics? On this episode of Surprised by Grief, Christianity Today’s editor-in-chief Daniel Harrell and author Clarissa Moll talk

When the phone rings in the night, when the chaplain arrives at your doorstep, how do you respond? Sudden loss inflicts unique pain on those who endure it, forcing them to encounter the darkness of grief without warning. Quite literally, in catastrophic loss, grief takes us by surprise.On this episode of Surprised by Grief, Christianity Today’s editor-in-chief Daniel Harrell and

Here’s a sneak-peak at Suprised by Grief, a new podcast from Christianity Today. Co-hosts Daniel Harrell (CT’s Editor in Chief) and Clarissa Moll share their own stories of loss and heartache as they explore the various ways they experienced God’s kindness and care through ordinary means of grace. No one can fully prepare for grief, but we can open our hearts to the experienc