Have you ever experienced a moment that divided your life into a “before” and an “after”?
For Lisa Appelo, that moment came on an ordinary Thursday night during Father’s Day weekend. She and her husband, Dan, had eaten pizza with their seven children. As the family settled in for the night, Lisa told Dan good night just as she had thousands of times before.
The next morning, before the sun had risen, Lisa awoke to the sound of Dan’s strange breathing. Within hours, an emergency room doctor told her that Dan had suffered cardiac arrest and could not be revived.
There had been no warning. No known symptoms. An underlying heart condition had taken the husband she had loved since high school and the father of their children.
Overnight, Lisa’s life changed completely.
She was grieving the love of her life while trying to help seven children process the loss of their father. She faced questions about finances, her children’s health, their futures, and how she could possibly keep moving forward when simply putting her feet on the floor felt impossible.
“My kids have already lost one parent,” she remembers thinking. “They cannot lose two.”
In this week’s episode of The Love Offering Podcast, Lisa and I talk about the heartbreak that shaped her ministry and inspired her new devotional journal, God of Comfort. Her story is filled with sorrow, but it is also a testimony to the nearness, tenderness, and sustaining grace of God.
Fighting for a Future
Lisa describes one of the hardest parts of loss as “fighting for a future.”
When someone we love is no longer part of the future we imagined, it can be difficult to picture anything ahead—much less desire it. The life we planned has disappeared, and hope can feel like something meant for other people.
In those moments, Lisa says we may have to cling to the truth of God before our hearts catch up to it.
This is one of the tensions of Christian grief. We do not grieve as people without hope, but we still grieve. Faith does not require us to minimize our sorrow or pretend we are fine. It allows us to bring our sorrow to the One who can hold it.
During the earliest days after Dan’s death, Lisa would sit alone in her minivan with her Bible. She wasn’t searching for carefully chosen passages about loss. She simply continued the reading plan she had already begun.
Still, she found hope on every page.
Sometimes Scripture reminded her of God’s character. Other times, it reminded her of His promises. Each morning, God gave her enough truth to carry back inside to her children.
Psalm 126 became especially meaningful:
“Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy.”
—Psalm 126:5
Lisa could not yet see the harvest, but she held on to the promise that the God who had restored His people before could bring joy from what she was sowing in tears.
God Is Near Even When He Feels Distant
Psalm 34:18 tells us, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
Lisa experienced God’s presence in an almost palpable way after Dan’s death. But she also recognizes that not everyone feels God’s nearness while grieving.
Grief can create a fog so heavy that Scripture feels difficult to absorb and prayer seems unable to travel beyond the ceiling. If that is where you are today, Lisa offers this assurance: God’s nearness is true whether you feel it or not.
Our feelings are real, but they are not always reliable measures of God’s presence.
When God feels distant, Lisa encourages us to look for His hand. His comfort may arrive through a Scripture, a meal left on the porch, a friend willing to sit in silence, or enough strength to take the next breath. These acts do not erase our pain, but they remind us that we have not been forgotten.
Bringing Our Honest Emotions to God
Grief can carry loneliness, regret, guilt, fear, confusion, and anger. We may think we need to clean up these emotions before approaching God, but He already knows everything we are carrying.
We can cry out against God, or we can cry out to God.
Scripture gives us permission to lament. Throughout the Psalms, we see writers pouring out their sorrow, questions, and fears before the Lord. God is not unsettled by our honesty. He welcomes us to come without pretending or trying to appear put together.
Lisa has found journaling to be a practical way to follow this biblical pattern. Writing helps us uncover emotions we may not realize we are carrying. It allows us to unburden our hearts before God and give language to sorrow that feels too heavy to hold.
This is not necessarily a one-time practice. We may need to return to it daily, weekly, or whenever grief becomes overwhelming. We can write down what hurts, leave it with God, and receive His comfort for that day.
Don’t Rush What God Wants to Redeem
Our culture often pressures grieving people to “move on.” We may even become frustrated with ourselves when grief lasts longer than expected.
But grief does not follow a predictable schedule.
Lisa remembers wishing she could skip the painful process because she already believed God would be faithful. A friend gently told her, “You will not be who God wants you to be unless you walk it out.”
Those words stayed with her.
God does not waste the valley. He takes the broken pieces of our hearts and patiently reshapes them. If we allow Him, suffering can make us more compassionate, more dependent on Him, and more like Christ.
That does not make the loss good. It means God is able to bring good even from what has broken us.
Lisa encourages grieving women not to rush, mask, or medicate the pain. Grief demands to be addressed. When we refuse to face it on our terms, it often returns on its own terms later.
We can trust that God knows the road He is taking us down—and that His timing in our healing can be trusted.
Pockets of Joy Beside the Pain
Many grieving people feel guilty the first time they laugh, enjoy a meal, or make a new plan. Joy can feel like a betrayal of the person they lost.
Lisa once assumed she would have to travel through all the pain before experiencing joy again. Instead, she discovered that sorrow and joy often sit side by side.
She calls these moments “pockets of joy.”
One of Lisa’s sweetest Christmas memories is the first Christmas after Dan died. An uncle gave Lisa and her children a cabin in the mountains. It was decorated like a scene from a Hallmark movie, and her youngest son—one of seven children from Florida—prayed for snow.
Snow came.
Their grief had not disappeared, but God gave them a beautiful moment in the middle of it. That joy did not diminish their love for Dan. It became evidence that life would not always feel as dark as it did in the beginning.
Only God can place moments we will cherish directly beside our deepest pain.
Comforted So We Can Comfort Others
Second Corinthians 1:3–4 describes God as “the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort,” who comforts us so that we can comfort others.
Lisa’s grief eventually connected her with other women walking through loss. She did not need a large ministry or a published book to help them. She was simply a few steps ahead and able to reach back.
She could listen. She could understand. She could remind them that God would be faithful.
But Lisa also offers an important reminder: We do not have to experience someone’s precise pain to meet her in it.
Many of the people who lovingly showed up after Dan’s death had never lost a spouse. They had, however, experienced pain and received God’s comfort. From that place, they were able to offer compassionate presence.
We cannot fix another person’s grief. We can sit beside her, listen without rushing her, meet practical needs, and point her toward the God who will stay.
God Will Love You All the Way Through
When we think about God’s love, we may focus on the good gifts He gives. But Lisa reminds us that one of the purest forms of love is the friend who stays during the worst moments.
That is the kind of love God offers us.
He does not remain far away from our suffering. He is present in it. His presence carries us from breath to breath and moment to moment. Eventually, we realize we have taken a step forward. Then we have a good day. Then, perhaps, we begin to make a plan and imagine a future again.
God will love us all the way through.
Friend, if you are grieving today, God sees you. You do not have to fake that you are fine. You can bring Him every hard emotion and every unanswered question. You have not been overlooked, and you are not walking through this valley alone.
The way through grief is not a formula. It is found in the faithful presence of the God of all comfort.
Listen to this episode of The Love Offering Podcast.
Connect with Lisa Appelo
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