Quiet Grief, Undaunted Faith

This week has wrung me out in ways I'm still not sure how to describe. I share so much of my life and my story online because I want to remind people there's still hope in hard times. Because I want to spread healing for those living with emotional pain. Because grief and perspective don't always sit easily together.

But so often when I'm dealing with heavy emotions or coping with tragedy, I do it alone. I wrestle grief and loss in the quiet of my own space, mourning privately. I don't cry in public, and I don't typically wear my emotions on my sleeve.

If you were to meet me in real life, you'd probably see me as calm. Steady. Getting things done, moving forward. Brushing it off. But under the surface of the woman who still has deadlines to meet, chores to do, and appointments to show up for...I'm feeling it all. The turmoil may not be visible, but it is real.

Between the ongoing crises around the world, school shootings, the heartbreaking news of Iryna Zarutska's murder, the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk, and the 24th anniversary of 9/11, my heart has been impossibly heavy. I'm using every technique I've ever learned on how to cope with grief. I'm struggling to toe the line between responding to tragedy and processing loss in the middle of emotional exhaustion.

Some of the weight was truly personal, private grief, rooted in old wounds. Some was borne of a collective grief, shared with strangers around the world. And some was a secondary grief, the kind that rises in your soul like bubbles on boiling water when someone else’s pain mirrors your own deepest fear.

As the week wore on, I went about my life as usual. I cooked, I cleaned. I showed up where I was needed. I struggled to find writing time. But the space between my ribs got tighter and tighter, the air in my lungs thinned until I almost couldn't feel it passing through, and grief took up more and more space. By Thursday, I couldn’t push it down anymore.

Everything looked normal on the surface. We're housesitting, so on Wednesday I woke up, fed my friend's pets, and drove my youngest daughter to school. I drove back, had a chat with my spiritual mama, made some breakfast. I answered phone calls from doctor's offices. I prepped the 9/11 memorial video I'd been working on.

I'm always proud to spend a little mental time remembering the tragedy of 9/11. Honoring heroes who ran toward fire and smoke, remembering innocent lives that were stolen, holding space for families who will never stop grieving. Admiring the bravery of the men on Flight 93. Before September 11, 2001, I was born in the United States...but by September 12th, I was AMERICAN. That day, and the lasting impact of it, will sit with me forever. That video is my first attempt at book spine poetry...but it's so much more.

When the news broke that Charlie Kirk had been shot, I didn't recognize his name. It wasn't until later that I realized who he was—that I'd seen clips of his videos before. Conversations about his faith and his beliefs. Always passionate, but always steady. That night as I scrolled through social media, numb with shock, I found something deeper than sadness, darker than outrage.

There were people celebrating his death. Mocking. Justifying. I saw a screenshot shared from BlueSky where someone called it "a miracle on 9/11 Eve." And as I prayed over the impossible pain suffocating the family who watched Charlie Kirk die, I marveled at how we all still look like humans...but there are so few of us these days with any humanity left.

As if that wasn't enough, nearly everything on my feed that wasn't Charlie Kirk was Iryna Zarutska.

Iryna was 23 years old, a refugee from Ukraine. She was on her way home from work, here in America where she hoped to build a life in safety from bombs and bullets. She didn't provoke anyone. She wasn't rude. She wasn't hateful. She was just somebody's little girl, minding her own business on the way home. I saw the video. I saw her shock, her fear. Her quiet acceptance of what was happening. I saw her collapse. And I heard the soulless pride of her killer, boasting over what he'd done: "I got that white girl."

My oldest daughter is 21 years old, and she wants to see the world. She wants to fly in planes and ride in trains and look at all the wonder of God's creation. She's wanted to minister to the lost since she was a child. But she's a young white Christian woman in modern America.

The pain that filled my chest until I felt like my heart would burst...the outpouring of grief that filled my eyes and poured down my face...it wasn't abstract. It was close. It was personal in ways that made my hands shake and turned my dreams that night into horror films.

Thursday morning looked just like Wednesday had. I woke up, fed my friend's pets, and drove my youngest daughter to school. I drove back, had a chat with my spiritual mama, made some breakfast. I answered phone calls from doctor's offices.

But because something that looks the same on the outside might still be forever altered below the surface, I thought about the lessons I’ve tried to pass on to my daughters, the many ways I've tried to teach them to survive in this society. To live cautiously (but not fearfully). To be kind across dividing lines. To carry their faith boldly, but to temper that faith with gentle compassion and grace for those who believe differently. I thought about how small those teachings sometimes feel, how meaningless they seem in a world as broken as this one.

And in the quiet of those few stolen moments alone, I curled around myself on the couch, took my glasses off...and sobbed.

*****

By the end of the week, I was facing backlash over my lack of a public statement—but grief is complicated even without complex PTSD, and for many people it's deeper than a public outcry, a candlelight vigil, or a social media post. Sometimes private. Quiet. Marked by the kind of emotional exhaustion that makes the effort of making noise simply too much to bear.

Sometimes it's carried in a scar gouged so deep in the tissues of the soul that it can't be measured and doesn't need to be proven.

This week, as we navigate the next chapter of our lives in a world freshly turned upside down, let's remember that silence doesn’t always mean indifference. Private emotion does not equal absent emotion. And sometimes it's all we can do to sit with the heaviness, allow ourselves to feel it, and still believe with all our hopeful hearts that God is near.

I didn’t rush to post a statement when the news broke, because that's not my way. I didn’t pour my pain over the internet as proof that I cared—because I am a person, not a performance. Instead, I sat in the quiet and let my heart ache. And I prayed for Charlie’s widow, Erika. For his daughter and son, who will never see their daddy on this side of Heaven again. For Iryna’s loved ones, who are so far away in war-torn Ukraine that they won't even have the closure of a funeral.

I prayed for my daughters, who will inherit this world. I prayed for myself, and that I’ll keep holding onto faith even when humanity feels lost. And I prayed for you, that you will stand against rage and bitterness. That you will hold hope and compassion no matter how loud someone else's grief is...or isn't.

Because for some of us, it’s only in the whisper of God's still, small voice, that we find the courage to…

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