The Most Overlooked Trauma Healing Experience: Tears, Grieving and Lamenting – Part 2

Grieving has to do with significant loss and working through the emotion of it all. If you’ve ever struggled with loss, pain, or the overwhelming emotions that come with grief, I invite you to join me for this heartfelt broadcast. In this second part of my series on tears, grieving, and lamenting, I open up about the most overlooked trauma healing experience—one that many of us try to avoid, but desperately need.

What about grieving through decisions and choices of the past? I talk about that as well.

Together, we’ll explore not just the pain of loss, but the beauty and growth that can emerge from it. I’ll share practical insights, biblical wisdom, and personal stories to help you embrace your own valleys and challenges. Whether you’re facing the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, or the loss of a dream, you’ll find encouragement and tools to process your emotions in a healthy, compassionate way.

I talk about the five stages of grief, the difference between godly and ungodly sorrow, and how lamenting can become a powerful, honest exchange with God. This isn’t just about “getting over it”—it’s about learning to walk through grief with grace, finding hope in the darkness, and discovering that your tears are not a sign of weakness, but a sacred part of your healing journey. If you’re ready for a deeper, more authentic connection with yourself, with others, and with God, I encourage you to watch and listen. Let’s take this healing and freedom journey together.

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In our fast-paced, fix-it culture, we’ve somehow convinced ourselves that emotional pain is something to quickly overcome rather than work through. Yet one of the most powerful tools God has given us for healing remains largely misunderstood and avoided: the sacred process of grieving, crying, and lamenting.

Understanding Grief Beyond Death

When we hear “grief,” most of us immediately think of death and bereavement. While losing a loved one certainly calls for grief, this natural emotional process extends far beyond death. Grief is our response to any significant loss or change that dramatically alters our lives and perception of life.

Grief encompasses many kinds of loss:

Relational losses: divorce, breakups, friendship endings, family estrangement, the empty nest transition
Childhood wounds: grieving the loving childhood you never had, absent fathers, non-nurturing mothers, neglect
Trauma of all kinds: abuse, natural disasters, spiritual abuse, violence
Health losses: serious diagnoses, physical disabilities, infertility, miscarriage
Future losses: job loss, financial ruin, shattered dreams, major disappointments
Safety losses: changes in your community, country, or world that leave you feeling unsafe
Past decisions: grieving unhealthy patterns or sinful choices you’ve made

The goal of grieving isn’t to “get over it” and return to life as it was before. Grieving allows us to process pain, integrate loss into our life story, and walk forward – even with a limp or sting we might carry. It leads us into a new chapter rather than back to our old one.

Two Paths: Godly Grief vs. Worldly Sorrow

The apostle Paul makes a crucial distinction in 2 Corinthians 7 between godly grief that leads to healing and worldly sorrow that produces death. When correction or painful awareness enters our lives, we face two possible responses:

Worldly sorrow spirals into shame attacks. It drowns us in self-condemnation, making us feel stuck in failure. We become so overwhelmed with our badness that we can’t learn, grow, or see empowerment. This kind of grief produces death – emotional, relational, and spiritual stagnation.

Godly grief, however, awakens us to opportunity. It produces diligence, clearing of wrongdoing, healthy indignation over what’s wrong, reverence for God, healthy desire for better things, zeal for God’s ways, and justice. It’s not about groveling or extended self-punishment – it’s about awakening to God’s goodness and the growth available to us.

The key difference? Godly grief allows learning to enter while keeping shame from being the dominant influence. It positions us as beloved sons and daughters receiving correction from a loving Father, not as slaves fearing disconnection.

The Messy Reality of Grief Stages

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross identified five stages of grief through studying people who received terminal illness diagnoses: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. These stages aren’t a neat, linear progression but rather a messy mixture we cycle through repeatedly.

Denial protects us from emotional overwhelm initially. Anger can signal we’re processing but also that underlying fears need attention. Bargaining represents our attempts to maintain control and “fix” what happened. Depression is the sadness we typically run from but desperately need to feel. Acceptance isn’t arrival at happiness but a gentler positioning toward pain where we stop fighting reality.

Everyone grieves differently. The timing varies dramatically. What matters is giving ourselves permission to experience this process without forcing it into a timeline or prescription.

How Christians Get Grief Wrong

Unfortunately, many believers respond to grief in ways that hinder rather than help healing:

Quick fixes and platitudes: “God has a plan,” “Everything happens for a reason,” “God won’t give you more than you can handle” (which misquotes 1 Corinthians 10:13). These responses often come from people uncomfortable with pain who want to rush past the messiness.

Complete avoidance: Jumping back into life, refusing to talk about loss, suppressing emotions, staying frantically busy, or numbing pain with substances or behaviors.

Shame-based responses: Believing grief means you lack faith, that tears indicate weakness, or that mourning is self-centered. Some Christian teaching has wrongly suggested that proper faith means you shouldn’t grieve – contradicting Jesus himself, who wept.

Getting stuck: Whether in denial, blame cycles, unproductive venting without processing, or becoming so consumed by loss that it defines your entire identity.

The truth is that seasons of mourning are biblical. Ecclesiastes reminds us there’s “a time to weep and a time to laugh.” Jesus wept. The Psalms are filled with raw, honest expressions of pain. Grief isn’t the opposite of faith – it’s faith expressed through our full humanity.

The Sacred Gift of Lament

Beyond personal grieving lies the biblical practice of lament – bringing our deepest pain, confusion, and questions honestly before God. Lament isn’t mere complaining but rather honest expression coupled with movement toward God rather than away from him.

Biblical lament includes:

Honest expression of pain: Psalm 31:9 says, “Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eye is wasted from grief; my soul and my body also.”
Moving toward God: Positioning ourselves for his help rather than withdrawing
Petitioning for aid: Not necessarily asking for circumstances to change but for strength and presence in walking through them
Affirming trust: Even while struggling, seeking to connect with God’s character and faithfulness

Lament can be individual (like David’s personal cries in Psalm 86) or communal (like Psalm 12’s community grief over widespread sin). It invites us to bring our unfiltered emotions to God while trusting his goodness and seeking his comfort.

Three Truths About Tears

As you consider your own relationship with grief and tears, remember these truths:

Tears are temporary. Even when pain feels endless, the intensity won’t last forever. Psalm 30:5 promises that “weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning” – understanding that the “night” may be a season rather than eight hours.

Tears invite exchange with God. Isaiah 61 speaks of beauty for ashes, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Our pain becomes a pathway to experiencing God’s redemptive power in new ways.

One day, tears will be wiped away. Revelation 21:4 promises that God “will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” Our present grief is held within the hope of ultimate healing and restoration.

Permission to Grieve

If you’ve been avoiding, suppressing, or shaming yourself for grief in your life, consider this your permission slip. You don’t have to force tears, but you can stop holding them back when they come. You can recognize that your emotions aren’t enemies to defeat but messengers carrying important information about your heart and your losses.

Start with self-compassion: “It’s okay that I’m not okay right now.” Allow emotions to work through you rather than fighting them. Find safe people who can sit with you in pain without trying to fix you immediately. Consider professional help from grief counselors or therapists who understand trauma and loss.

Most importantly, remember that embracing grief doesn’t make you weak, faithless, or self-centered. It makes you human. It makes you like Jesus, who entered fully into human experience, including its pain. And it positions you to receive the comfort, healing, and growth that can only come through walking honestly through valleys rather than sprinting around them.

Your tears are not a liability – they’re a sacred gift, a pathway to deeper intimacy with God and authentic community with others. In a world that often demands we “get over it,” choosing to work through grief with compassion and faith becomes a radical act of trust in God’s redemptive purposes.

The valley of weeping can become a place of springs. But only if we’re willing to enter it.

Empowering You to Live Healed and Free