E24 Jesus Wept: A Conversation About How To Cope With Grief During Times of Sorrow And Loss

SHOW TRANSCRIPT:

Jen Cudmore (00:00)
Hey, welcome back. again, I have my friend Roslyn with us today. it’s been about six weeks ish the day of the recording this it’s been about six weeks since my father passed away. And so Roslyn and I have had several conversations about grief over the years, but lately, you know, ⁓

Rosalynn Lasley (00:04)
Bye

Jen Cudmore (00:17)
just kind of about what’s happening with my father and then how she is no stranger to grief herself as you probably are aware if you’ve heard the last couple episodes. So ⁓ we thought it would be great to sort of tag team this topic. And so she’s here today. Thanks for joining me. So ⁓ what is the grief process supposed to look like? And one thing that we both have really felt strongly about is that

Rosalynn Lasley (00:22)
Yeah.

Yeah, my pleasure.

Jen Cudmore (00:43)
A lot of people have such a specific picture in their mind of what it should look like, whether for yourself or you’re watching someone else go through it. And we want to sort of debunk that because there is not necessarily a right or wrong way to grieve. Now, there might be some things that you can do to make yourself less miserable and make sure that you’re healing and not just spewing emotion everywhere. But essentially,

you know, there’s different ways that it can look in different seasons with different people. And so that’s what we want to tackle today. So we all have expectations. How can we maybe give ourselves a little more grace and give other people a little more grace when they’re going through ⁓ grief? So I’m going to let Rosalind start us off.

Rosalynn Lasley (01:27)
Alright, so, I mean, if you’ve listened to last few episodes, you’ve realized that I have some grief tied up in my story, and of course that’s not the only grief, but that was probably the heaviest grief I’ve ever experienced, and at that point in my life, ⁓ grief to that level of magnitude. So I had experienced, you know, like the death of my great-grandparents and stuff prior to that, but that…

I mean, I was really close to my mom’s, mom’s mom, my maternal great grandma, but not to the level of like losing my own child or even when my grandparents passed away. And so I didn’t have a full idea of what grief was supposed to look like. I know that I had expectations on myself and then I would get frustrated because I didn’t meet my own expectations even though I didn’t actually really know what that was supposed to look like.

and I feel like I would find myself frustrated because it’s like people try to fit grief into the five stages of grief in this little neat tiny box. And, for me that I felt like it didn’t fit in that. And maybe at some point in my life, I touched all of those different components of the five stages of grief. ⁓ but it wasn’t like, ⁓ I got through that portion. I’m good now. ⁓ we may experience or feel any of those different components all over the place all in one day.

over the course of many years, some maybe not at all. so ⁓ sometimes it can just feel very confusing or it can be a catalyst for shame in our life when we’re already vulnerable because the world sets these expectations for us or we set these expectations for ourselves and then it makes a difficult thing even harder than it should be.

Jen Cudmore (03:15)
Yeah, I agree. And I’ll just point out one thing that I learned when I was doing the research is that some people say there’s seven stages of grief. So is it five? Is it seven? Like there’s the data is not like exact. So anyway, keep going.

Rosalynn Lasley (03:21)
I didn’t know that.

Yeah.

I think for me, it was hard to know. When you have grandparents, the natural order of things is that you’ll typically lose them at some point in your life ⁓ because that’s just the natural order of how life follows a pattern. ⁓ But losing a baby, that goes out of the order of what life is quote unquote supposed to be. And so I feel like that rocked my world a little bit more because it was unexpected.

Jen Cudmore (03:46)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (03:57)
And same with, there’s lots of unexpected grief and loss in life. ⁓ But I feel like we think it may be easier if it’s something that fits within this order of how life is supposed to go, or if somebody is sick and you’re expecting it. And then when it’s hard, you’re like, why am I struggling? I knew this was gonna happen, that sort of thing. And so I feel like there’s a huge risk of setting unrealistic expectations of what grief is supposed to look like. And then, like I said, it makes…

Jen Cudmore (04:09)
Okay. Okay.

Rosalynn Lasley (04:25)
difficult thing even harder than it should be because you shouldn’t have to meet expectations when your heart is raw.

Jen Cudmore (04:33)
That’s true. That’s 100 % true. ⁓ so the expectations just make it harder. It’s essentially what you were saying. And so how can we learn to look at this differently to where we’re not making up rules over what should happen and we’re not saying, you know, putting ourselves in a box and saying, we have to go through all of these stages in this order or whatever. Like just giving ourselves the space or giving others the space to be like, okay, today, this is what I feel. And so I’m just gonna go with it.

Rosalynn Lasley (04:54)
Yeah.

Yeah,

Jen Cudmore (05:01)
And I remember

Rosalynn Lasley (05:01)
right.

Jen Cudmore (05:02)
talking to a dear friend of mine ⁓ who went through a terrible loss and she was older, she was one of my mentors and I just felt so sorry for her and I would kind of check on her every day and she’d just be like, this is what it is. She was so low key about it and I thought, man, if that had happened to me, I would be a basket case. But in her maturity, in her growth, she was like.

It is what it is and I’m just going to go with it. This is how I feel in the moment. If I need to cry, I’ll cry. I like, you know, whatever. And so that really inspired me to just kind of scale it back or dial it back. I’m the type of person, especially when I was less healed than I am now to tell people this is what something has to look like. Like it’s got to fit in this box or, you know, you’ll you’ll be judged and criticized if you’re not following these rules, so to speak. So

Rosalynn Lasley (05:43)
Yeah.

Jen Cudmore (05:54)
Anyhow, that’s sort of, for me, that was the moment where I thought, okay, I really need to pull back and stop having so many rules. Like, there’s no rules and there shouldn’t be, right?

Rosalynn Lasley (06:09)
Well,

for me, I would look at how the people that I was aware that had walked through miscarriage or even like the loss of grandparents or close friends and sort of things and thought like, they seem fine and I’m not fine. Like what in the world is wrong with me that they’re okay and I’m not okay? But the difference is that I can hear my own thoughts as they come and work through them as they come and feel the…

full range of my own emotions as it comes, but I was only privy to a very small piece of the other people’s experience. And so I was making a lot of assumptions of maybe what was going on in their mind or their life, and maybe they’re just better at hiding how they really feel when they’re in the front of other people and I wear my heart on my sleeve. And so, ⁓ you know, we make a lot of assumptions of how other people are doing, how other people are handling things, or even… ⁓

Jen Cudmore (06:43)
Exactly.

Yep.

Rosalynn Lasley (07:04)
for me it was kind of very eye-opening for me in the midst of my miscarriage when I was actively going through it. I was having a lot of nightmares. ⁓ So like when I was awake, my reality was really heartbreaking, but when I was asleep, it was like I was being tormented and so there was no peace in sleep or awake. And so I remember one night I was in the bath because I just…

Like I said in one of the other episodes, I spent a lot of time in the shower because the hot water just felt good when I was hurting like emotionally. And I remember thinking like, this is why people get high. And that was a crazy thought, but it’s true. I’m like, you know, if I could choose a substance where I knew that I wouldn’t be addicted long term, there would be no consequences and I could just take this away for even a little while, I would consider it. And so I thought…

Jen Cudmore (07:56)
Right.

Rosalynn Lasley (07:57)
This is why people abuse substances. This is where a lot of people’s stories intersect with long-term addiction, because if you can’t find peace from this heartache, anything is appealing when you’re really in the raw state of these emotions. And so it gave me a completely different understanding for other people’s stories, because it was really eye-opening to me how desperate I was to take that pain away.

Jen Cudmore (08:17)
Wow.

That really is, I never had that thought and that’s a really good thing to mention because that is why people do those things. That is why people drink too much or turn to substances is because they’re trying to numb those really uncomfortable emotions. But that’s what I think is so sad about ⁓ or a frustration that I have in general with the church in America. I’m trying to be vague because I don’t wanna be super negative, but

I wasn’t taught how to grieve. I wasn’t taught by my family. I wasn’t taught by the church. And so I didn’t know that I was missing this important life process because the truth is sorrow is a normal part of the human experience, right? We are going to have sorrow and we’re going to have it multiple times and we need to learn how to process it, how to handle it. So where do we learn that from? Well, know, ideally we would be in a good, a healthy community, like through our parents or a church group and learn.

Rosalynn Lasley (08:57)
Right.

Jen Cudmore (09:23)
that for me, I ended up learning how to grieve from a counselor. And ⁓ thank God that I did. But that’s, I think that’s part of the reason that I feel so strongly about the topic of lament and why I’m, I’m so excited that I feel the Lord leading me to write a book about it is because God has an entire process set up for us to follow. I don’t know if process is the right word. I’m still working through it, but just like

Rosalynn Lasley (09:30)
Mm-hmm.

Jen Cudmore (09:49)
God knew this was going to be part of life and he has given us tools to work through all that pain and sorrow, not to avoid it or numb it, but to actually learn how to deal with it and deal with it properly. anyhow.

Rosalynn Lasley (10:02)
Yeah, and

I feel like for me, when I was going through the loss of our baby, it was kind of eye-opening to me how it felt foreign because it is. The way that God designed us from the beginning of creation, we weren’t intended to ever experience death. This was never meant to be a part of our story. This is why there’s times where it feels like torment, because it is. ⁓ And it’s something that…

Jen Cudmore (10:24)
Good point.

Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (10:31)
we will carry with us until we take our last breath. It doesn’t mean that it’ll hold the same weight and it’ll be as devastating forever. There’ll be times where it doesn’t, we don’t cry. Like for me, being able to tell my story and not cry is a symbol of some healing, although it is still totally normal to cry at sharing parts of your story because what breaks your heart comes out of your eyes. ⁓ But.

Jen Cudmore (10:56)
Yes.

Rosalynn Lasley (10:58)
It was never meant to be this way and that’s why it feels so hard. ⁓ Our souls were not designed to have this sort of heartache, but we do because of the fall. so God has given us tools like community and himself and worship and lament to be able to walk through it in a way that isn’t so destructive and debilitating that we feel like we have to find an escape from it.

Jen Cudmore (11:27)
So did you find it, for me, it just felt sort of natural that when I’m in pain or when I’m experiencing sorrow and grief, I just naturally turn to God and be like, help me figure this out. And I feel like you’re sort of that way too. ⁓ It just felt natural to be like, God’s gotta help me because this is awful.

Rosalynn Lasley (11:46)
Yeah,

yeah. And I remember like not even knowing how to pray. So I would just pray literally like, Jesus, help me, help me, help me, help me, because that was all I could utter. But even scripture talks about that, like when we don’t know how to pray, the Holy Spirit intercedes for us. So it is not a symbol of having weak faith that we don’t have the beautiful, elegant words to communicate what’s breaking our heart and what we need when we don’t know what we need. ⁓

God said, you know, this is going to wreck you. It wasn’t meant to be your experience when I designed you. And so it is okay if all you can say is help me. If the only words you have are tears, that is okay. ⁓ But yeah, I truly, and I don’t mean it in like an arrogant or like holy way. I don’t understand how people walk through hard things without the Lord because like as a Christian that was solid in my faith, I thought.

Jen Cudmore (12:28)
Yep.

Rosalynn Lasley (12:41)
Yeah, if I could get high right now and I knew that it wouldn’t have any long-term consequences, it would be seriously appealing to me. ⁓ And so that seemed crazy. I can’t believe this crossed my mind, but it gave me a completely different understanding for why people choose what they do ⁓ because anything to escape that uncomfortable feeling is appealing because it is so hard.

Jen Cudmore (12:56)
Yeah.

It absolutely is hard. you had mentioned to me the other day about how going through grief gave you a, I forget how you worded it, but it helped you have a better understanding of Jesus and who he was as a human, fully God, but yet fully man. You know, that’s kind of a difficult concept for us. I’d love for you to speak into that a little bit and sort of share more about that.

Rosalynn Lasley (13:19)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

and so ⁓ I’ll admit that I don’t have a super solid theological understanding of the Bible. Like I know key components of it and stories and sometimes like maybe my take on things isn’t fully the way that God meant it, but the way that my creative brain works and the things that are comforting to me. You know, one of the times when I was walking through grief, I just thought like Jesus wept when he lost his friend Lazarus.

He knew that he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead and yet he still wept. ⁓ Grief demands to be felt. And yet what a beautiful example of Jesus being fully man and fully God because he was in the midst of the emotion and the heartache of grief and wept over Lazarus’ death while also containing the power to raise him from the dead. And I couldn’t think of any other time in the Bible where

We have this great example of Jesus feeling the full human emotion to the rawness of grief and sorrow and weeping and then performing this miracle. We see the different miracles. We see him casting out demons. We see him calling people to repentance. We see him encouraging change. We see him flipping tables and chasing people in the temple. But for him to have the human experience of sorrow while preparing to perform a miracle.

I was just like, I think this is the biggest example of the Holy Trinity I’ve ever kind of taken a hold of. I’ve never really related to it and been able to understand it aside from grief. what a beautiful example of God saying that he’s near to the brokenhearted when we can say Jesus felt this as a man and also as fully God. I don’t know, it was just kind of an aha moment for me to be able to understand the divinity of Jesus and also the humanity of him.

Jen Cudmore (15:26)
I, I wonder like what was going through his mind, you know, like he, he knew Lazarus had died and, and yet he didn’t rush back. ⁓ you know, his heart hurt because his friend was gone, even though, like you said, he knew he was going to raise him. There’s still that, that normal disappointment or, know, when loss happens, you know, our heart is broken. But I think on top of that also being that

watching the sisters grieve, know, Mary and Martha and how sad they were not only that their brother had died because it looks like from scripture that he was their caretaker or their, what’s the right word, a guardian, you know, they lived with him. But then also, ⁓

their frustration at him like, Lord, if you would have been here, you could have fixed this for us. I think there’s so many emotions going on there. And I wish the scripture would have expanded on that a little bit more. I we don’t know everything that was going on, but it just, I just feel when I ponder that moment, like how difficult that must have been for him and on so many levels, right?

Rosalynn Lasley (16:32)
Yeah.

And I think scripture leaving it vague is intentional because if it was so specific, we wouldn’t be able to relate to it. And so by leaving it, like how many times have we said, God, if you just would have responded the way I asked you to, God, if you would just would have been one minute sooner, God, if you just would have heard my cries, if you just would have been there for me the way I expected you to, then XYZ wouldn’t have happened. I wouldn’t have felt this sorrow or this disappointment or, um,

Jen Cudmore (16:40)
I think so too.

Rosalynn Lasley (17:01)
had this relationship severed, I wouldn’t have felt myself feeling desperate and hopeless. Where were you when I needed you? And he’s like, I had to delay so that way you could see the goodness and fullness of who I am and the miracles I’m about to perform for you. And so again, it’s one of those things where had we had more context, had we had more understanding, had he just shown up and…

Lazarus been healed? Sure, he would have been healed, but we wouldn’t have been able to relate to him where we could understand him being fully God and fully man because he’s having similar experiences that we are.

Jen Cudmore (17:40)
Yeah, and I love that we have moments like this that make.

make it more tangible. You know, this is who our Savior is. He gets it. Like you were saying ⁓ in the previous episode about how Jesus knows or God knows what it’s like to lose a child because he gave up Jesus, right? When Jesus died on the cross. so God as a father can feel your pain when you lose a baby. And I had a similar, in fact, I think it might have been you that said this to me, is I had a similar ⁓

Outlook when my son was leaving home and when I was preparing my heart to let him go ⁓ Just the concept of God knows what it’s like to lose a child or let go of a child and so when that’s really ⁓ Tearing me up inside I can turn to someone who gets it and gets me and just loves me Like crazy and can help me bear that burden though

Rosalynn Lasley (18:19)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Right, and he wants to comfort us as a parent. And I had a hard time understanding God the Father because of my own struggles with my relationship with my dad. And we’re in a much better place than we were. But I still had a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea of what God as a father was supposed to look like in a way that was without flaw. But I could understand as a parent, and not that I’m without flaw by any means, but my desire to

care for my children and to love my children and protect my children and to comfort my children and to ⁓ be concerned for my children and to look out for the best for my children. I can understand how I feel about that and understand that that’s God’s vision for me. ⁓ So when we feel that grief and that heaviness and you know we have the desire to comfort our own children or our own friends if we don’t have children or people that we care about when we just want to make it better and our heart

is broken because theirs is broken, we can understand that that’s how God feels towards us when we go through this loss because He never meant for us to feel this when He designed this perfect place for us.

Jen Cudmore (19:49)
And I think that a lot of times we can read the Bible and we can hear verses and it makes sense to us logically, but until we’re like experiencing it.

⁓ And I don’t know if I’m using the right language, but there’s a difference between, my mom used to always say head knowledge and heart knowledge, right? ⁓ Sometimes there’s quite a distance between the head and the heart because we know it here, but we have a hard time embracing it or living it. And so I think of the scripture in Psalm 34, 18, where it talks about how God.

is close to the brokenhearted and how we can hear that a hundred times, but until we’re brokenhearted and we’re laying on the bathroom floor, crying our eyes out, like I did a couple of times, you know, when I, I thought my husband and I’s marriage was over, I would lay on the bathroom floor. ⁓ and I, I lived that, you know, God was there with me, laying on the floor with me, ⁓ crying with me, you know, holding me while I was just worried sick that, you know, my family was going to be torn apart and, ⁓

There are scriptures that we hold onto that, on faith, but that I think there are scriptures that we hold onto because we experienced what he said there, right?

Rosalynn Lasley (21:05)
Yeah,

absolutely. And that makes you so thankful because there’s, you know, as a kid growing up or reading scriptures at some point in it, the faith is new to you, you know, maybe you didn’t come to know Christ until adulthood. ⁓ There’s times where you don’t quite get it. You’re like, okay, well, how is this relevant or why is this in here? What does this have to do with me? And sometimes it’s not at all what it has to do with us. It’s defining the character of God. But when we experience those things and we have these aha moments where

Jesus knew that what was next was gonna be amazing. He knew that he was gonna raise Lazarus, but he still wept. And it was significant enough for them to write it down to be a testimony to us. Like, cause there’s lots of things that happened in Jesus’s life that we don’t know anything about. Like it wasn’t like the day to day we were getting the rundown. So what was the significance of this that they wrote it down and said, Jesus wept. And that was it. They just stopped it there. Jesus wept.

Jen Cudmore (21:48)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (22:05)
It had to be a really impactful, guttural, not just like, a little tear running down and I was like, all right, that’s enough. You know, like it had to be something that meant something so much that it was meant to be, you know, eye catching and speaking to our hearts when we needed it. You know, our grief matters because Jesus’s grief mattered. Like our grief.

Jen Cudmore (22:14)
Yeah.

For sure.

Rosalynn Lasley (22:34)
is gonna rock our worlds, because Jesus’ grief rocked his and theirs, and his grief rocks ours. So when we feel it and we are relating to it, because finally these texts make sense, it’s like everything else kind of falls into place, because you’re like, if this is meant to encourage us, if this is meant to relate to us, if this is meant to be a part of our story, this is meant to be something that we share with somebody else, these other things are too.

Jen Cudmore (23:03)
Yeah, and being the shortest verse in the Bible, like gives it gives it a little bit more of a punch too, right? Jesus wept. Okay. And I think that also, you know, being able to look at this as an example of, know, grief brings tears, like crying is necessary when you’re dealing with loss and sorrow. I think that that’s one thing that I had to learn.

Rosalynn Lasley (23:10)
Yeah.

Jen Cudmore (23:25)
in my very first experience of, don’t know how to grieve, so let me figure this out. When Tim and I were going through marriage counseling and ⁓ then we were doing some separate counseling and ⁓ that was a huge time of grief for me because not only was I…

Well, essentially what I realized is I was grieving the loss of the marriage that I thought I had. I was grieving the loss of the marriage that I really wanted and I recognized was not there. And so learning how to make time for tears. It’s not just when you go to bed at night or when you’re hiding in the bathroom, right? But also like I had to show up for work. I mean, this for us, this was a really sort of nine minutes.

nine months of torment of us trying to figure out are we going to stay married or are we not? And so it was, I mean, nine months of grief and all the different emotions and all the other things that go with that piece of it. I’m focusing on grief at the moment. You know, there were times where I was.

I would need to take a break from work and I’d be like, I don’t know, do I go for a walk? Do I go hide in the bathroom? I? And something would happen and would trigger you and you would have to zip off and hide for a minute and just let the tears come. And so many people, as we were kind of saying before, they hide from that, they run from that, they ignore it and find ways to medicate and bury it. But what I learned to do is I was like, okay, this sucks. I need to cry for a minute or I need just a moment to maybe take a nap.

So there were several times where I would, thankfully at this point in my life, my desk at work was sort of in the corner up against the window and we were on the, what floor were we on? Third floor, I think. ⁓ And so there were times where I would take my break and I would crawl under my desk and I would pull my chair forwards and nobody could see me. I was kind of just tucked away. And usually I would tell my boss or tell my coworker next to me, I’m just,

I’m here, but please, you know, don’t bother me. Because I felt like it was just wise to give someone a heads up that I was taking a break. But, you know, crawling under there. And if I needed to take a few minutes giving myself permission to cry, I feel like that was a long way of me saying in the different aspects of daily life, let’s give ourselves permission to cry and not be afraid of that and not even necessarily hide it. Like my coworkers knew I was crying at my desk.

Rosalynn Lasley (25:36)
Mm-hmm.

Jen Cudmore (25:48)
And I wasn’t ashamed of that. I chose to not be ashamed of that. So, what are your thoughts on that?

Rosalynn Lasley (25:52)
Yeah, and it’s hard too because

sometimes it’s like, if I open the floodgates, I don’t know that I’m ever going to be able to contain them again. that is difficult too, but like grief or just emotion in general demands to be felt. Like when we have joy, it spills out. We smile and that’s something reflective or ⁓ what’s the word I mean? Like we can’t help it that we smile.

Jen Cudmore (26:00)
Okay, good point. There’s that. ⁓

Rosalynn Lasley (26:19)
Laughter just bubbles out when it happens and the same as tears like you can fight it, but it’s like a sneeze It’s going to come out you can try and hold it in and it’s gonna come out But the more you fight it the harder it gets and then once you let it out You can’t like I’m never gonna be able to tuck this back in so ⁓ I don’t know I feel like some people need that practice of being able to fully feel emotion Because it’s part of the process and it’s not a bad thing

Jen Cudmore (26:19)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (26:46)
And just the scientific side of things for my doula brain, like you release oxytocin, which is like a love and bonding hormone when you laugh when you are with someone you love, but you also release oxytocin when you cry. And so that’s like, know, after you have a good cry and you feel kind of sleepy, like there’s a reason that we have those feel good emotions that are associated with crying also. ⁓

Jen Cudmore (27:00)
Okay

Rosalynn Lasley (27:10)
And so in some ways it will help you feel better to cry because you’re releasing those emotions that are good for you.

Jen Cudmore (27:18)
⁓ that’s so good. I hadn’t even thought about the science behind it so that I’m glad you threw that in there. That’s really good. was there anything else that you wanted to share or?

Rosalynn Lasley (27:29)
I just think if you are going through grief and sorrow and whether it’s like grief isn’t just death, for me there’s the grief of the life that I had before I broke my back and just the physical health that I had before I broke my back. Maybe it’s the grief over losing friends just in a relational way that are still very much alive and well and you’re on the outside looking in. Maybe it’s the loss of a job or…

⁓ health or any of those things. Like grief can be more than just death, ⁓ but it’s okay to feel it when it comes. And feelings are temporary, even when they’re hard, like fear and ⁓ anger and but you know, those sorts of things, it is temporary. And so when it’s really hard and really heavy, and even when it’s unfamiliar,

Jen Cudmore (28:10)
Yes.

Rosalynn Lasley (28:22)
One of the things that I will do is I’ll tell myself, like, this is uncomfortable, but it’s not going to last. This is uncomfortable, it’s not going to last. This is uncomfortable, it’s not going to last. Because, like, when it’s uncomfortable and when it’s unfamiliar, it is natural to want to escape it. But you’re doing yourself a disservice to try and hide from the things that, in the end, it’s good for you to work through them. And if you don’t have practice or you don’t have community of seeing what healthy grieving looks like, or even healthy emotion as anger,

fear or any of those things, it’s natural to want to take it away, whether it’s in any sort of unhealthy way. And so, like, I would encourage you to seek out counseling or even there’s grief shares at churches and stuff like that because it is such a heavy thing and it’s something that’s very hard to navigate if you’ve never had the opportunity to see it lived out in a healthy way. And you shouldn’t feel shamed.

to say, I’m struggling, hey, I’m uncomfortable, hey, I’m grieving, and I don’t know how to do this in a healthy way. ⁓ I’m tempted to seek relief from this. It is okay to speak up and say that this is unfamiliar and it’s hard and I don’t like it, because it’s not a sign of weakness. It’s actually a huge sign of strength to be able to say that I don’t feel like I can do this well.

Jen Cudmore (29:42)
Yeah, and you kind of touched on this for a second. think that people really don’t even know, sometimes they don’t even know that they’re going through grief or that they’re experiencing a symptom of grief. I think that’s another thing that’s unfortunate is we don’t always recognize the signs and symptoms. And so we don’t know how to manage those or handle those things like brain fog or having trouble sleeping or. ⁓

Rosalynn Lasley (30:05)
Mm-hmm.

Jen Cudmore (30:08)
it’s so important to get that information so that you can be prepared, so that you know what to expect and you know how to handle it and you understand the value of community and walking it out with somebody and you know how to go to God and talk to God about it. ⁓ There’s several different elements that…

as we said before, can help you get through it a little bit easier and make yourself a little bit less miserable, then if you don’t know what’s going on or what to expect or what is a normal reaction, ⁓ you can have your expectations in the wrong spot. So anyhow.

Rosalynn Lasley (30:42)
Yeah,

and it gives you the opportunity to learn how to be gracious with yourself. It’s not like I’ve mastered grieving, you know, you’re, I’m really good at this. I’m doing it just the right way. But it’s more of like making that your experience is one that, at on the other side of it, you can say, you know, that was hard, but it was good. Is it, which is a weird even concept to think, you know, when I think about losing our baby and

Jen Cudmore (30:46)
Yes.

you

Rosalynn Lasley (31:09)
breaking my back was like, this was hard, this was devastating, but it was also really good and it’s crazy to think that I could ever be grateful for it. And it’s not because I grieved well, it’s not because I mastered it and I did it just the perfect way and I had just the right verses and just the perfect encouragement and all of that, but it’s because in the midst of this really dark time in my life, God was very, very present and it set me up for a lifetime of encouragement because of how He walked through something so hard.

Jen Cudmore (31:16)
Yeah.

Yep.

is there anything else you want to touch on before we wrap up?

Rosalynn Lasley (31:44)
I think, you know, it’s something I mentioned when we talked in the last episode about, ⁓ you know, how my children were encouraged by my faith. And it wasn’t because I was doing it in any perfect way, but it was because they had the opportunity to see it modeled out in real time. ⁓ You know, it may be tempting to hide your pain and your sorrow and your story as you’re going through it, because nobody wants to feel like they’re a hot mess on public display. But…

Jen Cudmore (32:01)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (32:14)
there’s a balance between ⁓ pretending to be okay when you’re not and then being so messy that it’s concerning. Like trying to find what that balance looks like, but it’s really important for the people that are in your sphere of influence, whether it’s your children or your neighbors or people you’re working with or whatever, to see natural grief in its raw realness lived out in a healthy but messy way. ⁓ Because the more people that are willing to walk

Jen Cudmore (32:22)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (32:45)
the hard road of grief, whether it’s for death or other reasons, ⁓ you’re encouraging other people to see that it is okay to feel feelings even when they’re really, really uncomfortable. ⁓ And that it sets, you know, I feel like it also breaks chains of, ⁓ you know, family trauma and stuff like that when you’re willing to walk through hard things without having to numb from them or chase really unhealthy things.

Jen Cudmore (33:14)
Yeah, ⁓ so two thoughts on what you were saying. ⁓

Definitely like when I was going through the grief of my son’s last year of high school before he left, I so appreciated my husband ⁓ because for a while I was hiding my tears and my husband was like, yeah, I don’t think that you should do that. Like it’s okay to cry in front of the kids. And so I remember being in the truck one day and something happened and I started to cry and I was like, ⁓ I’m going to just let it go. And my husband said,

You guys need to understand that for, for some moms it’s really hard to let kids go and say goodbye or whatever. And so she’s gonna cry and we need to just be supportive and let her cry. And I was so grateful to have a spouse who would support me like that in not only letting me have a moment that I needed, but also, ⁓

including the kids in that and explaining, you know, hey, this is going to be painful. so similarly, as my my daughter went to college and then she was home again and then she got married. Similarly, like I think because of that experience of living it out in front of them, you know, she had so much compassion for me in understanding how much I was going to miss her when she left. And so she was able to just be supportive in a different way instead of just brushing

me off as some crazy woman who can’t stop crying, right? Living it out in front of your kids, in front of your family, being real and having that balance of this is what I need in the moment, so I’m going to process my grief. Maybe I need to talk or cry or sleep or whatever. But then also, if it’s super messy, knowing the moments where you need to be alone versus where you just need to be real in the moment.

Rosalynn Lasley (35:02)
and hiding

it sometimes gives people the wrong idea too. They might think that you’re okay and you’re really not and then you’re like I’m alone because nobody even cares that I’m struggling but they just didn’t know or you know with kids leaving home if other parents are really taking it hard and you’re taking it hard but privately your kids might think wow they don’t even care and everyone else’s parents are crying in mind or just completely dry

Jen Cudmore (35:07)
⁓ sure.

Rosalynn Lasley (35:25)
So it’s a balance and also not worrying so much about what other people think too, but you don’t want to give people the wrong idea that you’re totally fine if you’re not fine when you could have community if you would allow it.

Jen Cudmore (35:33)
Y’all.

sometimes we may even need to reach out to someone and say, hey, I could use someone to talk to you because I’m not fine right now. And I have done that before and I know you have to. But I think also being careful to not put expectations on other people and how do I say this? Like being needy of their attention or their comfort to be careful with that too, because

We can have wrong expectations of people and I can’t remember if I mentioned this before but

Father’s Day was just a few weeks ago and I recognized that you know the day before I was beginning to really dread the concept of Father’s Day having just lost my father a few weeks before that and I had this thought and I know this was Satan and it almost tripped me up I was tempted and I didn’t take the bait but I heard this thought came through my mind of I can’t believe it’s the day before Father’s Day and not a single friend of mine has reached out to

talked to me about Father’s Day, knowing that my dad just died two weeks ago or whatever. I didn’t need all this attention from all of my friends to say, hey, I know this Father’s Day might be tough for you.

⁓ Like I was able to dial that back and be like, okay, I know it’s going to be tough and I don’t need to put that on other people. It’s not their job to make me feel better because of this specific day on the calendar, right? So, anyhow.

Rosalynn Lasley (37:04)
Yeah. Well, and

then people also are like, I don’t know if it’s okay for me to mention this because I don’t want to make you think about it if you’re not. But the reality is if you’re grieving and you’ve lost somebody you love, you’re thinking about it. And so if somebody else is thinking about it, it is okay to say, you know, I, maybe I’m wrong, but I’m just imagining that tomorrow might be really hard for you. And I just want you to know I’m thinking about you or I know your anniversary of your loss is coming up and

Jen Cudmore (37:12)
Yes.

Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (37:31)
I know that sometimes this is hard for you, sometimes it’s not. I just want you to know that it’s crossed my mind, you know? But it’s also hard when you’re the one that’s trying to figure out, do I comfort them? Don’t I comfort them? Is it okay to say something? Is it not okay to say something? And so it’s just all around, it’s just a hard experience that none of us really, we’re not carved out to do this well. Like we, and we don’t want to.

Jen Cudmore (37:36)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, there’s no perfect length,

Rosalynn Lasley (37:53)
Yeah, and we don’t want to grieve

Jen Cudmore (37:54)
like you said.

Rosalynn Lasley (37:54)
so often that you’re like, well, I’ve crushed it. I’ve really figured it out. Like, I’d rather not have to experience grief so many times that I get good at it. ⁓ But I do want to learn how to be gracious and also compassionate and proactive when people that I love are grieving because, you know, I know how much it changed everything for me just having the handful of people that were there to support us when we needed it most.

Jen Cudmore (41:25.285)
Yeah, really think this is my opinion. I would err on the side of checking on them. And you can word it in such a way of, I don’t kind of like what you were saying. Like, I don’t mean to make you feel sad, but I just want you to know that I’m here if you feel like talking or that I did think of you or whatever.

Rosalynn Lasley (42:35.455)
did you want to share the scripture that you had about the Lord catching our tears?

Jen Cudmore (42:39.645)
Oh yeah, there was one more scripture that I wanted to bring up Psalm 56, eight, just the concept of how God collects our tears and how he sees us, right? He sees us when we’re crying. He doesn’t ignore us or brush us off like we’re being dramatic or like he legit cares about our pain and you had brought that up before and he will sit with us in the midst of it. just.

Jen Cudmore (43:04.433)
being able to recognize God is there. He cares about even the little things, even the small things that disappoint us. Like when my cat ran away and I felt silly for being so sad that my cat ran away, you know, that was a tough time for me. And I needed to cry a lot and God didn’t like make fun of me or like he didn’t think it was stupid that I’m crying over a lost cat, right? Even though the small things where we’re grieving to something that that we would label small, that’s okay. He cares. he

Jen Cudmore (43:34.289)
He collects our tears because he cares. All right, well, so that’s pretty much everything I wanted to cover. So do you have any final thoughts for us before we… Okay. Great discussion. So yeah, be careful not to put expectations on yourself or others when there’s loss and sorrow. So as we go about this week, let’s explore the depths of this final thought. Where do you have some misconceptions or wrong expectations over what grief should look like?

Rosalynn Lasley (43:36.488)
Right, absolutely.

Rosalynn Lasley (43:44.732)
So I think we covered everything.

Jen Cudmore (44:04.177)
whether it’s for yourself or for others. So even if you’re not in a moment of grief, there’s probably somebody in your life who is going through a loss and may need a little bit of, you know, love and compassion from you. So how can you show up with no expectation and be a good friend to them? So that’s it. Thanks everybody. We’ll see you next episode. Bye.