Chapter 7: Creating a Shared Grief Journey

Read this day on your own first, and take a little extra gentleness with it. When you come together, begin with something that landed well. Then, with the questions, let one person speak fully while the other listens only to understand. Don't fix, defend, or rebut. Grief is tender ground, and past wounds may surface. If a question hurts too much, stop and come back to it another day. No question here is worth a bad night. If it keeps running hot, a pastor or counselor can walk beside you.

Chapter 7 helps a family look honestly at each person's grief, adults and children alike, and grieve forward together. Deal uses the picture of an earthquake and its aftershocks. The original loss, whether a death, a divorce, or a broken relationship, shook each person's sense of who they are. Aftershocks keep coming. He asks how your family can talk about the past out loud and carry important people and relationships into the present, and how faith and pain are connected.

John 11:32-36 shows us Jesus in a grief scene. Mary falls at his feet and says, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." Her sister Martha had said the same words earlier (John 11:21). It's honest, and it carries an edge of accusation. Look at what Jesus does not do. In these verses he doesn't correct her or hurry her along. He sees her weeping and the others weeping, and he is "deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled." Then he asks, "Where have you laid him?" He goes toward the place of the loss.

That is a model for parents. Deal's chapter includes emotional coaching: listening to children and validating what they feel, instead of talking them out of it. A child who says, "I wish things were the way they used to be," is not rejecting you. They are showing you a quake line.

Then comes the shortest verse in the passage: "Jesus wept." He knew what he was about to do (John 11:11-15, 43-44). Knowing a good ending didn't cancel the tears. The bystanders say, "See how he loved him!" Grief shows what mattered. In a blended family, honoring a child's grief for a parent, a lost home, or a family that used to be is not a threat to your marriage. It is a way of telling them the love was real.

Deal also suggests stepping into a child's grief at strategic moments, such as the wedding, and being ready for bitter as well as sweet emotions. A day can hold joy and sadness at once.

For the two of you: this is also about your own losses. A widow, widower, or divorced spouse has grief too. You can make room for each other's past without feeling replaced.