After Greg and Cathy’s adult son died unexpectedly by suicide, every part of their lives was impacted by the grief. Day-to-day tasks seemed almost impossible. They were now looking at the world through the lens of grief. Cathy says that some days she would drive to the grocery store only to sit in the parking lot for a few minutes, realize that it would just be too hard, and then drive back home again.
Now, many people said to Cathy during these first weeks and months, “Call me if you need anything.” The logical thing for Cathy to do while she was sitting in that parking lot would have been to call one of those friends and ask if they could meet her at the store or even go to the store for her, but in that moment, it was impossible for Cathy to use the lens of logic. Her emotions were out of control focusing on everything that she could not do at that moment. Thinking of a ‘logical’ solution was impossible so she just drove back home knowing that she would have to do without the groceries.
This is just one of the many reasons that Greg and Kathy felt called to start a ministry of their own in order to educate the public about child loss to help them understand a little bit about what grieving parents go through each and every day. They started an organization called The Empty Chair Endeavor and recently launched a podcast entitled ‘Hope After Child Loss’ in order to give parents a platform to tell their personal stories of faith and grief. We may not be able to put down our own grief lens to look through the logic lens as the world around us does, but Greg and Cathy hope that their ministry will give listeners a little glimpse of what it feels like to look at life through the lens of grief.
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