Summary: An extended reflection for Christians permitting ourselves and others to grieve well and how we may accompany those who are grieving.

Can you just sit with me? Have you ever felt like that in a time of pain, grief, or loss? You don’t want to be asked questions, or to be fixed, or told to “get over it,” or be counselled. You just want a friend or friends who will be there with silence, a listening ear, a caring hug, and to hand you another tissue when you need it.

The title captures both the longing of the grieving and the point of this book so well. Natasha Smith has known more grief than one would think one could bear in a lifetime. It has left her with lots of questions, including questions for God. But one thing she knows. Our culture isn’t very good at giving people the space to grieve and the time to heal. Out of her own experience she helps others who are grieving to understand that what they feel is normal. And she helps those who want to care to know how to sit with the grieving.

She discusses the nature of grief and particularly offers a helpful chart contrasting myths versus facts about grief. The first of these is that the myth is that everyone grieves in stages when the fact is that grief doesn’t follow the rules. Another resource in this discussion that is powerful is Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D’s “Mourner’s Bill of Rights” which begins, “You have the right to experience your unique grief” and enumerates nine more “rights.”

In successive chapters she discusses the truth that God understands, the many questions loss and grief raises and the freedom to confess these to God, our struggles with unanswered prayers, and our struggle to finds meaning. In discussing the dual process of loss- and restoration-orientation in grieving, Smith proposes that we can take a break from loss to long for home, to think about rebuilding. She discusses the invisible griefs, the losses that are not always recognized as losses to grieve. Grief is also revealing–it reveals what is true of us and our identity in God. Smith uses an “I am…” exercise to help us identify the things we are coming to understand both about ourselves and who we are in Christ. She talks about how we may both love Jesus and grieve in her “Both/And Jesus” chapter. She observes Jesus own path of grief and what we may learn about the healing of grief from him. In her concluding chapter “As We Sit,” she ties it all together. She offers a helpful series of statements we can share with others in our grief.

Each chapter combines Smith’s personal stories, biblical principles centering on Jesus, and a grief exercise in each chapter. We are invited to retell our grief story, to recollect the names of God, to confess our questions, to pray breath prayers, to consider what grief does in us, to write a lament, to journal and pray our invisible griefs, and more.

The book reads like a conversation–we are invited to “feel all the feels.” Smith both helps us understand the grief journey and unabashedly speaks of how God meets us in it–not to fix it or to tell us to get over it, but to accompany us, to quietly minister to us, to heal us, and to change us. This understanding of grief and how God meets us is also important for those who care for those who grieve. We can just sit with the grieving, both because grief doesn’t follow rules, and God alone heals. We so want to do more, and yet that is not for us. We sit, and listen, and weep with, and love and pray. And with God, that is enough.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher. ( )