And so I learned about grief, and about the absence and emptiness that for a long time make grief unforgettable.

New grief, when it came, you could feel filling the air. It took up all the room there was. The place itself, the whole place, became a reminder of the absence of the hurt or the dead or the missing one. I don't believe that grief passes away. It has its time and place forever. More time is added to it; it becomes a story within a story. But grief and griever alike endure. "What can't be helped must be endured," Mat Feltner said. And he was a man who knew.

But grief and griever alike endure.

I heard that my mother is dead. I wish I had time to let her die. I wish I had time to wish I had. It is because in the wild and outraged earth too soon too soon too soon. It's not that I wouldn't and will not it's that it is too soon too soon too soon.

be.—Yes he thought Between grief and nothing I will take grief.

If you are called as a missionary—a "sent-out one"—then you are called to comfort those who mourn. You are called to love the broken until they understand God's love—a love that never dies—through you.

We need to be angels for each other, to give each other strength and consolation. Because only when we fully realize that the cup of life is not only a cup of sorrow but also a cup of joy will we be able to drink it.

A heart that knows sorrow loses the ability to compare. I will just tell you that I have walked a road marked and rutted as your own. I too had every reason to grow bitter. I could have turned my back on the Lord above. But I chose to trust Him. I cannot say that I understand His ways, but this trust has served me well. It has comforted me through hard times, and blessed me with joy when there was goodness about — and with peace when there wasn't.

The work in Iraq is difficult and it is dangerous. Like most Americans, I see the images of violence and bloodshed. Every picture is horrifying, and the suffering is real.

Our family has always drawn on the power from above to comfort us in times of despair and stress.

I've learned a lot since I was a new mother. My approach to struggle and shame now is to talk to yourself like you'd talk to someone you love and reach out to tell your story.

Some people think the theists get off easy by offering eternal life, but in my experience it is awfully difficult to reconcile the death of a child with the idea of a loving God. As a Christian, I knew what to say, but I don't think my words made much of a difference. What mattered most was just being there and sharing the hurt.