How to Overcome the Pain

Some of the hardest moments after loss aren’t the ones filled with tears or conversation.
They’re the ones filled with silence.

Because silence can feel unbearable, can it not?

That’s when the memories come that haunt us. That’s when the unanswered questions echo in our minds and peace feels impossible.

But I want to teach you something today. I want to help you have one of those mindset shifts that I talk about. What if silence isn’t punishment?
What if silence is the place where God begins to speak again—just in a different way?

---

God Speaks in the Gap

This past Sunday I sat in church listening to a message that felt like it was written just for me.
Do you ever feel that way?

I opened my Bible to the passage our pastor was reading from, and it was familiar. I’d read it many times, but that’s what’s so amazing about God’s Word—it’s alive and active.

What does that mean?
It means it breathes truth into whatever season we’re in. God’s Word meets us in today’s pain and speaks directly to the heart of what we’re walking through.

We’re in a series on David, a man after God’s own heart.
This week our pastor was teaching about the gap—the time between David being called to be king and when he actually became king.

We started in the book of Samuel, learning that God does not look at the outward appearance, but He looks at the heart.

David was about fifteen years old when he was called to be king, but around thirty when he actually stepped into that position. That’s fifteen years in the gap.

He was a shepherd. Where does a shepherd spend his days? In the fields.

When the prophet came to David’s home to anoint a new king, God rejected every brother and asked David’s father, “Do you have another son?”

His father said, “Yes, but he’s out tending the flock.”
It never crossed his mind that his youngest son could be the one chosen by God.

God’s plans are not our plans.

David spent his life in the fields with the sheep—alone, responsible for their lives, dependent on God for strength and protection.

1 Samuel 17:34–36 (NLT) says:

“But David persisted. ‘I have been taking care of my father’s sheep and goats,’ he said.
‘When a lion or a bear comes to steal a lamb from the flock, I go after it with a club and rescue the lamb from its mouth.
If the animal turns on me, I catch it by the jaw and club it to death.
I have done this to both lions and bears, and I’ll do it to this pagan Philistine too, for he has defied the armies of the living God!’”

That passage is talking about when David was summoned to face the giant. He was just a boy sent to deliver food to his brothers on the front lines, but because of his confidence in God—built through years alone in the field—he was ready for what no one else believed he could do.

It’s in those quiet, hidden times when no one is watching that God does His deepest work.

David wasn’t being trained for kingship in a palace—he was being trained in a pasture, in silence.

---

Formed in Silence

This truth speaks to the very heart of God.
Everyone expected the Son of God to come in royalty, but instead He came in a manger.

There’s a theme here, friend.

Our culture dislikes the gap. We rush through it. It makes us uncomfortable.
It makes everyone around us uncomfortable too.

Have you ever been in a conversation where silence falls and you can almost feel everyone fidget, desperate for someone to speak?
We fill every quiet space with noise and distraction, and friend, this is especially true in grief.

But I want to teach you something about that silence—the kind that feels unbearable.
That is where God refines us.

Inside The Grief Mentor Workshop, we talked about identity shifts in child loss. It’s not something you read about elsewhere, but I’ve lived it.

There are three shifts that happen in our identity:

• The person we were before our child left our side.
• The person we are now in the unbearable silence.
• And the person we are becoming.

There are two kinds of silence.

The first kind is unbearable, even torturous.
It’s the silence filled with unprocessed thoughts looping in our minds—the memories replaying, the what-ifs, the whys.
Peace feels a million miles away.

That silence is painful because your mind is trapped in the echoes of loss.
All you want is for someone to make the noise stop.

I understand that kind of silence.
It doesn’t stop until you learn how to process the layers of grief—the thoughts that circle endlessly in your head.

---

Redeemed Silence

But there’s another kind of silence—the one God redeems.

It’s the silence where His truth begins to settle the noise inside your heart.
It’s where you begin to let His Word take up more space than pain.

We want the pain erased. We want the suffering gone.
But that’s not how God works.

He doesn’t erase the pain—He redeems it.

When you start leaning into the silence, allowing God to show you and teach you, He begins to mold your heart.

It’s not easy. It never is. But it’s the answer.

Leaning into what God’s truth says will lead to where you want to go—but it doesn’t happen overnight.

Nobody knows that better than you, friend.
It starts small.

One scripture.
One prayer.
One whisper of surrender.

Write this down somewhere:
When the silence is filled with truth, a miracle happens—and peace comes.

---

God Works in the Waiting

Maybe right now you’re in your own gap.
You’re waiting for understanding, for comfort, for a sign that God still sees you.

Like David, maybe you’ve felt unseen, unheard, even forgotten.
But friend, what looks like silence is often where God is forming your strength.

The field where David learned to protect sheep was the same place God taught him to trust His voice.

That’s what’s happening for you too.

If the silence feels heavy this week, try something different.
Instead of filling every quiet moment with distraction, sit with God for just a few minutes and whisper:
“Lord, what are You teaching me right here in this moment?”

Don’t rush the answer. Take a deep breath and lean in.
That’s how you begin to recognize His voice again.

One mom I mentor told me she sits on her son’s bed and cries.
At first it felt unbearable, but over time those moments became prayers of lament.
That’s the kind of holy silence God can use to heal your heart.

---

When Truth Takes Up More Space Than Pain

If the silence you’re living in feels more like torture than transformation, I want you to know—I’ve been there.

In my own silence, I remember how desperate I was to hear the voice of God.
I stayed in His Word. I kept showing up. I kept knocking, asking, trusting that when it was time, He would reveal Himself.

And He did.

There were three distinct moments in my grief when God’s Word came alive in supernatural ways:

• Once through Proverbs, when I learned to trust again.
• Once through Job, when His voice thundered truth into my despair.
• And once through Daniel, about a year after Andrew died—when light pierced the darkness of my pain.

Friend, don’t mistake the silence for absence.
Sometimes the Teacher is quiet because He’s letting you learn.

When I became teachable—when my heart was ready—He revealed great and unsearchable things I did not know.

If you’re living in the quiet suffering of child loss, I want you to know—you are not forgotten.
Keep showing up. Keep knocking. Keep trusting.

Because when the silence is filled with truth, a miracle happens—peace becomes a reality in your life.

---

🎧 Listen to the Full Episode

If this message speaks to you, listen to the full episode of The Grief Mentor Podcast:
🎧 “When Silence Feels Unbearable — How to Overcome the Pain.”

You’ll hear the full teaching on David’s waiting season, what it means to find God in silence, and how truth begins to heal what grief has broken.

---

Next Steps

If the silence you’re living in feels more like torture than transformation, I’d love to walk beside you.

In a 1:1 Grief Mentor Session, we’ll process the layers of grief that keep the silence heavy and begin filling that space with God’s truth so peace can grow again.

❤️‍🩹 Book a Grief Mentor Session

---