Does Grief Get Easier?
Living and Loving 7 Years Later
Seven years later, I still find myself asking, Does grief get easier?
There is something gut-wrenching about naming time after your child’s physical presence leaves your side. In the beginning, I couldn’t even let someone speak the number out loud without a shock going through my body. It felt like I was being pulled further and further away from Andrew, and every part of me resisted it.
When You Question What Changed
Maybe you’ve felt that too — that sharp ache when someone says how long it has been… or when you catch yourself breathing easier for a moment and you wonder, Does this mean I’m forgetting?
Does this mean I don’t love my child the same way I did before?
What Time Really Reveals
Friend, if this journey has taught me anything, it’s this: grief doesn’t take your child farther from you. Time doesn’t erase your love. The years reveal how love keeps shaping you — changing how you breathe, how you trust, how you see God, and how you carry your child in a way that’s no longer desperate, but deeply rooted.
Does Grief Get Easier?
We’re seven years into this road of missing our son, Andrew.
Not because we’ve figured it out, not because the pain has disappeared, and certainly not because we’ve moved on — but because God has been faithful in every question, every breath we didn’t think we could take again, and every step we did not know how to make.
The Same God Who Steadies You
And just as He has carried us, He will carry you too.
Shock
There are moments in grief where your body protects you before your mind ever gets a chance to understand what’s happened. Shock is not weakness — it is the way a human heart survives what it cannot yet hold.
For us, like so many of you, that is how our story began. I remember driving home from the crash site, and I couldn’t feel my hands on the steering wheel. My legs wouldn’t support me when I stepped out of the car. There was no way to make sense of what had just happened. My body shut down because the pain was too heavy to feel all at once.
When Survival Looks Different for Every Parent
Tony described it as a blur — like time went into slow motion. He couldn’t process the reality of losing our son, Andrew, so he did the only thing he could, focused on work. What was necessary to get through the day is what he leaned into. He didn’t do it because he was fine. He did it because that was the only way his heart could cope.
When God Meets Us in the Collapse
This is where one of our earliest scriptures became a lifeline to us:
Psalm 34:18
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted. He rescues those who are crushed.”
Crushed.
That was us. That may be you.
Friend, you are not weak for feeling numb. Your heart is protecting you from what it cannot yet bear. Shock is not failure — it is mercy.
Anger & Hard Questions
When the numbness begins to fade, our questions finally rise to the surface. We go from surviving the shock to feeling the ache — and that’s when things often get loud inside our souls.
For me, anger came quickly. Someone had to be responsible for what happened. I held God to it. He could have stopped it, and He didn’t. My prayers weren’t soft or reverent — they were screaming matches at the Lord; raw, distressed, painful. But here’s the part I treasure now: He listened to every word. He didn’t shame my anger. He didn’t leave me because I couldn’t pray “pretty.”
When Protecting Hurts More Than Fixing
Tony’s heart went somewhere different. He didn’t blame God. He didn’t question His sovereignty. He was angry at the reality that we wouldn’t get to do life with Andrew anymore. Angry that he couldn’t protect him. Angry that he couldn’t answer the questions that our family was asking. As a father, as a man, as a protector — he felt robbed.
Maybe you relate to one of us more than the other.
Maybe you don’t know what you believe anymore.
Maybe you still knock on Heaven’s door in anguish.
When God Welcomes the Questions
Friend, hear this with your whole heart:
Psalm 34:17
“The Lord hears His people when they call to Him for help.”
It doesn’t say you have to be calm.
It doesn’t say you have to be “in a good place.”
It doesn’t say you must pray with perfect faith.He hears you — angry, broken, questioning, undone.
Your pain is not too loud for God. Your questions do not scare Him
Identity Shaking
As the questions get louder, something begins to shift deep within us. It’s not just the loss of our child we’re grieving — it’s the version of ourselves that lived before they left our side. Grief doesn’t only break our hearts; it reshapes our identity.
A Mother’s Identity Reformed by Eternity
In the weeks and months after losing Andrew, I didn’t question whether I was still his mother. I knew I would always be Andrew’s mom, whether he had a physical body or not. But what I didn’t understand at first was that I would never go back to the same mother I was before. I was being shaped into someone who loved Andrew just as fiercely, but now through a different lens — a lens changed by eternity, loss, and surrender.
A Father’s Identity Humbled by Powerlessness
Tony was wrestling with identity too, in a way that looked nothing like mine. As a father and protector, he had always believed it was his responsibility to keep our family safe. On the day Andrew died, that belief shattered. He couldn’t protect him. He couldn’t save him. And he had to face a painful truth: his strength wasn’t enough to control the uncontrollable. His role as a protector didn’t end — but it changed, and that change was deeply humbling.
Here’s the truth that meets us in this place:
“Grief doesn’t change your role as a parent.”
Your role is not erased because your child is no longer walking beside you.
Your love didn’t fail. Your identity didn’t disappear. It’s being reshaped.
Sometimes that shaping feels like suffering; other times it feels like surrender. But God is not stripping away your identity — He’s grounding it. He’s inviting you to live out your role as a parent in a new way, one rooted in eternity, not just time.
When Weakness Becomes Our Strength
2 Corinthians 12:9 (NLT)
“My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.”
In grief, we learn that weakness does not make us less of a mother or father. It’s where we learn to depend on the One who loves our children more perfectly than we ever could. And that dependence begins to change how we see ourselves — not as parents who failed, but as parents held.
Learning to Breathe Again
There comes a moment in grief when the body can finally take a deeper breath — a breath that doesn’t feel forced, panicked, or held in fear. It’s the kind of breath that surprises you, because you’re not sure if it’s relief, guilt, or grace… and maybe it’s a strange mixture of all three.
When Presence Helps Us Survive the Day
When the shock eased and our identity began shifting, I found myself desperately needing a place to exist without performing, without explaining, without trying to keep it together. For me, that place was outside. I walked long stretches of road and trail, and I prayed in ways that weren’t neat or holy-sounding. I shouted. I cried. I lifted my face to the sky and demanded answers with my fists clenched tight. I didn’t feel spiritual — I felt broken.
But being outside did something important: it kept me present. I could feel the sun on my face, the breeze moving through the trees. The world around me kept going, and somehow, that steadiness helped me breathe again. I wasn’t healed. I wasn’t okay. But I was breathing — and that was enough.
When Stability Becomes Holy Work
Tony’s breathing looked different. He focused on doing what was necessary to get through each moment. He poured himself into work, not because he was escaping, but because he needed structure — something to hold onto while the ground beneath him was shifting. He showed up for our family, offering steadiness in the ways he could, even while he was grieving privately.
When Your Entire Life Must Be Relearned
Grief restructures your life.
It destroys your rhythms.
It demands that you learn how to live again with a heart that will never go back to who it was before.
When God Gives Breath to the Broken
In that restructuring, we begin to discover this truth:
Acts 17:28 (NLT)
“For in Him we live and move and exist.”
Breathing again is not moving on.
It’s not forgetting your child.
It’s grace — the grace that allows you to open a small space in your day where God can meet you in your pain.
Living doesn’t mean the ache disappears.
It means your child now walks with you in a way the world can’t see — and God gives you breath for the steps you’re meant to take.
Surrender
There’s a phrase that can cut deep into a grieving parent’s heart: “They just can’t get over it.”
Every time I hear those words, something rises up in me. Because underneath that phrase is an expectation, a demand: Be done. Move on. Stop making us uncomfortable with your pain.
That is not how grief works.
And that is not how God works.
When Surrender Isn’t the Same as “Getting Over It”
When I think about this part of the journey, I don’t use the words “get over it.” I use the word surrender.
“Get over it” sounds like something being forced on you from the outside. It feels like someone standing at a distance, telling you to do something impossible. Surrender is different. Surrender is something that comes from the inside, from a place where you’ve reached the end of your own strength.
Surrender suggests that we lay it down. It’s not taken from us. We are not commanded to hand it over on someone else’s timeline. It comes from a quiet, trembling place in our own hearts where we finally say:
“Lord, I don’t know what this looks like… but I’m willing. I’m willing to lay this at Your feet.”
When our son, Andrew, died, I knew from the moment I drove away from the crash site that I was leaving a life I would never have again. I needed help I could not give myself. I needed Jesus with skin on. My grief story started with “Why me?”—with blame, anger, and arguments I hurled toward God.
When God Transforms Our Question
But surrender slowly changed that question. As I let Him into the rawest parts of my pain, my prayer began to shift from “Why me?” to “Here I am, Lord. Send me.” Not because the grief ended, but because His presence in my grief transformed it.
Surrender Looks Different for Every Parent
Tony’s surrender looked different. He didn’t blame God. He didn’t see God as the One who caused the crash. He grieved the brokenness of this world—machines that fail, accidents that happen, things we can’t control. His surrender came as he realized how little control he truly had, and how much he had to rely on the God who is actually in control of everything.
We both needed help outside ourselves. Counseling. Grief support. While We’re Waiting retreats. People who sat with us and carried us when we had nothing left. They became Jesus with skin on for us—living reminders that God was holding us when we could not hold ourselves.
When Surrender Holds the Story
Surrender isn’t “getting over it.”
Surrender is choosing, again and again, to place this unthinkable part of your story into the hands of a God who loves you and your child more than you can understand.e for the ones who remain, and let God do the rest.
Being Shaped by Truth
Surrender opens the door, but truth is what begins to reshape us from the inside out.
Most of us discover, after child loss, that we had some cracks in our foundation long before our world fell apart. We may have believed things about God, about ourselves, or about suffering that sounded right on the surface—but under the weight of grief, they started to crumble.
When Our Foundation Must Be Rebuilt
In my own journey, I reached a point where I knew I had to settle some things with God. Not because all my questions would be answered this side of heaven, but because I couldn’t keep standing on shaky ground. I had to know: Who is God really, in the middle of this?
So I went to His Word. Not as a quick fix, and not looking for a verse to slap over the pain, but as a desperate mom asking God to show me His heart.
When Truth Comes Slowly, Quietly, Steadily
Over time, He did. Gently. Firmly. Patiently.
I began to see places where my understanding of God needed to be corrected and healed. Places where I had tied His goodness to my circumstances, or His love to the outcomes I wanted. Truth didn’t erase the pain—grief was still there. But it began to transform the pain from the inside. It took what felt like chaos and started to anchor it in something solid.
We’ve seen this in the way God has called us to come alongside other grieving parents too. When we attended our first While We’re Waiting retreat, we walked in as parents still very much in the valley. We left with a clearer sense that God wanted to use what we had walked through to comfort others.
That’s exactly what Scripture says:
2 Corinthians 1:3–4 (NLT)
“All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort.
He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others.
When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.”
When Truth Holds You While You’re Not Okay
That’s what being shaped by truth looks like. Our circumstances didn’t change. Andrew is still in heaven, and we are still here. But our understanding of God’s character has become more rooted, more steady. The cracks in our foundation have been filled with truth that holds, even when the waves hit hard.
Truth doesn’t ask you to pretend you’re okay.
Truth holds you while you’re not.
Living With Hope
If you had told me in the early days that I would one day use the words “living with hope” and “seven years” in the same sentence, I don’t think I could have believed you. I was too focused on where Andrew was, and if I’m honest, part of that focus came from a place of anger and longing.
When Hope Isn’t About the Answers
I knew, as a believer, that the moment Andrew left this earth, he was with the Lord. That wasn’t my struggle. My struggle was that I wanted him back. I wanted to know where he was, what he was experiencing, and why this had to be our story. I searched the Word of God not just for comfort, but for a deeper understanding of heaven, eternity, and the reality that my son was now with Jesus.
When Love Holds in Two Places at Once
Over time, something shifted. I began to realize that this wasn’t an “either/or” situation. It wasn’t: God has him, so I don’t.It became: God is holding him, and I am still his mother. Andrew didn’t stop being my son. He didn’t disappear from our family. He changed locations.
I hold him in my heart while God holds him in His presence.
When Time Moves Us Closer, Not Farther
Tony had a powerful moment about this too. Sitting in the car one day around the one-year mark, he was overwhelmed by the thought of how long this road would be. “Andrew’s been gone a whole year… and I have to keep doing this year after year,” he thought.
Then, in that quiet space, he sensed the Lord reframing it:
“No, Tony. Andrew’s not gone a year. You’re a year closer to seeing him again.”
That is the difference hope makes. Not a hope that denies reality or minimizes pain, but a hope rooted in eternity. Our time on this earth really is just a small sliver compared to forever. Every day, every month, every year is not more distance from our children—it is one step closer to the day we see them again.
When Hope Doesn’t Remove the Ache
Hope doesn’t mean the ache is gone.
Hope doesn’t mean we don’t still cry, still miss, still long.
Hope means we are held by a God who sees the entire story.
Hope means our children are safe with Him.
Hope means love did not end on the day their physical presence left our side.So does grief ever get easier?
I don’t know that I would say easier. But it does change. The waves aren’t as relentless. The breaths come a little more freely. And in the middle of it all, love and hope grow together.
🎧 Listen to the Full Episode
If this reflection has resonated with your heart, I’d love to invite you to listen to the full conversation.
🎧 Listen to “Does Grief Get Easier? Living and Loving 7 Years After Andrew” on The Grief Mentor Podcastwherever you listen to podcasts.
In this episode, Tony and I sit together on our son’s Heaven Day and walk through each of these seven themes in more detail—sharing specific moments, scriptures, and encouragement that we pray will help you feel less alone in your own journey.
Next Steps
Friend, if your heart feels especially heavy as the holidays approach, I want to help you find peace in the middle of it.
🎁 Holiday Flash Offer — Peace for the Holidays
Through November 22, book a 1:1 Grief Mentor Session and receive my new printable guide:
Peace for the Holidays — A Simple Plan for Grieving Moms.
In our time together, we’ll talk about what this season brings up for you and create a plan that helps you breathe again—one that honors your child and makes space for peace.
👉 Book your session here
💛 Join the Waitlist for The Grief Roadmap
If your heart is whispering that you need community, you’re not alone.
The next round of The Grief Roadmap opens after the first of the year, and the waitlist is now open for both new and returning moms.
When you join, you’ll be the first to know when enrollment begins—and you’ll receive early-access bonuses before the doors open.
👉 Join the waitlist here
You don’t have to face the next season alone. God is already walking with you, and I’d be honored to walk beside you too.
