SOMETIMES, YOU HEAR someone’s story and think: You’ve been through it.
Miscarriage. The loss of siblings. The death of a parent. The murder of a nephew. Loss of identity and career direction. Racial trauma. Natasha Smith has a deeper understanding than many of what it takes to walk through seasons when, as the hymn “It Is Well With My Soul” says, “sorrows like sea billows roll.” And her book Can You Just Sit with Me? Healthy Grieving for the Losses of Life offers hope, comfort, and compassion for the people trying to hold onto an “it is well” faith.
I remember saying to someone when I was deep in the trenches of my own grief, “You mean I have to feel like this forever?” — a question Smith herself has asked. Yet each chapter of her book reminds readers that by sitting with Jesus and with others while walking through loss, the pain lessens enough to be livable. In her book, you will find promises, but not empty ones, about life after loss. It makes a difference knowing that Smith has walked through the valley of the shadow of death and — though she’d be the first to tell you she’s still passing through it — has glimpsed the other side.
Smith’s deep faith doesn’t prevent her from recommending that Christians use all healing resources at their disposal, reminding readers, “It is okay to need both Jesus and a therapist.” What sets her book apart from others, however, is that Smith, an African American woman, also speaks to the collective grief of the pandemic and the compounded trauma that Black Americans experienced — and continue to live through — in the wake of the racial reckoning of 2020.
Perhaps the greatest gift of her book is the words Smith gives to people who are hurting too much to find their own. She offers reflection questions, exercises to help readers process grief, scripture for meditation, and starting points for prayers. She also identifies ways that grievers can respond to those who seek to support them — even if that looks like asking someone to simply sit beside them.
“Common now in our culture is the notion that grief lasts forever, and therefore grief is love,” Smith writes. “But the truth is that for the believer, grief is not love. There is only one thing, one person who holds the definition of love, and that is Christ.” This is a perspective of hers I’m not sure I share; I believe my grief is the sharp edge of love encountering a gaping hole. But even this tension speaks to Smith’s definition of grief: Each person feels and expresses it “in unique and personal ways, making it a multidimensional phenomenon.”
I wish I’d had this book when I was navigating the rawest season of my own grief, but I hope others can turn to it now to find their own way through loss.
“Growing through, in, and around grief, I find, is all about adapting, adjusting, making room to live life without what we have lost,” Smith writes. “And repeating it all over again as the days, months, and years go by.”
May this book be both balm and guide to those trying to do just that.
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