When the Church Wanted My Ministry but Not My Mourning

I learned the church had room for my preaching before it had room for my pain. That is hard to write because I love the church. I was raised by faith. I have served in church,  preached, prayed, taught, led, counseled, and stood beside people during some of the hardest moments of their lives. I have seen the church become shelter for families and comfort for those trying to make sense of loss. But when grief came for me, not as a minister, not as a counselor, not as the strong one people expected me to be, but as a grieving daughter, I learned something I could not ignore. Some churches know how to honor death publicly while failing to support grief privately.

In 2012, the only man I had ever known as my father died. He was not my biological father,  but he was my father. That relationship was not a technicality to me. It was love, history,  presence, and loss. When he died, I needed space to grieve. Instead, my grief was questioned. The senior pastor at the church where I was serving in full-time ministry as  Associate Pastor told me, “He was not your real father.” Those words stayed with me.

They made my grief feel like it had to defend itself. They made it seem as if my loss had to meet someone else’s definition before it could be honored. 

Bereavement days were not offered to me. I took the time anyway. I asked for prayer, and someone on the prayer team said, “Oh, you will be alright. I’m not worried about you.”  Preaching assignments continued. Ministry continued. The church kept moving. And I kept moving too, because that is what many grieving people learn to do. We keep functioning while something inside of us is falling apart. 

Over the course of four years, I became a caregiver for my mother. She had congestive heart failure. There were hospitalizations, code blues, fear, exhaustion, and the kind of grief that keeps your body on alert even when you are trying to rest. I was working full time in ministry while caring for my mother, working on my doctorate, and trying to care for myself. I was grieving before she died. Anticipatory grief was already sitting with me through anxiety, denial, anger, and exhaustion. 

Then my mother died. Again, the work continued. The responsibilities continued. The assumption seemed to be that because I was called, gifted, and capable, I could carry death and ministry at the same time without breaking. I tried. I tried to be focused, faithful, strong, and keep producing while my body, mind, and heart were trying to survive the death of my mother. A month after she died, my body told the truth my mouth had not fully been allowed to say. I was admitted to the hospital with symptoms doctors first thought might be a heart attack. After tests and an overnight stay, it was connected to high-functioning anxiety. Later came depression, and therapy. It was not just sadness. It was chest pain. It was shortness of breath. It was exhaustion. It was the weight of trying to be useful when I needed care.

Then came the staff meeting I will never forget. Two months after my mother died, the senior pastor said, “Even though your mother has died, I still have a church to run, and you need to be focused.” I was devastated. Not because I thought the church should stop existing because my mother died. I was devastated because, in that moment, my grief was treated like an interruption. My loss was placed beneath productivity. My mourning was something to manage so the work could continue.

The church wanted my ministry, but not my mourning. It had room for my preaching, leadership, prayers, labor, availability, and ability to show up for other people. But when I needed space to mourn, that space felt limited. Conditional. Inconvenient. 

I needed someone to understand that faith does not cancel grief. I needed someone to know that being a minister does not make a person immune to loss. People who pray for others still need someone to pray for them. People who preach still cry. People who lead still break. People who know scripture still need comfort. Eventually, after receiving counsel from people I trusted, I resigned from that church. I had to choose my physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. I had to stop asking for space from a place that did not know how to give it. I had to give myself permission to grieve. That decision was painful, but necessary. There were a handful of people in that church community who were sensitive to my grief and tried to support me. I remain grateful for them. But the intercultural did not understand what grief required. It did not understand that mourning needs more than a funeral. It needs follow-up. It needs patience. It needs people who do not rush you back into usefulness because your pain makes them uncomfortable. 

My grief changed me. It changed how I saw church and ministry. And how I saw myself.

It also forced me to ask hard questions about the ways I may have failed other grieving people before I understood my own grief this way. Had I rushed someone else’s mourning? Had I  expected people to keep serving when they needed to rest? Had I offered spiritual language when what they needed was silence, presence, or permission to fall apart? It showed me what I needed. It showed me what I did not receive. It showed me what the church must learn if it wants to care for grieving people beyond the day of the funeral.

I still believe in the church. I still believe in prayer. I still believe in worship, scripture, and community. But I also believe the church must stop confusing strength with silence.

It must stop treating grief like a lack of faith. It must stop measuring people by how quickly they can return to service after loss. Grief does not end because the funeral is over. It follows people into birthdays, workdays, staff meetings, Sunday mornings, holidays,  hospital rooms, and quiet nights when no one else is around. 

What I learned is this: grieving people do not need to be rushed back into who they were before the loss. They need room to become who they are after it. They need people who will not minimize the relationship or weaponize responsibility. They need communities that can say, “You can grieve here. You can be honest here. You do not have to perform strength here.” 

That is what I needed. That is what I did not fully receive. And that is why I now believe, with everything in me, that the church must learn how to grieve. From that place, I made a vow to become a grief advocate for spiritual communities. I wanted to help create the kind of space I needed when I was mourning. Today, that is the work I am doing: helping churches, leaders, and communities understand that grief needs permission, time, space, and care.

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