For This House
Every Season. Every Space. All for Him.
Every Season. Every Space. All for Him.
April 7, 2025 | 15 min read
Krystal Cerrillo, guest author
“You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?” Psalm 56:8
For six years now, I have been well-acquainted with grief. In 2019, three years into marriage, we suffered a miscarriage and lost our first baby, Sunny Rae. Two years later, I lost my older sister unexpectedly. On April 21, 2021 my beloved older sister, Kourtney Rae, entered into the Holy places and saw Jesus face to face. Healthy, rendered complete, and raised to her new life she left this sin-stained world and arrived home.
I have personally and profoundly come to know several multi-faceted grooves of the complexities of grief. It is anything but linear. There is no timeline for grief. I have been in survival mode, I have been in the angry state, I have been in the disbelief stage, and I have been in the denial season. I have been so overcome with sorrow and excruciating pain. I still am most days, and that’s okay.
The light begins breaking through those cracks so slowly. Things hidden become revealed. Praise God for eyes to see how He is working, moving, and pruning in all things. My lens of grief is a Gospel-shaped one. One where I am more inclined to those hurting around me because of my own hurt. One that leads me to see that this world is not our home all the more steadily. I slowly began to understand what “the joy of the Lord is my strength” looks like in a particular way I wouldn’t have known otherwise without this suffering.
It is my heart’s desire to share with full transparency about my experience wrestling with the Lord through raw emotions, fears, questions, hurts, and pain. I did not always have the capacity to reflect much like I am now on the Biblical art of lament and grieving with Gospel-hope.
In six years, I am still learning and walking with a limp. In six years, I am honored to write these words now that bring awareness to grief within the church and honor Kourtney and Sunny, whilst glorifying the Lord.
I have been in prayer over these words, seeking the Holy Spirit for direction and clarity on what specifically to include. It is no accident or coincidence that you are here having your eyes on these heart reflections that are set before you now.
If you are in a grieving season, my heart is so for yours. I empathize with you in this very specific valley you find yourself in now and I pray this will uplift, encourage, and spur you on toward the Good Shepherd and the truth of His Word.
How do we move out of the paralyzation and start to scale this cataclysmic loss, this mountain of grief, this vast ocean of lament?
My hope is to share a few acts that have served me well in my grief that may be life-giving for you also, plus a few resources that may be a healing balm to your soul if you consider incorporating into your own season of lamenting. Especially those who are in the fresh moments, plagued with brain fog and hazy thoughts, unsure of where to begin sifting through the range of emotions.
This mountain we are scaling is where we will be found climbing for the remainder of our days this side of Heaven. But we are never alone. We continue up the mountain with the Good Shepherd leading us beside still waters. I am honored to be invited into your climb and partner with you in some small way as you read on. Thank you for your time. Thank you for choosing to take in this prayed-over information that is heavy and may even unearth some tear-soaked memories.
I always describe it as entering into my basement of grief and pulling a new box off the shelf that I have stored away in my unconscious fight or flight mode. Whether you are on the first step into your basement now, whether you are fully submerged in the musky air retrieving shelved boxes to open, or simply just passing by the basement door leaving it locked and closed for now… may you hold fast to this truth as Jesus is holding you fast: the Lord gives the exact grace needed for every single movement in our trudging through.
“Build a little fence of trust around today;
fill the space with loving work and therein stay.
Look not through the protective rails upon tomorrow;
God will help you bear what comes of joy or sorrow.”
-Mary F. Butts
Nothing is assigned to us that has not first passed through God’s providence, that has not first passed through His sovereign hand. I’ve had to check my heart more than I ever have (it is deceitful after all) in how I am actively trusting and delighting in the Lord through His taking as much as through His giving.
I learned to see the Lord working through taking away. In all the taking away, He is still giving.
I often go to the book of Job and the Psalms to remind my heart of the Lord being completely sovereign over us. Job lost everything and everyone he ever loved. He was a man who was upright and blameless before the Lord. Yet, he was suffering under great distress; mind, body, and soul.
The physical pain of grief strikes so intensely. I feel it most in my chest. After losing someone you shared in such tender ties with, you are forever changed. I’m walking now with figurative limps and broken bones declaring Psalm 51:8, “Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice.”
In being so utterly broken, I imagine Job exclaiming with the Psalmist, “Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eye is wasted from grief; my soul and my body also. For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of my iniquity, and my bones waste away.” [Psalm 31:9-10]
While broken and bruised by the weight of loss, we are also perfectly redeemed and held together in Christ.
To lament is to express sorrow. In Scripture, we read this in all of Lamentations, we see the Psalms of lament, we hear that Jesus Himself lamented and weeped. For even our Prince of Peace was well-acquainted with sorrow as the ‘Man of Sorrows’. He is not far removed from us in our suffering. He weeps with us and knows every tear that falls.
We have clear examples of this art form to help us shape our prayers as we encounter our own expressions of sorrow. In my lamenting, I have been renewed to fully rely wholly on Christ and Christ alone. In all the sorrow-not-yet-removed, I am rejoicing that the Lord’s presence will never be removed from me and in my weakness; I can boast all the more of His resurrecting power.
You see, our theology informs our lament. It is a melody of love, a reminder of truth, and it is worship unto the Lord. It is strengthening to the believer to walk in such ways. It is purposeful and transformative. In lamenting, we are rehearsing and declaring our faith in Jesus, how one day He will come again and is now making all things new.
Our laments present themselves as a mere pilgrimage of sorts to the pilgrim journeying homeward. We move from despair into trust and from sorrow into hope. It is an ebb and flow. It is a cry out to God in full confidence that He will provide as we trust in Him to ask for our deliverance.
When rehearsing this sequence in our own lives, we learn to grieve with Gospel-hope. We learn how necessary weeping through the pain is. How tears can be just as effective as words. Weeping provides peace in connecting us with those whom we have lost as we remember them with tears flowing. Lament locks us into our anchoring hope; hope that is immovable in who God is.
God gave His Son as a ransom for many, that we may live and have the hope of eternity on the other side of the veil (Mark 10:45). The enemy wants us to remain in the pit of despair. But the Lord enables us, by His grace, to grieve with hope because He has offered us the free gift of salvation in Christ Jesus (Romans 3:24). What a comfort to remember we won’t be separated by death forever.
Because of Christ alone, God the Father has placed His seal upon us who are hidden in Him (2 Corinthians 1:22). We are secure forever, sustained entirely, and sealed for eternity. Hallelujah! While I may never again not know grief this side of Heaven, I will also never not know grace. I will never be separated from the love of God (Romans 8:31-39). In my brokenness because of that truth, I am both emptied and filled at the same time. I’m brought low and to the end of myself at the foot of the cross.
Here in this place, I am becoming more of who it is that God is making me to be—trusting in Him and resting in Who He is. Blessed be the name of the Lord!
“In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.” Ephesians 1:13-14
The Christian life is one of remembrance. One of recalling, rehearsing, and reorienting our gaze cast upon Jesus. We are a people prone to wander and prone to forget. The Lord knows this about us. We see in Scripture how He beckons us over and over again to remember Him.
I recently heard a sermon in Exodus wherein the pastor was reminding the congregation how the Israelites in Exodus 16:3 were misremembering their lives as slaves in Egypt when they were exclaiming “If only we had died by the LORD’s hand in Egypt!” For at least there they had pots of meat and all the food they wanted. We are a people prone to misremembering God’s provision and His promises.
Jesus says to His apostles during the Last Supper, “Do this in remembrance of Me” as He broke bread and gave it to them. The sacraments we regularly rehearse in the taking of communion and participation in Baptism are for us to remember what God has done in the finished work of Jesus. We must remember how prone we are to misremember.
The Lenten season is an opportunity for believers to rightfully recalibrate our hearts and keep the first thing first. The Lenten season brings deep comfort as the focus is set fast on Christ’s victory over sin and death. We who mourn approach this very same day in history deeply offended by the sting of death but not left abandoned in that offense.
After loss, the ache for Heaven is all the more profoundly piercing. With all of creation we find ourselves groaning, waiting for relief, and the fullness of redemption that is yet to come in Christ’s final return for His Bride. One day we will see this full restoration. One day we will be reunited with our loved ones who were hidden in Christ as we share in this resurrected glory together. Death is swallowed up in victory—although ever painful right now in these present days of waiting.
Life continues onward and it feels cruel that days keep coming packed full of relentless grief. After all, grief will be a consistent, life-long companion the moment you meet her. It may even feel like you lost much of yourself in the loss you experienced. It’s as if our life is now broken up in the “before” and “after” segments surrounding our grief.
Over the past six years, I have pursued various forms of therapy to help me through my grief. I have also adopted several practices and resources to honor my loved ones and create margin for my grief to take shape in the day to day.
As a wife and mama, I’ve often felt like my lament had to be compartmentalized. It wasn’t until I learned how to do that in a healthy way, that I found freedom from guilt and shame in thinking I was just pushing it all down and ignoring it.
I attended counseling for well over a year and participated in EMDR as a form of sifting through my traumatic grief in a new way. Grief counseling is just plain hard. Hard for a multitude of reasons; but one of those being that it’s effective and fruitful. The digging up of so much hurt and exposing my wounds is like undergoing ‘emotional surgery’ every week.
Coupled with counseling, these things proved to be healing and helpful in their own way:
These are just gentle suggestions I share from my experience you may find yourself considering. I did not know how or where to start in the beginning. I pray this serves you well. I pray that whatever the Lord has for you to assist in your own journey of walking with Him through a valley, that He would make it known in time with peace and abundant clarity of what those resources are.
In life “after” grief, I have seen my share of paradoxical days. I’ve been restless while learning to rest. I’ve been heavy-laden while learning to be comforted and counseled. I’ve been shown so clearly my limitations while being radically empowered in new ways by the Lord. I have also uncovered a richer, fuller understanding of the Lord’s plan for my life.
His plan for me isn’t a particular dream, pursuit, achievement, or plan. It is simply sanctification. Growth. The renewing of our minds daily fashioned on Him and His Word. The ongoing process of being edified and dying to self to be conformed to the likeness of Christ.
When we wonder what the Lord has planned for us in future seasons, that is the very essence of what it entails. Our ultimate calling is the pursuit of God in seasons of great joy and great sorrow alike. I praise the Lord that suffering is never wasted for God’s Kingdom. I know Kourtney and Sunny are singing in His presence right now as their joy has been made complete.
If you’re looking for more support through your grief, these are the resources that helped me through the early days of finding Gospel hope through lament:
Heavenly Father,
I give thanks for how near you are to the broken-hearted and crushed in spirit. I pray for your Holy Spirit to minister to those deep in their sorrow right now in tangible ways and to remind them that this present suffering is preparing for us a future weight of glory that is soon to be revealed as your word says in Romans 8:18. We have assurance of our hope anchored in the glorious truths of your word; that all things which come to pass within your will for our lives are ordained and intended for our good and your glory. May our grief magnify your grace. Thank you for sustaining us and holding us fast. We love you.
In Jesus Holy Name,
Amen.
Krystal is a military spouse of eight years and a stay-at-home mama to two littles. Currently residing in North Carolina, she has a heart for missional-minded hospitality and serving their local church plant in pursuit of military families. She enjoys raising chickens, thrifting, fresh flowers, sipping coffee at any local spot, and learning more about the beautiful art of homemaking.