Helping Your Family Grieve Lament and Remember Together

Helping Your Family Grieve offers gentle guidance for you and your children to navigate the difficult journey of loss with God's comforting presence. Description Grief is overwhelming, especially for children, who do not naturally know how to respond to loss. They need help to express the sadness, fear, and anger that comes after encountering death. Thankfully, God has given us a pathway through grief. He promises to lead your family up and out of the dark valley of grief. Darby A. Strickland Darby Strickland, an experienced family counselor, guides you and your children through the sadness, disorientation, and struggles of grief. She shares two restorative practices to help you navigate an unwanted grief journey. The first is to help you and your children speak directly to the Lord about your sadness and to look for his comfort. The second is to give your family meaningful opportunities to remember your loved one, which will encourage healing and connection. Grief is a journey that doesn't come with linear directions—but it has a destination. God invites us to come to him, and we can help our children see that we grieve best when we grieve with God. Darby A. Strickland is a faculty member and counselor at the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation (CCEF), where she has served since 2003. She holds a Master of Divinity with a counseling emphasis from Westminster Theological Seminary. Darby brings particular passion and expertise in caring for the vulnerable and oppressed, especially women in abusive marriages. She has served in missionary church contexts and women’s ministry leadership, and has contributed to key resources like Becoming a Church That Cares Well for the Abused and the PCA’s Domestic Abuse & Sexual Assault training materials. She is the author of Is It Abuse? (P&R, 2020), When It’s Trauma: A Biblical Guide to Understanding Trauma and Walking Faithfully with Sufferers (P&R, 2025), and several minibooks. She also writes for the Comfort for Children in Hard Times series, helping families walk together through suffering with biblical wisdom and care. Darby’s writing and teaching reflect her deep commitment to bringing Christ’s comfort to those in dark and complex places. She and her husband have particularly enjoyed homeschooling their three children and are now taking joy in launching them into the world.