Some losses change you forever.
A prayer that seemed answered, only to fall apart. A relationship you believed God was restoring. A dream that finally came to life before unexpectedly slipping away. Moments like these leave us asking one painful question:
How do you keep trusting God when you’re holding something that hurts?
Most people think faith and grief cannot exist together. If you’re grieving, your faith must be weak. If you’re full of faith, you shouldn’t feel the weight of loss.
But Scripture paints a very different picture.
In 2 Kings 4, we meet a woman from Shunem whose story teaches us one of the most powerful lessons about spiritual resilience. After years of disappointment, God miraculously blesses her with a son. Then, years later, the unimaginable happens. The very child God gave her dies in her arms.
What she does next is extraordinary.
Instead of surrendering to despair, she carries her son into the room she had built for the prophet Elisha and lays him on his bed. She doesn’t pretend nothing happened. She doesn’t deny the pain. She simply brings what has died into the place where she knows God’s presence has been.
That decision reveals something every believer needs to understand.
Don’t Suppress Your Grief—Bring It to God
Many people cope with pain by trying to ignore it.
We distract ourselves.
We bury our emotions.
We convince ourselves we’ve moved on.
But hidden grief never becomes healed grief.
The Shunammite woman didn’t suppress what she was carrying. She contained it. She acknowledged the reality of her loss while refusing to let it dictate her relationship with God.
Faith isn’t pretending everything is okay.
Faith is choosing where you take what isn’t.
There is a difference between living in grief and bringing your grief into God’s presence. One leaves you trapped. The other opens the door for healing.
Move Toward God, Not Away From Him
Loss has a way of tempting us to distance ourselves from God.
Questions become accusations.
Silence replaces prayer.
Disappointment slowly becomes isolation.
Yet the woman in this story does the exact opposite.
The moment tragedy strikes, she immediately sets out to find the man of God. She refuses to stay where the pain happened. She moves toward the One who represents God’s presence.
This is one of the hardest decisions faith requires.
When life breaks your heart, your instinct may be to withdraw.
But breakthrough begins when your direction is still toward God, even if your emotions haven’t caught up yet.
Your greatest moments of disappointment don’t have to become your greatest moments of distance from God.
“It Is Well” Is a Declaration of Trust
Along the journey, people ask her if everything is alright.
Her answer seems impossible.
“It is well.”
She isn’t denying reality.
Her son is still dead.
Nothing has changed.
So why can she say those words?
Because she understands something deeper than her circumstances.
God has not spoken His final word.
Sometimes we misunderstand faith as positive thinking.
Biblical faith is different.
Faith looks at impossible circumstances and says, “I don’t know how God will work, but I know He still can.”
“It is well” isn’t confidence in the situation.
It’s confidence in the character of God.
Stop Declaring Dead What God Hasn’t Finished With
How often do we pronounce something over before God does?
We declare marriages finished.
Dreams impossible.
Callings abandoned.
People beyond hope.
Yet throughout Scripture, God repeatedly brings life where everyone else sees only endings.
That doesn’t mean every situation unfolds exactly as we desire.
It means our circumstances never get to write the final chapter.
Only God does.
When we rush to conclusions, we often give our pain the authority that belongs to God alone.
Give God the Final Word
Eventually, Elisha comes to the house, prays, and the boy is raised back to life.
The miracle is remarkable.
But perhaps the greater miracle happened before the resurrection.
It happened when a grieving mother refused to let grief become greater than her trust in God.
She held both loss and faith.
She acknowledged reality without surrendering hope.
She moved toward God instead of away from Him.
And she refused to believe the story was over until God said it was.
We all carry losses.
Some are visible.
Others remain hidden beneath the surface.
But whatever you’re holding today, remember this:
You don’t have to choose between grieving and believing.
You can bring your pain honestly before God while continuing to trust His goodness.
You can hold loss.
And you can still hold faith.
Because until God has spoken His final word, hope is never truly gone.
What Are You Holding Today
Take a moment to be honest with yourself.
What loss have you been carrying on your own? What disappointment, unanswered prayer, or broken dream have you allowed to pull you away from God?
Today, choose to do what the Shunammite woman did. Bring your pain to God instead of burying it. Tell Him exactly how you feel, and trust Him with what you cannot change. You don’t have to deny your grief to have faith. You can hold both—and let God have the final word.
Your story isn’t over yet.
By Pastor Lorenzo DellaForesta