Charlotte Martin
By Charlotte Martin – Owensboro, KY
After my only child died, I read about a grieving mom who was a Catholic. Her church family hurt her with insensitive comments in response to her child’s death. A friend invited her to a Baptist church, where no one hurt her. She left the Catholic faith and became a Baptist.
I was in search of a different religious denomination, so I made a mental note to avoid Catholic churches.
Soon after reading that, I received a Bereaved Parents’ Newsletter in the mail. Another grieving mom told of attending the same Baptist church as her parents. After her child died, she was hurt by insensitive comments made by her church family. She left the Baptist denomination and became a Catholic.
This resulted in another mental note – “Don’t try Catholic or Baptist churches”.
I knew I could not tolerate one more, tiny bit of being hurt. However, someone insisted on taking me to talk to her Baptist pastor. I told him of my extreme desperation to know if my son was in Heaven.
He listened, showing no emotion, whatsoever, as I literally bawled. Then he told me, in a voice totally void of any emotion, that my son may be in Hell, but it didn’t mean I had to go there. I ran out the door screaming and crying with enough emotion for 100 people. I vowed then and there to never, ever, ever try going to a Baptist church.
Nearly everyone in my support group told of leaving their churches due to insensitive comments made to them. Many of them simply never tried to find another church. One divorced mother told us that she totally dropped out of church, and started hanging out in bars, because at least drunks would cry with her. (“Romans 12:15…weep with those who weep.) In “A Time To Weep”, Loren Eaton claims that we seem to have lost our ability to cry.
I desperately wanted to be in church, and desperately needed a loving church family. There seemed to be no way to escape the hurtful comments, which was a “double whammy” for me. I have supra ventricular tachycardia. The very second someone made an insensitive comment; my heart began racing to 300 BPM. Ambulances either picked me up at churches, or I drove straight to the E.R. to have my heart stopped and re-started. One woman told me that if I really wanted to be in church, I could control my heart. Another woman told me that I should just go to church, and stop telling people that my son died, and then I wouldn’t get hurt. Others told me that I just needed to remember that churchgoers did not intend to hurt me. I always knew that, but my heart did not know, and seemed incapable of learning, and I certainly was not able to control it.
One woman smirked as she asked “So, you’ve been to at least ten churches, and you’ve gotten hurt at every single one of them?” I said “Yes”. Still smirking, she asked if maybe – just maybe it had ever occurred to me that I just might possibly be the problem. I told her that I was indeed the problem – that I was the one who lost a child.
Eventually, I made an appointment with a pastor to talk about my problem. I told him about my desperate 
search for a church, but how my visits ended with having to get my heart stopped and restarted. He said “Well, you know, churches are not a hospital for the hurting; they are a place to worship God”.
Ten years down the road, my uncle, who was a pastor, came to my home and said he wanted to talk to me. He said he had heard that I did not feel like my family was there for me after Keith died. I told him they were not, but I realized it was because they didn’t know how to “be there”. He said “We came to the funeral! We sent flowers!! We brought food!!! What ELSE did you want us to DO?!!!!
The following by Rev. Henry M. White – Elizabethtown, KY
On December 17, 1999 our 18-year-old son was killed in an automobile accident. In the weeks following, my wife, Brenda and I attended a group called The Compassionate Friends (TCF) composed of parents who had lost a child. Being a pastor, I was impressed by the anger some of the parents expressed over how their minister dealt with the death of their child. Many more than I expected told us 
things the minister had said or done that they considered inappropriate and hurtful. In some cases, they shared what they wished their minister had said or done.
An expanded survey I conducted with a much larger group of bereaved parents confirmed the same findings. It was while attending TCF that I decided to write “The Greatest Loss” to help ministers in particular, and others in general, know how to better console grieving parents. It is my prayer that “The Greatest Loss” will help people minister better to parents experiencing the worst tragedy a parent can know, the death of a child.
The following is by Rev. Raymond Wilson
As tragic as the experience of the death of a child is, how terrible it is to walk through the journey of grief alone. Even within the faith community, many of us feel abandoned by the very people we had thought were going to be there for us. The messages we hear from fellow parishioners, and even from “the pulpit”, well intended or not, usually don’t help at all, leaving us very frustrated and lonely.
There are many principles and examples given in the Bible on how to give appropriate extended care to those who 
are hurting, especially to those in grief. If these principles are applied by pastors, the pastoral staff and others, there would be fewer bereaved parents walking alone in their grief, both within the church and in the community. All that is needed is someone with a teachable heart and compassionate spirit to walk alongside someone in their grief journey.
There is a need for both men and women in leadership positions in faith community settings and fellow parishioners to have a teachable heart and compassionate spirit to REALLY SEE how seriously in pain bereaved parents are in, and begin to apply effective and extended care, rather than just trying to put a spiritual band aid over a wound that is as wide and deep as the Grand Canyon. (“Jeremiah 8:11 They give useless medicine for my people’s grievous wounds, for they assure them all is well when that isn’t so at all”).
Ministry to the bereaved has only begun, and not ended at the grave site. My hope is that as a result of this series shining a spotlight on grief illiteracy, there will be fewer bereaved parents walking alone in grief, because you chose to make a difference.
