Grieving a suicide and supporting the survivors
- How do we grieve and move forward without letting someone's suicide color our lives?
- Is it okay to be angry after someone takes their own life?
Shifting to the aftermath, the hosts discuss how grieving a suicide differs from grieving cancer or an accident -- the unanswerable questions, guilt, and anger -- and how to support survivors without smothering them: a genuine 'how are you doing,' practical logistics help, and permission to just laugh. A host references on-air remarks by Mike and Dan's pastoral experience with funerals, including one for children who found their mother. They close the topic with an overarching recap, recommend the Christian counseling center Family Legacy in the Des Moines metro, and offer prayer via info@lifeinthepath.org.
More on Grief
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Holy Spirit experience: healing, cessationism, and testing the spirits
- Is there a normative experience of the Holy Spirit in the world today?
The central hard question: is there a normative experience of the Holy Spirit in the world today, and what does it mean for a follower of Jesus?
From No. 593 · Do You Hear What I Hear
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Dear LFTP 3: Mom's false teeth
- What should the family do with their late mother's false teeth?
Mike reads the letter: the family found their late mother's false teeth — creepy to keep, wrong to discard?
From No. 590 · Theodore Franco
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Dear LFTP: should I attend my murdered niece's funeral?
- Should I attend my murdered niece's funeral after thirty years of family estrangement?
Mike reads a letter from a woman estranged from her brother's family for thirty years whose niece was murdered by her husband in a murder-suicide.
From No. 587 · Coffee After Sunday
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Dear LFTP: AA member who witnessed a life-support withdrawal
- How do I come to terms with accidentally witnessing a fellow AA member's life-support withdrawal?
An AA member writes that while visiting a hospitalized fellow member with cookies, he arrived at the exact moment doctors withdrew life support and witnessed the family's raw grief; he now fears he intruded and caused harm.
From No. 568 · Like Jesus