Alabaster Tears

The Grace of Grief

Mar 23, 2026

Grief will visit every one of us. We chose to write about grief in these months that are in between winter and spring; in between epiphany and Easter. Lent is the middle passage that takes us through Jesus’s life, through Jesus’ death, and delivers us again to Life. Join us as we walk through the topic of “Grief” together.

To me, grief is . . . odd. In one way it can be a grounding experience. In another, mystical. While some individuals may try to clinically map out their stages, the path of grief may be as untraceable as wind rippling over an ocean.

We aren’t always sure where grief may carry us.

It carried me to the coast of Italy. There I was, laying flat on my belly, ribs pressing down on a stone dock while bits of gravel bruised me. One arm cradled my head and I gazed down, into the mesmerizing blue of the Ligurian Sea.

I could see the bottom.

My other arm dangled over the edge of the dock as I held a small, alabaster jar above the water. In it were four-handwritten letters, and I was about to give them a funeral.

Why did grief carry me there? Well, a month earlier, God asked me a question.

“Have you grieved your barrenness?”

Little did I know how God’s persistent query would lead me into the grace of grief.

With his question, my imagination immediately pictured a funeral – a funeral for the children we never had. So, on our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, my husband and I hiked trails along the Cinque de Terre, looking for a place that God would indicate for us.

As we hiked I looked back on the twenty-some years of infertility. I rarely shed a tear for my barrenness, about how different our lives were from what we had imagined. I couldn’t. There were times when the tears would start, but a sudden numbness shut a door and locked it fast against emotion. Perhaps I had a fear of being overwhelmed by grief. Or perhaps the numbness was God’s grace until I was ready and the time was right.

I know this: grace had carried me here — laying prostrate, holding an alabaster “casket” over the waters of Italy.

On the third day of hiking, God showed us the place in the distance, much like He showed Abraham where to offer up his son Isaac to the Lord as a sacrifice.

“And on the third day, [Abraham] looked up and saw the place in the distance.” (Gen. 22:4 NLT)

We put our backpacks down and wrote two, precious letters each: one for a daughter, and one for a son. Before we read our letters aloud, we nervously wondered if the familiar numbness would take over. We needed that door of tears to be opened. Somehow, we knew it was time.

Thankfully, at the first words, a key clicked in the locked door and it opened easily. It felt like a true evidence of grace.

We folded up our “dreams” and tucked them inside the little, alabaster jar. With tears on our cheeks, we walked down the dock and laid ourselves flat on the pebbly stone.

Like the woman in John 12 who poured out her jar of priceless perfume, we poured out our dreams at the feet of our Pastoring God and buried what was precious to us.

We let go. And through a blur of tears I watched the jar’s journey to the bottom.

You may wonder if, since then, I have seen the bottom of this grief? I don’t think I can, as every season of life offers a new angle of what motherhood could have meant. But when the tears come, they flow freely, like grace. My alabaster tears are a soft, honest wash through the questions and ache. And some even glisten with acceptance.

Perhaps you have a sense that it is time for your own tears. It may be that God would ask you what He asked me:

Have you grieved your ________________?

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