Hi, and welcome to the Five Word Prayers Daily, a five day a week daily devotional where we share the word, prayers in our heart.

I'm Lisa Whittle, and I welcome you to just five minutes with me, which I trust and pray will be five minutes well spent.

We're talking grief this week on the daily, and I hope it's helpful to you.

Grief is tough to maneuver, and I want to help us all, as much as I can, in these quick five-minute

shows. Can't tackle everything, but we can hopefully offer a nugget or two. Today, our five-word

prayer is Hold Me While I Grieve, and I do believe that's what Jesus does for us so tenderly,

so dearly, as he loves us so much. It's a prayer I wrote that didn't make it into the five-word

prayers book, which, by the way, did you know this show started from a devotional book I wrote

by the same name? Yep, sure did. I'll tell you more about that in a minute and link it in the show

notes, but for today, I'm going to read you this quick bonus prayer.

There's a precious verse in Matthew that says this, you're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the one most dear to you, Matthew

5.4. I have to tell you, I didn't feel very blessed when I lost my dad a year and a half ago,

but I do understand what it

feels like to be blessed by the embrace of Jesus in the midst of that pain, of which I am so very

grateful. Many of you relate, I know, and I want to read that for us, this prayer and bonus devotional

hold me while I grieve based on that verse. Sometimes I feel overcome by the depth of grief and loss

in this world, and were it not for Jesus, I would be swallowed up in my distress. The days were long

but short when my father was dying this past year, and I could do nothing but watch it happen,

and wonder how I would do without the man I love the longest on earth. All of my mental preparations

and emotional checklist never prepared me to pick out his casket. Even now, months after he's been

gone, I catch a whiff of his cologne in the grocery store on the neck of another and weep. Grief is

cruel and shockingly real. Sorrows are similar, but no two grievings are alike.

...