When Grief Makes It Hard to Read Your Bible

Lately, I’ve seen so many articles and posts about spiritual disciplines and putting the “Word before the world,” as they say. And they’re good and well meaning. We do need to be women who open our Bibles and know God’s Word, because we need to know what’s true about God, especially when so much of what we’re feeling or experiencing can seem to tell us something different. But because I view so much of life through the lens of being a Hope Mom, and because I know and love so many Hope Moms, I keep thinking about how different this conversation can feel when your baby has died.

A lot of the encouragement I’ve seen says some version of, “You may not feel like reading your Bible, so build the discipline and do it anyway.” And there are absolutely seasons when I think that’s exactly what we need to hear. Sometimes we don’t feel like opening our Bibles, and we need to open them anyway, because our feelings don’t determine what’s true, and we need God’s Word to 1) know God and 2) to remind our hearts of what is true about Him.

But grief can make reading genuinely difficult, even when you desperately want to be in God’s Word. Your brain just doesn’t work the way it did before. You can read the same paragraph five times and still have no idea what you just read. You can open your Bible with every intention of spending time with the Lord and find yourself crying before you’ve made it through a few verses. And sometimes you come across something about God’s goodness or His sovereignty that you’ve read and believed a hundred times before, but now you’re reading it after your baby has died, and suddenly you have questions you’ve never had to ask before.

I remember this so well after Paige died. There were things I had known about God and believed about Him for years that suddenly felt so much harder to understand. I still believed them, but now I was having to believe them from inside a story I never wanted to live, and that was different. I wanted to hear from God and know what was true and trust Him, but grief made even the most familiar truths feel like I was learning them all over again. And I know I’m not alone in that. I’ve talked to so many Hope Moms over the years who want to spend time with God and read their Bibles, but they’re exhausted, and their minds are foggy, and reading Scripture through the eyes of grief brings up questions and emotions they simply didn’t have before.

So when I tell you that you need God’s Word, I want to be careful about how I say that, because I know that reading the Bible after your baby dies may not be as simple as deciding to be more disciplined and doing it. I don’t want you to think you need to somehow recreate the quiet time you had before your baby died. I want to help you find ways to stay near God’s Word right where you are, because we do need it, and especially in those early days and months of grief, that may look very different than it did before.

1. Let it be small for a while.

You don’t have to read three chapters of your Bible for your time in God’s Word to matter. You don’t have to finish a reading plan, fill a page in your journal, or walk away with some new insight every time you open your Bible. There may be a season when all your grieving brain can manage is a few verses, so read a few verses. Read one Psalm. Read a paragraph. Read one verse slowly, and then read it again.

There were times in my grief when I needed to sit with just a few words because that was honestly all my brain and heart could hold. “The LORD is near to the brokenhearted” (Psalm 34:18). “The LORD is my shepherd” (Psalm 23:1). “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).

Try not to measure the value of your time in Scripture by how much you’re able to read right now. God’s Word is living and active, and it is doing something in us even when grief makes it difficult to concentrate or remember everything we’ve read. You are learning to come to God and His Word from inside a story you never wanted to live, and there may be days when a few verses are all you have the capacity for. Read those few verses and trust Him with them.

2. Go back to what you already know.

I think sometimes we approach Bible reading as though it only counts if we’re learning something new, but grief may be a season when what you need most is to go back to the same places over and over again and be reminded of what you already know, to strengthen your foundation. 

Find the passages that remind you of who God is and what is true. For me, there are places I’ve returned to so many times that I almost know where the words are on the page, and I’ve needed them in different ways in different seasons.

Psalm 23. Psalm 34. Psalm 42. Psalm 46. Psalm 121. Lamentations 3. Isaiah 40. Romans 8. 2 Corinthians 4. Revelation 21.

Make your own little list and keep it somewhere you can find it on the days when you don’t have the capacity to figure out where to read. There is nothing wrong with going back to the same places again and again, because sometimes we need to be reminded of what we already know as we learn what it means to believe it here too.

3. Let someone else read the Bible to you.

If your eyes move across the page but your brain can’t seem to hold onto the words, listen to an audio Bible. Put it on while you’re driving, taking a walk, or getting ready in the morning. Ask your husband or a friend to sit beside you and read a Psalm. Let someone send you Scripture in a text and simply receive it. Sit in church and listen without putting pressure on yourself to take notes, follow every thought, or remember every word when you leave.

Listening is enough. You don’t have to have your Bible open in front of you for God’s Word to be doing its work in you, and God’s Word is no less His Word because someone else is reading it aloud. You can listen and receive what you’re able to receive that day, and there may be a season when this is what time in God’s Word looks like for you because reading it for yourself is just really hard.

4. Don’t be afraid of the places that are hard.

After our babies die, there are passages that can feel different than they did before. Verses about God’s goodness, His sovereignty, His protection, prayer, healing, suffering, or even heaven can bring questions to the surface that we didn’t know we had until grief gave us a reason to ask them. You don’t have to pretend those questions aren’t there, and asking them doesn’t mean you’ve stopped trusting God.

I love that God has given us words for grief in Scripture too, and that the Psalms are full of people bringing their sorrow and questions honestly before Him, asking where He is and how long their suffering will last. There is something comforting to me about knowing those words are right there in our Bibles, because it reminds me that we can bring our questions to God too.

So bring your questions with you when you open your Bible. Write them in the margins if you need to, and tell God when you don’t understand what you’re reading or when something feels especially hard after what has happened to you. You don’t have to have an answer for every question before you keep reading, and I think there is something important about continuing to bring those questions to God while letting His Word remind you of what is true about Him.

5. And when you realize it’s been a while, just come back.

There may be days when you don’t read your Bible, and there may even be a lot of them, especially in the beginning. I don’t say that because I think God’s Word is optional, because I don’t. I think we desperately need it. But I also know how easy it is to realize it’s been a few days, or maybe a few weeks, and then feel guilty that you haven’t been reading, and sometimes that guilt can make it even harder to open your Bible again.

So if you realize it’s been three days or three weeks, open it today. You don’t have to make up all the chapters you missed, start your reading plan over, or promise that you’ll do better this time. You can just come back.

Read a Psalm or a few verses. Listen to Scripture while you take a walk. Ask the Lord to help you understand what you’re reading and remind you of what is true about Him, and then tomorrow, come back again.

Over time, you may find that you’re able to read more, that your concentration returns, and that studying Scripture begins to look more like it did before your baby died. Or maybe your time in God’s Word will look different in some ways because you are different now. You have suffered something you had not suffered before, and you are bringing questions and experiences and a broken heart to Scripture that you didn’t bring before.

But however it looks in this season, keep coming back. There will be days when opening your Bible takes discipline, and there will be days when even a few verses read over you will feel like a lot. That’s okay. Keep coming back anyway, because you need to know God here too. You need His Word to remind you who He is when grief makes that harder to understand, and you need to be reminded of the hope you have because of Jesus when everything feels uncertain. Your world has changed, but God hasn’t. Keep coming back to Him and keep coming back to His Word.

Jennie is the Executive Director for Hope Mommies. She and her husband Brian live in Oregon and have four children together— Trenton, Paige who has been in Heaven with Jesus since 2010, Mason, and Cora. If you were to knock on her front door today, you’d find her in something comfortable drinking a hot cup of tea, while trying to figure out how to balance all the things that make up a life. She enjoys spending time in God’s word, fresh flowers, board games with her kids, cooking, and evening walks in her neighborhood. She adores being a new creation in Christ and prays she reflects Him well on this earth.