Grief, God, and the Quiet Holiness of Missing Someone

Grief Is Part of the Love Story

I wasn’t expecting to feel this much.

That’s the thing about grief—it sneaks in when we least expect it. One moment you’re moving through your day, doing what needs to be done, and the next, you’re stopped in your tracks by a wave of emotion you didn’t see coming. It catches you off guard. It humbles you. It reminds you just how deeply you loved.

Shortly after the news of Pope Francis's passing, I found myself reflecting even more on the nature of grief and faith. The loss of a spiritual leader—someone whose presence has quietly anchored millions—stirs something personal in so many of us. For me, it reminded me how intertwined grief and belief can be. How sometimes, the one thing we’ve been pushing away is actually the one thing we need the most.

What I’ve learned—through the loss of my dad, and through walking alongside so many others navigating grief—is that grief is sacred. It’s not something to be rushed or fixed. There’s a quiet holiness in missing someone so deeply. A stillness that doesn’t demand answers or solutions—only presence.

Grief invites us to slow down. To simply stay.

It asks us to show up—to ourselves, and one another. To sit in the silence, even when it’s uncomfortable. Because love doesn’t disappear when someone dies. It shifts. It softens. It finds new ways to live on in us.

Grief isn’t a detour. It’s not a sign that something has gone wrong. It’s part of the love story.

That’s what I’ve come to understand more deeply in recent years. I recently made a decision I never expected to make: I chose to be confirmed into the Catholic Church. It wasn’t part of my plan. In fact, it was something that I rejected for most of my life. My father was a Catholic man who often found himself conflicted by the teachings of the church throughout my childhood. Upon his passing, I was told that he came back to his faith in the months leading up to his death. I’d kept Catholicism at arm’s length for a long time. But grief has a way of opening us—of cracking something in us wide enough to let something new in.

What came in for me was faith; what I once rejected ended up being the one thing that I needed the most.

Not blind certainty, but a quiet, steady belief that I wasn’t walking this road alone. That my dad, in some mysterious way, was still with me. That God was still with me. And that maybe the stillness I’d been sitting in wasn’t empty at all—it was sacred.

So if you’re feeling it today—if the ache is loud or the tears are close—I want you to know you’re not alone. I’m with you in it.

And I promise: there’s no shame in missing them. There’s something sacred in the missing.