Why Grief Matters For Healing

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Husband Material Podcast, where we help Christian men outgrow porn. Why? So you can change your brain, heal your heart, and save your relationship. My name is Drew Boa, and I'm here to show you how. Let's go. Thanks so much for listening to my interview with Mike Murray. Today we are talking about grief. Because grief is one of the core experiences that often drives us to porn and unwanted sexual behavior when we don't allow ourselves to feel it and process it. So in this episode, you will learn what grief is and is not, what kind of responses to grief help and do not help. You're going to get some really fantastic ideas about healthy ways to grieve, how our Christian faith is a resource for grief, and the six needs of the grieving. Both Mike and I will share parts of our personal stories of grief and what has helped us connect with our younger self and experience redemption. Mike Murray is a licensed independent social worker with 10 years of experience who specializes in EMDR therapy and grief work. He has also trained with Megan Devine and David Kessler, two of the world's experts on grief, and he is passionate about helping to destigmatize mental health in the church. Enjoy the episode. Today

Mike’s Loss And Inner Child

SPEAKER_01 1:20

we get to hear from one of our community members, a beloved man, Mike Murray. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Thanks, Jair. So glad to be here.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Mike, what has been your experience with husband material?

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Yeah, I've been around husband material for almost two years now. I joined the beginning of 2025, and I feel like this is a taste of heaven, honestly. The love and the affirmation and the grace that is so abundant in men all over the world. I tell people I have never experienced that kind of biblical community in the way that I have in HM. So that's been amazing.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

It's been amazing to witness. And a huge part of what we do at Husband Material is process our stories and learn how to grieve together. What has grief looked like in your life?

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Definitely, grief has been a huge part of my story. So I grief started for me when I lost my father to cancer as an eight-year-old boy. I was obviously unfortunately introduced to grief a lot earlier than I would have liked. As I have, so I'm 34 now, and I have seen God do amazing things through my grief, and I have seen him redeem my pain. But a few months ago, I was in therapy, and my therapist asked me I think the most helpful question to my recovery that anyone's ever asked me. We were talking about my dad and just my grief, and and she said, Okay, so if you as a 34-year-old adult could go back to you eight-year-old fatherless mic, what would you say? And I said it would probably be something like, I know you can't believe me, and and this is probably hard to wrestle with, but God sees you, God loves you, God has a plan for all this. And my therapist said, Okay, how does eight-year-old Mike respond to that affirmation? And without thinking, my first response was of you. I don't I don't believe you. And my therapist gave me this look of so much compassion. And she said, Okay, clearly, eight-year-old Mike needs more love than you've been giving him. And that for me, especially after being around Husmaterial for, you know, a year, you know, that was like when all of the light bulbs just immediately went off in my head. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is what Drew has been talking about this entire time. Like this this makes so much sense now. This is the boy that I need to heal so that I can lead the boy and and let the man appear.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

That is beautiful. That's what we're aiming for. And also, it's just

Why Grief Feels So Impossible

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hard.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

I mean, why is grief so hard? So many things. I think a lot of times grief is hard because it's just so misunderstood. One of my favorite people in the grief world, her name's Megan Devine. She wrote a really, really cool book called It's Okay That You're Not Okay, where she just normalizes just the pain. And, you know, she opens her book and she says, This really is as bad as you think it is. And no, we can't make it better. Especially in the church, I think, you know, people are so quick to jump to God has a reason for this. And those things just in the moment, they're not helpful. And, you know, I think typically when I've heard those kinds of things, I immediately feel like, can you just not try to cheer me up for a second and just let me sit in my pain? Will you sit with me? But I think so many people are afraid to do that because they're uncomfortable. So because they're uncomfortable, I can't be uncomfortable because that makes them uncomfortable. And I think that's what makes healing through grief so difficult is because community is so essential. You know, we you can't move through something as heavy as grief alone. And sometimes finding community that is actually healing, that is actually not trying to talk you out of what you're feeling can be really, really difficult. Because some people just want to go straight to all of the positive passages in scripture, which are great. They don't change the pain. They don't change the pain of loss. And I think you know, people just get so caught up in, oh, I need to make this person feel better or try to make them feel better instead of no, I just need to sit with this person. I just need to give them a hug. I just need to give them the space to let them cry and and scream and just get their get their feelings off their chest. Because chances are they're feeling as isolated as as they seem.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

A lot of it seems to come from misunderstandings of what grief even is.

unknown 6:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

Almost as if it's like a speed bump or an obstacle, maybe even this is a sin or something. What do you wish more of us understood about grief?

SPEAKER_00 7:06

Aaron Ross Powell One of the most beautiful, simple, concise statements I've ever heard about grief is it's from that book, It's Okay That You're Not Okay. And the statement is grief is not a sign that you're unwell or unevolved. It's a sign that love has been part of your life and that you want love to continue.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

Whew, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:32

No, isn't that good? Isn't that good? I know. And you know, I've also heard it said, you know, along those same lines that grief lasts as long as love does. You know, and of course, you don't stop loving someone just because they're gone. A lot of times we don't realize how much we might have taken somebody for granted until they're gone. So a lot of times I think our love just continues to grow and continues to increase as we miss them. And, you know, I think people just don't understand that pain doesn't stop hurting just because time goes by. Some things are just painful, some things are just hard. And that book also talks about how some things can't be fixed, they can only be carried. And I think is I think grief is is one of those things for sure.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

Yeah.

Raw Grief And Honest Prayer

SPEAKER_01 8:28

One of the ways that grief has touched my life is the death of my infant son. His name is Josiah, and he was born, he lived for four hours, and then he died 2019. And he has really changed me forever. Most people don't know the pre-Josiah Drew. There's a podcast where I tell my story as it relates to him, and I'll put a link to that in the show notes. But man, that grief completely changed my relationship with God, my relationship with myself, my relationship with other people. And it really is true. Grief is not linear. There's not a right or wrong way to grieve, there's not a timeline. And yet there are so many ways it can happen. Like for me with Josiah, one of the things I had to do that my body told me to do was to curse. After I found out that Josiah had a condition that was incompatible with life and that he was going to die very soon after birth, I went home and for 15 minutes, I cursed, I said the most obscene, horrible strings of words I could think of. Just endless for 15 minutes. And then when the 15 minutes were up, I was done. I never did it again. It changed my view of language and it has kind of opened me up to a time and a place for for certain language, but that's just one way that I found like I had to grieve. And it didn't fit with my theological framework at the time. But when we don't allow ourselves to grieve, a lot of times those feelings come out sideways.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Including sexually.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

You know, Drew, I love that example you shared so much because I think no one knows your grief like you do. No one knows me my grief like I do. So we have inside of us what we need, what we know we need to grieve effectively. You know, for you, you know, you you knew in that moment. I just need to get all of these things off of my chest. And you felt lighter immediately. And I think like, you know, that is the perfect example of okay, this is this is what I needed. I've definitely had a lot of moments like that in my own story where I've I've needed to just be just raw. First of all, I always find it kind of amusing how people like God's not surprised. Right? God's not surprised that we have these thoughts. God knows our thoughts better than we do. But, you know, also I read in another great book called Gentle and Lowly, which is all about Jesus hard for sinners, and like one of the most encouraging books for my for my walk with the Lord I ever read. But there's a there's a chapter in that book that talks about emotions, and and it just mentions how if there is one person in the entire universe who is capable and even holy in receiving anger, it is the Lord. Because, you know, God is perfect, and God, when anger arises in us, God is angrier than we are. I really believe that. When we are abused, when we are victims of sexual abuse, or when we are grieving, you know, I believe that God is weeping with us, and yet God and his being perfect and his holy nature, unlike us, God never never uses that anger in a way that is evil. And I've heard Adam Young say that the book of Job is really useful for grieving because Job, another example of somebody who was not afraid to be raw. You know, if Job were living now, you know, a lot of people in church would probably look sideways at Job. And yet I love what Adam Young says. He says that Job gives us the lines to know what to say because he knows how difficult it is for us to engage our anger with him because we're afraid of how he's going to respond, if at all.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

Scripture gives us incredible resources and language to grieve. Many Psalms, the Book of Lamentations, Job. This is the word of God, and sometimes it's ugly. Yeah. It's messy. And God wants us to be unedited, unfiltered, ugly, messy, honest with him about how we really feel.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

I think that's so important too, because as I have been raw about my grief with the Lord, I have found that to be the path to the authentic relationship with Jesus, that I entirely believe that that's what he wants for us. And I think, you know, it if we have this view of God where we believe we can only say the things that we're supposed to, I think I don't think that's the perspective that God wants us to have, because I think that that really limits our ability to engage with him in a way that sometimes our heart feels like we need to. As like you said, we see that throughout scripture. And I think that's why as Christians, going to those passages is so important because you know the Bible is real, right? You know, the Bible shows us, the Bible's not, doesn't filter the suckiness of life and and pain, you know?

SPEAKER_01 14:50

Many psalms end with a redemptive turn of like, but I trust in the Lord. But some don't. Like Psalm 88 ends with the darkness is my closest friend. And we need that too. Yes. There's space for all of it. So our Christian faith is an incredible resource for grief, but maybe not in the way that we would

Platitudes That Worsen Pain

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expect. What are some of the unhelpful things that Christians will say trying to make it better?

SPEAKER_00 15:20

This is from again, from that it's okay that you're not okay book. So the book talks about how when people say the unhelpful things, God needed you more than we did. They're in a better place. So the book talks about how is there there's this implied second half of the sentence that goes something like, God needed them more than we did. So stop feeling so bad about this. And like I think that framework is so accurate because I think that is exactly why those words, even if they are well-intentioned, are just not helpful and often more hurtful and and cause a lot more damage than I think if people would just shut up and just be willing to sit and let you cry and let you say, you know what, I'm really just struggling right now. This is so hard, and I don't I don't know how to deal with this.

SPEAKER_01 16:20

To allow that to exist. Not try to solve it, not try to fix it. We need that. Yeah. And especially on this journey of outgrowing porn, I have noticed that the most predictable precursor to a porn relapse is some kind of unprocessed loss. It could be the loss of a friend, a job, a church or a community, a marriage, a child, like in my case. When we don't grieve, those feelings stay stuck in our bodies. And sometimes sexual urges and fantasies are like a signal saying, hey, there's something that you need to feel. There's something that you are avoiding, and that's just the surface level of this deeper suffering.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

On the surface, it seems so much so much easier to let porn pacify that pain. But I think it's kind of like Novcaine, you know, you're you're just numbing yourself out until eventually it wears off, and that stuff hurts, and you're back to where you started. So it's like, yeah, you know what? You know, I tell my clients, you know, nothing about grieving well is easy. And for most people, it's it's it's a lifelong journey. And I think invalidating our own experience is often what keeps us stuck too.

Practical First Steps Into Grief

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Mike, with your own grief, what is it like to continue to feel and process your dad's death?

SPEAKER_00 18:20

Ooh. That's such a great question. I think it is, it has been so illuminating for me because I don't think there will come a day when eight-year-old Mike, fatherless, eight-year-old Mike, ever doesn't need that love. And, you know, especially from my heavenly father, right? So there will never be title for God that is more meaningful as a fatherless man than God is my heavenly father. So I think in that way it's been illuminating. And yet it's also been really, really hard. Especially as a father now. I I have a four-year-old daughter, and I constantly feel God teaching me about how He loves me, and yet the one person I wish I could go to, I don't have him. I look at my daughter and I feel so much love and so much joy, and yet so much sadness and pain and heartbreak at the same time because I, you know, she is a reminder to me of what I'm missing and that that heartache that I will I will carry for the rest of my life this side of heaven.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

Thank you so much for your vulnerability. Yeah. It sounds like an ongoing invitation to love and be loved. And it shifts and it changes, it never gets removed or replaced. It does get redeemed. Yes. Yet that is not a simple straightforward path.

SPEAKER_00 20:06

As with most things, as we know that we know the way God works.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

As we talk about grief, I feel the need to get more specific and practical because sometimes guys will say, like, I know I need to grieve what happened to me or what didn't happen for me when I was growing up, but I just can't seem to get there, or what do I actually do? So, what are some healthy ways to enter grief and let that start to unfold?

SPEAKER_00 20:37

Yeah, that's such a great question. First of all, I think two principles that are important to consider. So the first, just this awareness of I know my own grief better than anybody. You know your grief better than anybody. So I need to trust myself day to day, week to week, month to month for what I need. And also what I tell my clients is look, if you're not hurting yourself and you're not hurting anybody else, there is no right answer for this process. It can look a thousand different ways. So I think the first thing that come to mind is finding community that will sit with you and let you grieve however you need to, without trying to talk you out of your feelings, without trying to minimize your pain, without trying to say, oh Mike, it's been 26 years and you're still grieving. Yeah, I am, and I'm I'm gonna be grieving all my life because there is no one more important to me on earth than my father, and I don't have him. So I think finding that community, which that in and of itself can be such a hard challenge because ironically, you know, I think even though you know Christian. Christians having this eternal sense of joy, I think we are still some of the most earthly people afraid of pain and suffering. And I think that's why, even in the church, I think finding healthy community that can walk alongside with you can be so hard. And yet it is so it is a necessity. Grief is a mountain that we can't tackle alone. You know, scripture is clear that you know we were not made for a life of solitude, and and grief is certainly not a season of our life where we have the choice to be alone if we are going to move through it in a way that's healthy.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

Absolutely. And we're trying to create those spaces at Husband Material where all parts of you are welcome. And there's no should about how you should feel. That's why I have this little 3D printed sign that says don't should all over yourself. I love that. Yeah. What are some of the outlets that you have found to be helpful?

Journaling Movement And Rage Rooms

SPEAKER_00 23:15

I love journaling. I think journaling can be so useful in grief. I think a lot of times, you know, as we go about our days, you know, and our jobs and just everything going on, I think it's easy for difficult things, difficult emotions to just get kind of balled up with all of the other things and not really give us a space to process them the way that we need to. So I think journaling is a really nice outlet because it gives us a deliberate time and space of, okay, I'm gonna pull these couple thoughts out of my head and I'm just gonna write, and I'm just gonna say, Jesus, like, will you show me what I need to get out in front of me so that I can start to process it and bring it to you in a way that is healing, in a way that allows me to just continue to move through move through what I'm feeling. So yeah, I think journaling is great. I also tell people grief carries a lot of energy to it, right? So I think grief is I'm sure you felt it it can feel like our body is just weighed down with 100-pound anvils. And I think, you know, for that reason, I think finding physical outlets is really important, you know, working out. I know you like to run. So going for a run, going for going for hikes. One of my favorite things to do, I or like that I've done that I tell my clients to do is to go to a rage room. Like just go and take a friend and just break, break shit. Honestly, I feel like that for me, that's been one of the most cathartic outlets I've ever experienced in my life.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

That can be such a release. That can be so cathartic. And also, Doug Carpenter taught me it can be helpful to put words to it. Yeah. Like, what am I smashing symbolically? What am I getting out of my system and and giving meaning to it so that it's also happening on the inside too?

SPEAKER_00 25:29

I love that. You know, that's where I think sometimes like journaling after going to a rage room could be really useful. Like, yeah, this is this is what it felt in my body to just to get this out of me. And we need to just have that outlet and in a safe environment where we're not hurting ourselves and we're not hurting anybody else, but just just this this outlet where we can just rage and vent those feelings in very practical but also a very tangible way, too.

SPEAKER_01 26:02

And we create space for that at husband material retreats, at the healing weekend intensives. Oftentimes getting very particular, sometimes we will set up a scene that matches whatever is being grieved in some way. For example, having a baby doll to grieve not just my inner child, but my inner infant. Or going out to the pool because something happened at a pool or it happened by a body of water. Getting in the car and driving around because what we're grieving happened in a car.

unknown 26:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:41

Sometimes those physical embodied experiences can really unlock the grieving process. And Mike, I love an example that you shared with me that helped you tap into the age you were when you were eight years old.

Reconnecting With Joyful Childhood Anchors

SPEAKER_00 26:57

I I think the first the first Toy Story movie, it came out in like the late 90s. Came out when my dad was still living. I think it was a few years before he died. And I remember I was one of those kids who I was obsessed with this movie. I was the annoying kid in my family with my four kids every time it was a movie night. That's what I wanted to watch. So for me, and this kind of goes back to your earlier question, which I love too. Part of continuing to heal my little boy means that Toy Story has become a big part of my life. So so at my office, I've got I've got these little alien things all over my desk. I've got a slinky above me, and I've got some I've got some more of the alien figures. My lanyard that I have my keys on is it's got aliens on it from the Toy Store movies. I probably have 10 different Toy Story t-shirts, including one that's bright pink for the pig. So for me, I think not just not just integrating that, but I think embracing that part of my childhood has been essential for me because it brings me joy, and yet it continues to bring me back to the very few memories I have of my dad when he was still with me.

SPEAKER_01 28:36

That's so redemptive. That's a beautiful example of giving your younger self what he needs. In my life right now, during a stressful season, I am re-listening through the Harry Potter audiobooks. When I was growing up, moving around place to place, having to make completely new friends every year or two. Harry, Ron, and Hermione were my friends.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

And I grew up when those books were still coming out. So there was a bond of waiting two years for the next book. As I go back through these books, it feels healing. It feels restorative, it feels regulating. And that's me giving my younger self what he needs.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

Yeah, I love that. Yeah, that's such a great example, too.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

And also looking at Harry Potter through the lens of healing or through the lens of Christianity can also be fascinating as well. Thinking about Harry's trauma, thinking about the themes throughout the books. Yeah, I agree. That's that's so good. Yeah. So Toy Story, Harry Potter might seem childish to some people, but I see it as the adult self connecting with the child self, and it's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 30:05

Yeah, and I think there's something holy about that also, because I think that is a very tangible way of receiving love from Jesus that he wants us to never ever ever ever forget. And I think you know, each of us tapping into those ways of loving our inner child, you know, we are inviting the presence of Jesus into our lives so that we never forget how good he is and how much he loves us. Amen.

SPEAKER_01 30:41

Preach. Mike, that's so good. We've talked about healthy ways to grieve, including community, emotional outlets like journaling, physical outlets like rage rooms, imaginative engagement with the things that brought us joy when we were kids. And I also want to add one more category, and that's creativity. Whether it's creating art or music or a garden or anything that is beautiful to you can be another resource for grief.

SPEAKER_00 31:26

Yeah. I love that too, because I think, you know, spiritually we see in scripture how God wants to raise every dead thing by his power and in his name. And creativity, I think, just gives us such a golden opportunity to again just invite Jesus to bring life back into our lives. And you know, we are we are grieving someone we can't bring back, and we can't change that. But we can invite Jesus to breathe life into our spirits.

SPEAKER_01 32:05

Amen.

Six Needs Of The Grieving

SPEAKER_01 32:06

Mike, you've trained with Megan Devine, the author of the book you mentioned, as well as David Kessler, two of the world's experts on grief. What does David Kessler say are the six needs of the grieving?

SPEAKER_00 32:19

The six needs of the grieving he mentions are one, to have your pain witnessed, to to express your feelings, three to release the burden of guilt, four, to be free of old wounds that often arise with grief. Five, to integrate the pain and love. And the last one is to find meaning in life after loss. And he emphasizes that there's no meaning in death, but meaning is an us. Meaning is, okay, I have this loss, so what does it look like for me to adjust? What does it look like for me to integrate this pain into my life, into my story? How do I allow Jesus to use this as a part of my redemptive story?

SPEAKER_01 33:20

So beautiful. Mike, what is your favorite thing about the healing work of grief?

SPEAKER_00 33:30

That's such a great question, Drew. I think my favorite thing about the healing work of grief is that I think it's such a great parallel for our lives as believers, you know, as as believers and as you know, in Hudson Material, we often have this false idea that we have to earn God's love or that we are rejecting or we are uninviting ourselves from from the love of God with our struggles. And yet God is clear, you know, God, God says, I see you, and I love you. And my sacrifice proves that your your sin can't change that, your your struggle can't change that. That parallel of we can be in our pain, and we can hold our pain with our joy at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 34:32

We can suffer knowing that on the other side of death there is resurrection. Yes, amen. Mike, thank you so much for sharing your story, your passion, and these really helpful perspectives on grief.

SPEAKER_00 34:46

Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Drew.

SPEAKER_01 34:48

It's great to great to be here. You're welcome. So glad we did. Guys, thank you for listening. Always remember you are God's beloved son, and you, he is well pleased.