When profound loss shakes the very foundation of your spirit, causing grief and faith to feel like opposites, where do you turn for a candid conversation? Pastor, spiritual director, and author Kirk Byron Jones joins to share his decades of wisdom on God and spirituality amidst the pain of loss. Dr. Jones advocates for the powerful concept of ‘healthy doubt’ as an avenue for spiritual growth, and he shares his own personal journey through burnout and struggles with divine trust. He offers essential practices, like his ‘Morning Brew’ ritual and ‘Peace Pockets,’ encouraging listeners to embrace rest, ‘self-gracing,’ and sacred stillness to transform solitude from isolation into a wellspring of compassionate presence. I am sharing my experience of loving the same man for 32 years, a mother to two adult children, a retired military officer, a breast cancer survivor, and my connections with others.  Anyone experiencing suicidal thoughts should reach out to a suicide hotline or local emergency number in their country: Psychology Today Suicide Hotlines and Prevention Resources Around the World. — Watch the episode here    Listen to the podcast here   Honoring The Empty Spaces Where Grief And Faith Meet With Kirk Byron Jones Thank you for being along for this mini series, Voices of Widowhood: Healing through the Holidays. Our last guest for this conversation, Dr. Jones, has some nuggets for you. We’re going to talk about what fills you and what drains you. He also has a great acronym to start the day called BREW. The first B is Be still. The R is Receive grace. I’ll let him explain the rest of them to you in this conversation. Let’s jump into it.       Dr. Jones, welcome to the Widowhood. Greetings. It’s good to be with you. I’ve been looking forward to talking with you. When you hear, “Welcome to the Widowhood,” what comes to mind? What a first question. We’re here to talk. First of all, I take the word welcome very seriously in a lighthearted way. When you say, “Welcome,” I see from your face and from the invitation that you mean it, so I don’t take welcomes for granted. Thank you for the welcome. To the Widowhood, I celebrate community amid a missing or a losing. Yet, you found each other, which, to me, speaks of life continuing on amid loss, grief, hurt, and pain. We oftentimes find that in each other. There are resources within, but there are resources without. When you say, “Welcome to the sisters of the Widowhood,” it’s a layered blessing. When Grief Makes God Feel Distant: Honoring The Empty Spaces Thank you. You have spent decades working with pastors and caregivers on the idea of slowing down the pace, having a better relationship with God. I want to start there for the people who are grieving. They’d love to understand what that looks like in their grief because they’re not hearing God. They feel like God is distant. I can tell this conversation is going to be a slow conversation. I hope that people appreciate the pauses as much as they do the words, because the spaces in between this conversation, something tells me, are going to be very important. I would attest to that. This mini series that you agreed to participate in, Voices of Widowhood: Healing through the Holidays, I believe this is going to be the last conversation in this series. It is important as this conversation will air in the last week of January 2026. People have read from different people giving them information about encouragement, how to make it through, and how to breathe. What I’ve often found lingering in the back of those conversations is that missing piece of that candid discussion about God, their faith, and what that looks like in their grief. Understanding that every reader has a different faith that they may resonate with, but the overall concept of how this level of loss impacts one’s faith. Going to your question about how we honor, I hear it as how you honor the empty spaces. Being honest about the distance of divinity is important because often, God feels gone if we’re honest about it. Maybe not so much on a Sunday morning. I’m in the Baptist tradition. When the choir gets going, and there’s a whole lot of hallelujah going on, the assumption is that the spirit is in the place, but I’ve pastored long enough to know that even in such moments, there are people who feel the opposite. They’re maybe clapping to not be detected because it’s habitual. The real truth of the matter is, in any given moment in a worship or anywhere else, God feels gone. I’ve never experienced the loss that the sisters of the widowhood are experiencing. I preached a scripture where it’s post-resurrection. It’s the last chapter in Matthew. The disciples are gathered on the mountain. They’ve gotten word from this alleged resurrected Jesus for them to meet him on the mountain. There’s this interesting passage that says that they’re there. Some doubted. Though they had gathered post-resurrection, some doubted. The promise comes that Jesus says, “I’ll be with you always.” He didn’t separate the crowd before He made the promise, which means to me that the shouters, those who affirmed the resurrection and believed in it, and the doubters received the same promise. I may have been tempted to separate those who believed from those who doubted and said to the believers, “I’m with you,” and ignored those who were doubting. The moral of the story is that God’s being with us does not depend on our being with God. When God seems gone, it seems to me is when we need God the most, even though we may not feel God’s presence. We don’t have to feel God’s presence. God need not be invited to be present. I may have some folks who come at me on this. I don’t believe God needs to be named to