15 Quotes and Verses to Help With Grief

Chosen by a Counselor Specializing in Grief and Trauma

Here are some quotes and verses I have compiled about grief. I find them helpful in explaining the grieving process, grief itself, and, ultimately, how to cope with grief and sadness. I also share some Bible verses about the hope and healing we can find in Christ.

Learning to Live with Grief

The five stages  ?  denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance  ?  are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the one we lost. They are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

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No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.

C.S. Lewis

Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.

William Shakespeare, Macbeth

The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be
whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Relationships take up energy; letting go of them, psychiatrists theorize, entails mental work. When you lose someone you were close to, you have to reassess your picture of the world and your place in it. The more your identity was wrapped up with the deceased, the more difficult the loss.

Meghan O’Rourke

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

What Does the Bible Say about Grief?

For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; Nor has He hidden His face from Him; But when He cried to Him, He heard.

Psalm 22:24

Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Matthew 11:28

For the Lord will not cast off forever. Though He causes grief, Yet He will show compassion According to the multitude of His mercies. For He does not afflict willingly, Nor grieve the children of men.

Lamentations 3:31-33

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Matthew 5:4

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

II Corinthians 1:3-4

My flesh and my heart fail; But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Psalm 73:26

The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart, And saves such as have a contrite spirit.

Psalm 34:18

For His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for life; Weeping may endure for a night, But joy comes in the morning.

Psalm 30:5

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord,
thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Jeremiah 29:11

Christian Counseling to Process Your Grief

As a Christian counselor, I am accustomed to accompanying people in their grief and have been privileged to witness how the process of grieving a loved one can help people to grow in new and unexpected ways. Grief is difficult, but you do not have to go through it alone.