God Didn't Take Your Child

You know you need something, you're just not sure what. You've been listening, you're doing the work, but there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place, like you're waiting for the thing that finally moves you. Now maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back, the timing, the money, or you're just not sure you're ready yet. I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you. I built a resource for exactly this moment, guided meditations for when the waves hit and you just need to breathe. Workbooks to help you get out of your head and onto the page, ebooks on what near-death experiences tell us about the people we've lost, and whether they're really gone, a full course for widows and widowers who are ready to find their way back to living, and a full course for the evidence of the afterlife. And all of it is available for pay what you want. Nobody gets turned away because of money. I think these resources are valuable, but I don't want to hold them back because you don't have the money to pay for them. You don't have to wait until you're ready for coaching. The next step might be a lot smaller than you think. To find out, go to grief2growth.com/store. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/store. And check out the resources I've made for you. Maybe God took my child because it's straight. That sentence was whispered to me through tears in a session recently. Now I'm going to change some of the details, but the ache behind it is real. And it's far too common. My client had lost a child, an infant. Unimaginable pain, the kind of grief that tears open the structure of your soul and asks every question you've ever had about why anything happens the way that it does. She had grown up in a strict Catholic church where God was described as loving, but also as angry, holy but punitive, always watching, always waiting, waiting for that one unconfessed sin to pounce on you. The message was subtle sometimes, but it was sometimes overt. Good people get rewarded and sinners get punished. But over the years, she'd found her own spiritual path, one that felt more loving, more intuitive, more rooted in connection than fear. She felt like she was loved. She felt like she was held. She still lit candles. She still prayed. She still felt presence of God. But she'd no longer walk the path that she was raised on. And then the unthinkable happened. Her child passed. A little bit later, as so often happens, someone reached out. It was a well-meaning friend, probably uncomfortable with grief, with mystery, and with ambiguity. And her friend said to her, "You need to get back to Jesus." Now, on the surface, that sounds like concern, right? But beneath it, that comment planted a seed of judgment. It took her right back to those days in Sunday school. That trauma that's implanted in a lot of us at such an early age. Because that's what happens with trauma. If we don't process those emotions, they stick around. And we go right back to that child we were when that trauma is triggered. And she said, maybe I'm being punished. Maybe I caused this loss by stepping away from God. Maybe my child died because I failed and God took her from me. And I gotta tell you, my heart broke with her. Because this is what happens when theology is built on fear. What kind of God would punish you by taking your child? Now let's stop and really sit with this question. Let's assume you made mistakes. Let's assume that you had sinned. What kind of God will respond by taking the life of someone else, someone that you love? What kind of justice is that? It's not justice. It's cruelty. And cruelty is not divine. To believe in that kind of God is to live in a universe where love is conditional, and suffering is always deserved. And I gotta tell you, that's not faith. Now, here's a deeper lie. The lie that death is a punishment. This grief, this spiral, it all hangs on this deeply embedded lie that death is a punishment. But what if it's not? What if death isn't a punishment, but a passage? What if it isn't a sentence, but a continuation? What if— and I want you to stay with me here— what if the soul knows what it's doing? Now, many spiritual traditions, traditions, even within Christianity, hold the belief that we are eternal, that this life is a chapter, not the whole book. And the ones we lose, especially children, are not lost to us forever. They are closer than we know. They've just gone home before we have. And if we truly understood what waits for us on the other side, we would never fear death. And we would certainly not call it punishment. We wouldn't say God took someone. We'd say that they went, that they went home. And we trust that where they went, that they are held. If we knew, if we truly knew what death really was, capital punishment would be abolished immediately. We wouldn't weaponize the afterlife to control or scare anyone. We wouldn't confuse loss or going home with judgment. And we never again look into the eyes of a grieving parent and say, this happened because you strayed. It's important that we understand this. We don't own our children, we accompany them. As parents, it's so natural to feel like our children belong to us. We say things like my son, my daughter. We say things like I brought you into this world. And yeah, we carry them, we fed them, we love them in the most physical and visceral ways. Their lives touched our bodies, their cries woke us in the night. And of course, we feel like they came from us. But the deeper truth is this: our children don't come from us, they come through us. We are a portal, we are a steward, we are a witness to their lives, but we are not the owner. Each soul has its own path, its own timing, purpose, lessons, and legacy. And while our journeys overlap, they are not the same. Their birth was not our decision. Their death is not our fault. Even in loss, even in heartbreak, their path remains theirs. It's sacred. It's complete, even if it's unbearably brief, even if it's only for a few months, like it was in the case of my client, or if it's 50 or 60 years. Now, this is hard to accept, especially when we're desperate to find a reason to make sense of the senseless. That's what humans do. And this is where these old ideas can start rushing back in. These theologies say this happened because you did something wrong, or God is punishing you. But those are fear's answers, not love's. That's a trauma response. Because the truth is this: no spiritual offense, no infidelity, No wandering from the path. No wrong turn in your belief system could ever override the soul's plan. Not yours, not theirs. You cannot override their plan. They didn't leave because you failed. They left because their journey here was done. And now they continue elsewhere. When I was a kid, I loved Bill Cosby. And there's an old joke that kind of gets a laugh because it hides a truth that we're afraid to say out loud. Bill Cosby used to say, "I brought you into this world, and I can take you out." We laughed, but underneath the laugh is a cultural wound. The joke is rooted in a false belief that parents create their children, and therefore have dominion over them. It's the same belief that makes us feel guilty when we lose them. It implies, "If I brought them in, maybe I did something that made them leave." But again, that's not how soul paths or soul plans work. You are not the author of your child's destiny. You are not the gatekeeper of their fate. And you are not the reason they died. You're neither omnipotent, omnipresent, or omniscient. You don't know everything. You can't be everywhere. And you don't have all power. You are not powerful enough to have taken your child out through your sins. What we are, what we have always been, is a temporary companion on their journey. We are a sacred escort through part of their soul's evolution. We are not the creator. We are not the controller. We are not the cause. When we try to carry the weight of their death as if it's ours to bear, we confuse biology— them coming through us— with divinity. But our power is limited, and I gotta tell you, that's actually a mercy because it means this: we can grieve without guilt. We can remember without shame. We can light candles for them without wondering if we're to blame. So let's tell a different story. Imagine this. Your soul and your child's soul knew each other before this life. They chose you, you chose them. You both knew your time here might be brief, but it was going to be powerful. It was going to be sacred. It was going to be transformative. I remember when my girls were like 4 and 7 years old, before we had polluted them with much religious teaching. And they were sitting at the kitchen table. And they were talking to each other about remembering being in heaven. Remember choosing us as their parents. I don't know where that came from. It's certainly not something I ever taught them. I didn't discover that teaching until decades later. Imagine a God not counting sins, but holding space for every heartbreak. Imagine a God who doesn't take but receives. Imagine a God who doesn't punish your path, but walks beside you wherever you go. Because this— love does not punish. Love does not take. Love holds. Love honors. And love stays. So in closing, I want you to think about this. Think about this thought. What kind of God would punish you by taking your children? What kind of God— what kind of sense does that make? And I want you to really think about that. Because I think if you do, you realize it makes no sense at all. And here are maybe some better questions to ask: What kind of love still remains? What kind of connection outlives the physical? And what kind of God meets you here in the ache, in the ritual, and in the mystery of the unknown? Hi there, I'm really excited to tell you about my latest ebook. It's 4 lessons that you can learn from the near-death experience without going through all the trouble of dying to learn them. I've been studying NDEs for several years now. I am completely convinced that not only are they 100% real, but that there's some very universal wisdom that we can get from the near-death experience. And I've distilled that down in this book into 4 short lessons. And I've also given you all the reasons why I believe that NDEs are absolutely real. So go to www.grieftogrowth.com/NDElessons to pick it up for free. www.grieftogrowth.com/NDElessons. I hope you enjoy it.