God has given Clarissa Moll a joyful life again after the tragic death of her husband on their family's vacation in 2019. As a young widow, she’s helping others by providing a map for finding grace in the grief after being blindsided by loss.
About Clarissa Moll:
Clarissa Moll is an award-winning writer and the author of Beyond the Darkness: A Gentle Guide for Living with Grief and Thriving after Loss. She cohosts Christianity Today’s Surprised by Grief podcast, and her writing appears in Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition, RELEVANT, Modern Loss, Grief Digest, and more. Clarissa holds a master's degree from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and delights in God’s good creation with her four children from their home along the New England seacoast.
Quotes to Remember from Clarissa Moll
It feels like the providence of God that even though we were 3000 miles away from the address we called home, we were still surrounded by a community of support that took really good care of us in those first weeks where it just felt jarring and full of shock.
When a large white SUV rolled into our campground down that gravel drive and stopped at my campsite, I knew that something was really bad.
There was a moment where I thought if you tell me what I think that you're going to tell me I think I might die just from the impact of that news.
Nine years before his death, he had published The Art of Dying: Living Fully into the Life to Come, which was born out of his work as a journalist.
When I think about dying, his hand would have been the one and the one I wanted to hold.
I can't imagine what it would have been like to carry the weight of grief and not have a plan.
When grief enters your experience, it's the guest that shows up with bags packed and just moves on in and you can fight it, and you can push it away, but it's just gonna keep showing up.
You're better off, I think, inviting grief to sit at the table with you to enter into your life and figure out a way that the two of you can move forward.
When we face our grief when we engage with it, then it'll be easier as time goes by, but healed? Recovered? Not until Jesus comes again.
Jesus will meet you there. He will meet you, and he'll sustain you, and he'll strengthen you for what he's placed before you.
Christ calls us beyond that darkness to fellowship with himself and then to the ultimate eternal hope that we have in him.
Grief has told me that it doesn't matter how smart you are, how well-educated, how well-equipped you are, how emotionally intelligent you are, that we all need God's amazing grace to be able to withstand the storms that lie in our way.
I'm reminded so many times that my strength is found in my weakness, and that's hard for me to accept.
It never has been the way I've expected, it would look since Rob died. But I can say that it's really beautiful nonetheless. And I think even that is the work of Jesus in my life to be able to look at what lies before me now and not see lack but see abundance.
Even as grief walks beside you, Jesus will walk every step of that way with you.
Scriptures Referenced
Romans 12:2
Resources
Beyond the Darkness: A Gentle Guide for Living with Grief and Thriving after Loss
Living with Grief and Thriving After Loss | Clarissa Moll