HARD CONVERSATIONS: DEATH —My Story

Ashley Lunnon

Jun 2 • Free Series

Before we move into day two I need to share something personal.

Because this series isn't just something I teach.

It's something I lived.

When I was 8 years old my mother passed away.

And I remember my aunt Judy trying to make me feel better the only way she knew how White Castle burgers.

I'll never forget what she said.

"There's no time to cry. Just eat."

And that was it.

No conversation about where my mother went. No language for what I was feeling. No God in the room to make sense of any of it.

I remember cursing God. I was 8 years old and I looked up and said if you were a good God why would you take my mother away?

Nobody answered that question for me.

It wasn't until I got older that I learned my mother had been dealing with hypothyroidism. That she had been sick. That this was a conversation our family should have been having while she was still living so that when she was gone we had something to hold onto.

We didn't have that conversation.

And I carried the weight of that silence for years.

Fast forward to when my grandmother passed she was very present in my children's lives. And I refused to let them experience what I experienced.

So I wrote them a book.

It's called Grandma's Coming Home.

It's based on our Christmas tradition, every year we would go to Maryland to her house to decorate and celebrate. But that Christmas she wasn't there. They looked everywhere for her. She was just.. gone.

In the book my children drift off to sleep and have a beautiful encounter with grandma in heaven. She tells them she's okay. Her legs are working. Everything she ever poured into them is still there. And she's just moved to a different home.

It's a book we can always come back to when we need it.

I'm sharing it here today because somebody in this community needs it. Maybe for your children. Maybe for yourself.

This is why we have hard conversations BEFORE the crisis hits.

So our children have something to hold onto when the unthinkable happens.

Not White Castle burgers and silence.

But truth. And hope. And God in the room.

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HARD CONVERSATIONS: DEATH —My Story