Faithful on the Clock is a podcast with the mission of getting your work and faith aligned. We want you to understand Who you're serving and why so you can get more joy and legacy from every minute spent on the clock. Thanks for joining us and taking this step toward a more fulfilling job and relationship with God!

Want to join us on social media?

We'd love to have you stay up-to-date with the show on all our platforms!

LinkedIn

YouTube

Substack

In this episode...

How to Handle Grief and Good Things

https://faithfulontheclock.com/how-to-handle-grief-and-good-things

In Episode 159 of Faithful on the Clock, we get real about how to handle the grief that often unexpectedly shows up when we transition into something new that’s good.

Timestamps:

[00:04] - Intro

[00:47] - Personal examples of transitions including grief

[03:23] - Examples from Scripture of transitions including grief

[06:26] - Overly focusing on the positive versus Jesus’ analogy in John 16:20-22, which links grief and childbirth

[09:48] - Tip to deal with the grief #1 — realize you aren’t alone and find empathetic people who can stay present with you

[11:07] - Tip to deal with the grief #2 — be honest about the grief contractions when they hit, rather than trying to hide them

[13:02] - Tip to deal with the grief #3 — come up with pre-decided coping strategies so you don’t handle your overwhelm with negative options

[14:39] - Closing thoughts — God’s love is bigging than the grief, and the presence of grief is not necessarily evidence you’ve made the wrong decision

[16:21] - Prayer

[16:53] - Outro/What’s coming up next

Key takeaways:

• Good career changes can bring real grief.
• Even positive transitions like promotions, retirement, or a new job often involve loss.
• The Bible is full of people who left good things to follow God.
• Moses, Joseph, Ruth, the disciples, and others all experienced loss alongside calling.
• God doesn't ask us to deny grief — He asks us not to stay there.
• Jesus’ analogy of childbirth shows that grief is only temporary and part of the process that leads to new joy. Feel the pain, but don't let it keep you from your next assignment.
• Don't go through the transition alone.
• Let trusted people walk beside you instead of isolating yourself.
• Expect grief to come in waves, and have a plan for difficult moments.
• When grief resurfaces, acknowledge it instead of pretending you're fine. Healthy coping strategies help you process grief without making harmful decisions.
• God's love is bigger than your grief.
• His presence sustains you until the joy on the other side arrives.
• Grief is not proof you’re moving in the wrong direction or made a bad decision.
• Leaving behind people, routines, or identity is a normal part of growth, and faithful obedience often includes loss before restoration and renewed joy.

CTAs:

• Share this episode with someone who's navigating a career change, retirement, promotion, or major life transition.
• Reflect this week: What good thing are you grieving, and how can you intentionally bring that grief to God instead of hiding it?

What’s coming up next:

Customer service is one of the most frustrating areas of business for both employees and buyers. In Episode 160 of Faithful on the Clock, Tom Vander Well shows it can be done with a biblical foundation.

Support the show!

Visit the Faithful on the Clock support page to choose a tier plan and become a supporting member. You'll gain access to goodies like early episode access, newsletters, and more based on the plan that's right for you. We also offer an option for a one-off tip or donation, too!

Support Faithful on the Clock

Visit our sister site! Faithfulonthclock.com features additional free, free-with-registration, and paid access content to grow your faith, including

• social media archives,
• previously published faith-based articles,
• original blogs,
• inspirational videos,
• episode teasers and replays
• exclusive faith-based essays and articles,
• exclusive videos
• exclusive audio
• exclusive in-depth devotionals.

Share the show! Like these episodes? Share them on social media, in texts or emails, or in person.

Hi, listeners! It’s me, your host, Wanda Thibodeaux, and you’re tuned in to Faithful on the Clock, the podcast for Christian professionals where all the calculators calculate to get your faith and work aligned. Today, we’re talking about moving on to good things — the retirement, the promotions, maybe a new job or finishing a long project. How do you feel through all of that? There’s probably a lot of excitement and happiness around those things. But if you also feel grief, you’re not alone. In this episode, we’ll look at how to deal with the grief that often unexpectedly shows up when good things happen in your career. Here we go.

If you follow me closely, then you know that for most of my early life, I prepared to be a music teacher. Did all kinds of band and choir stuff through school, and then when I went to college, I entered the music education program. Midway through that, I switched from education and ended up getting dual degrees in oboe and vocal performance. But all of the study for like a decade was around music, and I thought that was where my career was gonna be.

Ultimately, though, when I married my husband and we had our kids pretty soon after, I pivoted from music to writing, because, you know, with two little babies, I needed some work I could do from home. And again, if you follow me, you know I’ve always been a writer — there’s never been a time when I didn’t do that. But the point of the story is that to pivot to the writing, I had to move away from the music. And let me tell you, that was one of the most insanely hard things I’ve ever had to do. Because you gotta understand, music is a very collective thing. You have your people who really understand it and speak that language. So, it didn’t just feel like leaving an activity, OK? It was leaving community, leaving this whole way of connecting with other people. And I dealt with that the best that I could.

But then, years later, in my writing, I was hired to do this thought leadership article for this CEO of a tech company. And we went around a little bit about what the topic for the piece might be. But eventually, what we ended up talking about was his pivot when he sold his business. And he had thought that when he sold his company, he was gonna have this great time, feel awesome. That’s totally not what happened. He was miserable. And what he said was that he just really missed his team. He missed the energy of being involved and making stuff happen. And so, he did not last long as a retiree. He got right back on the horse, started a new company, and kind of reinvented himself, did extremely well.

Now, I tell both of these stories instead of just one so that you can see that there’s a theme here. And the theme is, sometimes when you move forward, there’s a very real grief inside of that. And I want to talk about that because so often, we treat that like it doesn’t exist or isn’t a possibility. We’re just gonna pivot and feel awesome and there’s gonna be all these unicorns and rainbows all over the place. And my goal is to help you first understand that this grief is extremely normal to experience, and to give you some insights that might help you cope through it.

So, let’s just dive into the Word a little here. Scripture is absolutely filled with faithful people who are fantastic models of obedience to God. But as they obeyed, you know, they’re doing amazing, mind-blowing things we’re still talking about thousands of years later. And yet, over and over again, we see them having to leave good things to do that. Let me just give you some examples.

So, we’ve got Moses. You know, this guy, grows up around royalty in Egypt, adopted by the Pharaoh's daughter. We’d say he had it made in a lot of ways. Then, he has to leave all that when he kills an Egyptian taskmaster who’s abusing a Hebrew slave. Now, he has decades of safety and peaceful living because he left. That’s good. But you think he didn’t to himself sometimes, “Man, I miss that palace life. That was pretty amazing. I miss my friends, and you know, I could so go for some Egyptian food about now.” And then, God shows up in a burning bush. And God’s like, well, Moses, you have to leave the good life you’ve built here tending flocks. All of that, drop it.” So, Moses going back to Egypt to free the Israelites, of course that was a deeply meaningful calling. But I cannot imagine that he went that entire time and never was like, “This matters, but wow, I miss just being responsible for the goats instead of all these people.” And if we look at the Israelites themselves, what do they do. They’re stepping into life with God, they see Him in the cloud and the fire and the parting of the sea, and yet, they’re like, “Back in Egypt, look at what we had.” And then there’s Joseph, the son of Jacob. God brings him into Egypt to save people during the famine. But to go there, he lost everything he had. Couldn’t be in his homeland, didn’t see his family for years. Ruth, same thing. Gives up everything she knows to be with her mother-in-law, Naomi. And then if we jump to Jesus’ ministry, I like to point out his earthly father, Joseph. Because we often forget that in this story that this guy has this whole expectation around Mary and what his life is gonna be. That’s what he’s preparing for when they get engaged. And then, he finds out she’s pregnant. And of course, what an honor to help care for the Son of God, right? But you know, they’ve got to move around to keep him safe, and maybe people were still questioning his whole marriage — he had to let go of a lot of standing and a lot of what he’d wanted. Then the disciples, Peter, Andrew, James, and John, we can infer they were relatively successful fisherman, had multiple boats. Matthew or Levi, he’s got money, collecting the taxes. And all Jesus’ followers, a lot of them, like Matthew, they left what they had to be around the Messiah.

Now, all of these stories are stories of leaving something that’s familiar, something that feels comfortable on some level. And a lot of the time when we have a transition, whether it’s going to a new job or maybe relocating, if we don’t feel good, we want to just focus on the good stuff that’s coming. We’ll maybe quote versus like Philippians 3:13-14 where Paul talks about forgetting the past and straining toward what’s ahead, or maybe Luke 9:62, where we’re told that nobody who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God. And we can get the idea from those verses that we’re not supposed to think about what we had at all, that we don’t have faith if we’re still grieving any of that.

Now, having been through childbirth myself, I will tell you, you reach a point where if you fight the pain, it’s worse. And you have to just let your body work through it. And birth coaches and doctors, they work with you to help you have an awareness so you don’t panic and can respond to what’s going on. You know, maybe you change position or you take your breaths or whatever.

But if we look at this from the psychology perspective, which you might have guessed I was gonna do, it’s the same thing. What the psychologists will tell you is that acknowledging the grief you have, staying aware of what’s going on and taking time to really process it, that’s actually what allows you to reach the point where your mind and heart can let it go and move forward. And so, Jesus isn’t saying, oh, just ignore the pain. Don’t think about the anguish you’re in. What he’s saying is that pain or grief is what happens in the transition. When the baby is born, when the new good thing finally comes to fruition, we move out of that pain. The grief isn’t something we have to ignore. It’s something that’s temporary that we can acknowledge and that we move through to get to the good thing. We have the guarantee and reassurance that even though that transition happens, even though we might have that pain or grief, the joy is coming.

So, if we look at those first verses in this context, the message isn’t to stuff everything down and deny everything and bury yourself in toxic positivity. It’s just that if we want to step into what God has planned for us, we can’t get stuck in the transition. We can feel the grief in it, but we can’t focus only on that grief and stay there. If we do that, we’re not focused enough on our calling and the joy that’s coming to serve well, and so we do become unfit.

But the question then is, how do you acknowledge the grief? How do you process it and work through it?

From my own experience, the first thing I would tell you is to remember that even though grief can feel really lonely, you’re not alone. And so again, if you look at Scripture, there’s case after case where God is like the midwife. And He stays with them through the whole transition and walks them through it. He doesn’t leave. But what I found helps is to find some people who can be with you through it, too. Now, ideally, these are people who can really empathize. Maybe they were at the same company and you’re going through the layoff together or something like that. Because I found what I really wanted when I was grieving, you know, it wasn’t that I wanted other people to grieve and hurt. It was just that I wanted someone who understood. They didn’t have to fix it. They didn’t have to do anything beyond just be present with me through all of these proverbial contractions. But even people who haven’t experienced the same grief, a lot of the time, they can still be there with you and love on you. But just having people to share stories with or who can keep checking on you, that has a lot of value. So, that’s the first thing, is just don’t isolate.

Secondly, anybody who’s had any kind of grief at all will tell you that grief is a little bit of an unpredictable beast. It’ll flare when you least expect it. I know when my mom passed away, even now, you know, I’ll be fine, going to get flowers for my patio, and then I’ll see the flowers she liked, and I’m just a mess. Welp, didn’t plan that, but there I am. And I’d just encourage you to again, don’t fight those flare-ups. Because that’s what we do a lot. Something triggers us, but then maybe socially we feel like it’s not appropriate or it’s not a good time to be crying, right? And then we end up in denial and pretending like we’re fine, when in reality, we’re not even close to fine. So, if you have those moments, you know, you don’t have to apologize about it. Just be honest about it. Give people some truth and say, “I’m glad to be doing x or to be here, but I’m still working through the transition. I’m gonna step away to compose myself and then I’ll be right back.”

Because here’s the thing, if you want to get super real here, OK? The minute that you hide that you’re in labor, that you’re going through that grief, that’s like going out to have your kid in the back alley. It is far less safe to pretend like that contraction didn’t just happen. It’s only when people know about the labor that they can help you out. And believe it or not, most people are not just gonna leave someone in labor to deliver the baby alone. They might be freaking out a little because they’ve never been that close to a delivery and aren’t trained, sure. They might fumble around like crazy. But most people, they’ll at least make the call, get you to the hospital, you know, whatever they’ve gotta do. So, don’t make the mistake of believing people won’t step up, because most people are not gonna run away.

The next thing I would say is make yourself a gameplan. And what I mean by that is, set yourself up ahead of time with some personal coping strategies you can use. So, for example, if I see some YouTube video come across my LinkedIn feed about this little girl just being immersed in music and I start missing how I used to perform, my plan is not to go out and impulse buy the Brandenburg concertos, OK? But maybe I say, you know what, at lunch, I’m gonna go enjoy this playlist I’ve got for 10 minutes. Or maybe I just say, I’m gonna text my husband until the feelings calm down a little. But the idea is that you identify some safe options that are gonna help you stay regulated while simultaneously acknowledging the feelings. You’re not stuffing the feelings down. You’re just saying, you know, this activity or having this cup of tea, it’ll give me a little bit of comfort and ensure that this feeling doesn’t get so intense that I can’t handle it. Because what I’ll tell you is, grief is not the problem. Going through grief without anywhere to put it is the problem. When you do not have a plan and that grief contraction hits, that’s when you’re going to be tempted to do things that maybe aren’t so healthy or that maybe God wouldn’t want you to do to make that pain go away. If you have the plan ahead of time, you pre-decide what you’re going to do, you won’t be caught off guard like that and turn to those more negative options.

So, I just want to leave you with a few closing thoughts here. The first one is that God’s love is always bigger than the grief. Lamentations 3:22-23 says that “because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed...His mercies are new every morning.” No matter how sad we are that the work we were doing is done or the team scattered or whatever it is, it’s not going to consume you.

But the key thought I want to end on is, if you're grieving something good you've left behind, it doesn't necessarily mean you made the wrong decision. Because so often we look at how bad it feels and we’re like, we’ll that must be evidence I messed up. I should have kept the old job or not moved or whatever it is. And then we start second-guessing ourselves and we backtrack and end up sabotaging our progress. But if you know the story of Job, you know that he had extraordinary grief without having made a mistake. And we also know that at the end of that grief, God restored Job beyond what he’d had before. Or if we look at Jesus when He delayed coming to Lazarus, that delay wasn’t wrong. And yet, Jesus wept. So, understand that the presence of grief is not an indictment. It’s not a reason to turn around and retreat. It is reason to be honest with God and cast your anxieties on Him so that He can be that presence you need until He gives you your joy baby, OK?

So, let’s pray.

Lord, so many of us are stepping into blessings that are truly amazing. But so often, God, you know, if we haven’t moved for a while, we go to get up and take a step and then it’s like, oh, my goodness, I’m so stiff, I miss my couch. So, just get us through that stiffness. Get us through that transition so we can freely move in your joy. In Jesus’ name, I pray.

That wraps it up for this episode, listeners. If you like what you’ve heard in today’s show, visit our support page at faithfulontheclock.com.captivate.fm/support. You’ll see tier plans with all kinds of extra goodies, and your membership or donation helps me continue to produce more great content just like this. For our next show, I’m welcoming author Tom Vander Well. He’s gonna take his decades in customer support and show us that yes, it really is possible to have this area of business NOT be torture when we build it on biblical values. I’ll see you in two weeks, and be blessed.