"He's the perfect image of grief, in the sense of accepting, embracing, expressing the emotional sadness, and also having full trust and hope in the resurrection." ~ Pat Millea

Why do grief "stages" set people up to feel like they're doing it wrong?

Is it okay to be angry with God after a loss?

What does Jesus losing himself in grief at Lazarus's tomb teach us about grieving well?

In this episode of This Whole Life, Pat and Kenna Millea talk about what it means to grieve and how to grieve well. They start by naming grief for what it actually is: both an emotional and physical response to loss, whether that loss is big or small, sudden or anticipated, a person, a relationship, or a season of life.

Kenna pushes back on the popular idea of fixed "stages" of grief, offering instead what she calls states of grief, not a staircase that only moves one direction, but a spiral staircase that circles back around. Pat and Kenna also open up about their own experiences of loss, including Kenna's reflections on A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis and what it taught her about grieving with faith instead of around it.

The conversation turns honest about anger, including anger at God, and why that anger and real hope in the resurrection are not mutually exclusive. Pat points to Jesus weeping at the tomb of Lazarus, even knowing he was about to raise him from the dead, as the model for what it looks like to hold both grief and hope at the same time.

This episode is for anyone who has grieved a person, a relationship, or a season of life, and wondered if they were doing it right.

Chapters:

• (00:00) - Cold Open: "And Jesus Wept"
• (00:30) - Welcome & Today's Topic: Grief
• (02:25) - Highs and Hards
• (09:33) - What Grief Actually Is (And Why It Isn't Linear)
• (18:58) - C.S. Lewis, "A Grief Observed," and Kenna's Own Story
• (34:23) - The Spiral Staircase: States, Not Stages, of Grief
• (44:19) - Is It Okay to Be Angry With God?
• (52:22) - Challenge by Choice & Closing Prayer

Links and Resources:

• A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis
• John 11 (Jesus weeps at the tomb of Lazarus)
• Romans 8:28

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Music: "You're Not Alone" by Marie Miller. Used with permission.

Sometimes God sends angels to save your life. And to let you watch the Super Bowl.

Manny Huerta is back for another Storytellers!

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Music: "You're Not Alone" by Marie Miller. Used with permission.

"When you throw in the idea of self-care, that makes a lot of Christian people cringe and run away, because what it sounds like is self-interest, self-indulgence, and pride." ~ Pat Millea

• Is wanting rest actually a form of pride, or is refusing rest the real problem?
• What does the prophet Elijah, collapsed under a tree and praying for death, have to teach us about rest and mission?
• Where's the actual line between self-care and self-indulgence?

In this episode of This Whole Life, Pat and Kenna Millea tackle a topic that makes a lot of faithful Christians uneasy: self-care. They name the tension head-on, if love means seeking the good of the other, why would seeking your own good ever be justified? From there they work through the common cultural misuses of self-care before proposing a clearly Catholic definition: self-care is seeking out the renewal, recreation, and refreshment we need in order to return to our duties with greater love, freedom, and generosity, not an end in itself.

Pat brings two scriptural examples to ground the conversation, including a deep dive into 1 Kings 19, where the prophet Elijah, exhausted and afraid after his showdown with the prophets of Baal, flees into the wilderness and prays for death. God's response isn't a rebuke. It's food, rest, and eventually a face-to-face encounter that sends him back to his mission renewed. Pat and Kenna use that story to draw out the real dividing line between self-indulgence and the kind of self-care that actually serves love.

This episode is for anyone who has ever felt guilty for needing rest, or wondered if taking care of themselves is somehow in conflict with taking care of everyone else.

Episode 110 Show Notes

Chapters:

• (00:00) - Cold Open
• (00:29) - Welcome, Where in the World, and a Movie Trivia Game
• (22:17) - Naming the Tension: Does Self-Care Sound Like Pride?
• (28:16) - A Catholic Definition of Self-Care
• (34:27) - Elijah in the Wilderness: 1 Kings 19
• (39:52) - Self-Care as Return to Mission
• (54:59) - Challenge by Choice and Closing Prayer

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Music: "You're Not Alone" by Marie Miller. Used with permission.

When you took your college visit, did you know what that college was located?

Pat & Kenna take a look back in this Storytellers!

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Music: "You're Not Alone" by Marie Miller. Used with permission.

"There is always, always hope in any marriage, and I mean any marriage." ~ Pat Millea

• Is it actually okay for a Catholic couple, even ones who work in mental health, to go to marriage counseling?
• Why might your spouse asking to talk about feelings not be a criticism of who you are?
• Does having a sacramental marriage, or being married to a therapist, guarantee a happy relationship?

In episode 109 of This Whole Life, Pat Millea flies solo (Kenna's swamped with back to school season) to share seven honest lessons he's learned from being married to a licensed marriage and family therapist. He opens by naming the assumption listeners might be making, that their marriage is easy because of what they do for a living, and admits there were genuinely difficult years in their relationship, including the moment Kenna first asked him to go to marriage counseling, which felt to him like being punched in the face.

From there, Pat walks through what he's learned since: that going to therapy is not a sign of failure, how naming an unspoken parent-child dynamic in their marriage changed how they related to each other, why learning to identify and voice his own emotions took years of practice, and how a simple, almost corny script helped them break out of a painful conflict cycle they'd repeated for years.

He closes with two of the most important lessons: that neither the sacrament of marriage nor a degree in therapy automatically produces a great relationship, since every marriage takes real, ongoing work, and that no marriage, no matter how far gone it feels, is beyond hope.

This episode is for anyone who has ever assumed marriage should get easier once you know what you're doing, or anyone quietly wondering if going to counseling means something is wrong with them.

Chapters:

• (00:00) - Cold Open
• (00:29) - Welcome, High and Hard, and Their Marriage Timeline
• (12:06) - Lesson 1: It Is Okay to Go to Therapy
• (15:11) - Lesson 2: Naming the Parent-Child Dynamic
• (21:52) - Lesson 3: Learning Emotional Attunement and the Feelings Wheel
• (26:49) - Lesson 4: Sidestepping the Dance Before It Starts
• (32:02) - Lesson 5: Sacraments and Therapy Are Not Magic Tricks
• (35:03) - Lessons 6 and 7, Challenge by Choice, and Closing Prayer

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Music: "You're Not Alone" by Marie Miller. Used with permission.

"I need you to have this baby literally anywhere else." 😂

Storytellers is back with a story that Kenna remembers the details of far better than Pat does.

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Music: "You're Not Alone" by Marie Miller. Used with permission.

"Getting help and offering it up are not mutually exclusive." ~ Pat Millea

• Does "offering it up" mean you're not allowed to also go to the doctor, take medication, or see a therapist?
• Is it possible to chase suffering in a way that's actually about proving something to yourself instead of uniting yourself to Christ?
• Where's the line between the grit that gets you through a hard season and the grit that's quietly eroding you?

In episode 108 of This Whole Life, Pat and Kenna Millea take on a phrase most Catholics have heard their whole lives but rarely stop to unpack: offering it up. Rather than presenting a tidy answer, they treat this episode as a genuine exploration, working through scripture, papal writing, and their own uncertainty to figure out what this phrase actually means and where it can go wrong.

They start with Colossians 1:24 and the concept of redemptive suffering, the idea that our suffering, when united to Christ's, takes on a meaning it wouldn't have on its own. From there they turn to Pope John Paul II's Salvifici Doloris and Pope Benedict XVI's Spe Salvi to wrestle with a harder question: is it ever unholy to try to reduce your own suffering, or is chasing pain itself, without love, its own kind of distortion?

The conversation gets especially honest around the danger of over-suffering, the belief that if you're not in constant discomfort you're somehow failing spiritually, and the very real ways this thinking can keep people stuck in bad jobs, unhealthy relationships, or situations they have every reason to leave. They land on a distinction they return to throughout the episode: getting help and offering it up are not mutually exclusive.

This episode is for anyone who has felt guilty for wanting relief, or anyone who has used the phrase "offer it up" without fully knowing what they meant by it.

Chapters:

• (00:31) - Welcome, Summer Confessions Game, and Highs and Hards
• (22:31) - Defining Offering It Up: Redemptive Suffering and Colossians 1:24
• (31:19) - Salvifici Doloris: Does Suffering Have to Be Sought to Be Redemptive?
• (35:23) - Is Suffering Automatically Holy? The Line Between Grit and Denial
• (46:04) - The Danger of Over-Suffering and When It Becomes Unhealthy
• (50:30) - Getting Help and Offering It Up Are Not Mutually Exclusive
• (1:02:03) - Challenge by Choice and Closing Prayer

Links and Resources:

• Salvifici Doloris, Pope John Paul II - https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters/1984/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_11021984_salvifici-doloris.html
• Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict XVI - https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi.html

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Music: "You're Not Alone" by Marie Miller. Used with permission.

In a moment of conversion, what else is there to say?

Chase Crouse joins This Whole Life again to tell the defining story of his faith.

Support the show

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Music: "You're Not Alone" by Marie Miller. Used with permission.