When a group of church members began a GriefShare ministry at First Baptist Church Foley in 2023, they didn’t imagine the strong bond that would form with a rehabilitation center just two blocks from campus. But God did.
“I never knew how I could establish such a bond with people that I never laid eyes on before and how much we could love each other in Christ like I do with these girls,” Debra Cross said.
About a dozen women from Coastal Rehabilitation Women’s Center, part of 7 Springs Ministries, meet each week at First Baptist to learn to let God handle their grief. One of them copes with the fact that her sister killed her mother.
“When I came into this program, I was very broken, very lost, suffered from tragedy, and the First Baptist Church of Foley, GriefShare, reached out to Coastal,” Mary said. “I started going to this GriefShare program, and throughout my journey, I have found hope for my future.
“I’ve learned to deal and cope with my grief and the loss of my mom. It’s a great program, and I recommend it to anyone.”
GriefShare is a national ministry hosted by local churches, using a 13-week Bible-based curriculum in small group settings.
Gene Mitchell, who as a hurting widower was reluctant to attend the first GriefShare meeting at First Baptist, now leads the ministry. He recently asked attendees to choose one word to describe their current state. Some said “confused.”
“Before Mary could even speak, I looked straight at her and said, ‘I don’t know what your answer would be, but here’s what I see on your face right now: I see hope for the first time,’” Mitchell recounted. “Her smile will melt you. She has hope now. It’s because of Coastal, it’s because of GriefShare, but mostly it’s because of her relationship with the Lord, who is helping her heal.”
‘Hurts and hangups’
Rachelle Whiddon, house manager at Coastal, said women at the center “have a lot of hurts and hangups that they’re dealing with, and a lot of that is grief from someone they know that died from overdose.”
“They need something other than what sometimes we can provide, so having GriefShare has just been so amazing,” Whiddon said. “I can see the light after they finish that class and the hope of being able to maintain sobriety and also have that close connection with the Lord to overcome grief.
“What we do as recovering addicts sometimes is we don’t know how to deal with grief other than turn to drugs,” Whiddon explained. “So GriefShare has given them the tools to keep from having to go back out there and do that, and how to lean on the Lord for understanding the grief.”
Safe space
Tasha Moseley, Coastal’s program coordinator, said many of the women who arrive at the center are “what we call chronic relapsers, and a lot of that has to do with them not knowing how to deal with grief that they’ve been suppressing with substances.”
“So going to a safe space with people that can teach them how to lean on the Lord and how to deal with that grief … it’s very beneficial to them in maintaining their sobriety and learning how to deal with issues,” Moseley said.
Mitchell added he has never seen a group in a church “love on each other as much as they love on each other.”
“It’s good to see the progress that they make, and not just progress at the house but most importantly progress in their relationships with each other and with the Lord.”
First Baptist now has hosted six rounds of GriefShare, and Debra Cross is impressed by the way the church has embraced the ministry.
“My Sunday School class in particular will donate money toward a fund so that the girls from the house do not have to pay for the books,” Cross, a facilitator, noted. “We pay for them, and we also pay for the journals so that when they leave they have their own book and they have their own journal.”
Other Sunday School classes provided food in December when GriefShare had an event called Surviving the Holidays.
Facilitators share their grief stories alongside women from the rehabilitation center.
“We find out that we have a lot of things in common, like losing babies,” Cross said. “I can relate to that. It helps me, and I think it helps them, too.”
The church could not have planned for a ministry to go this well if they tried, she added, recalling the first class she and Mitchell attended.
“We were not anything but just people grieving, and we had seven girls from Coastal that were there grieving as well, and we just formed this bond.”
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