Consider this tension: Pastors are not medical professionals and, therefore, should not give medical advice. This seems clear and straight-forward, BUT Pastoral silence on the issue psychotropic medications reinforces the idea they are bad for Christians to take. This...
Brad Hambrick
How to Listen
We are often poor listeners because we think of listening as merely hearing and retaining information. In a day of information overload, the significance of listening is easy to overlook. Consider this expanded definition of listening – listening is how you enter the...
Evaluation: Listening in Marriage
We often miss the power of common things. Being at a little league game doesn’t seem like a big deal until you hear a adult lament, “My father never came to any of my games.” We often only fully appreciate the significance of small things our spouse does after they...
Healthy Ways to Capture Memories
In the end, grief is about how we remember. Memory is powerful. It shapes our lives in many ways. Memory impacts our emotions. Memory shapes the significance we give to current events. Memory influences what we expect from the future. So the effort to grieve well...
Applying the Grief Seminar to Losses Not Caused by Death
Often it can be hard to recognize grief as grief, because of the absence of a death. Major losses can be caused by many other life changes than someone dying. But this difficulty goes well beyond the challenge of rightly labeling an experience. When we do not...
Memorial Ceremony for an Unborn Child
Grieving the loss of an unborn child can be particularly difficult. No one else had the privilege of knowing your baby and, therefore, many of the rituals of grief (i.e., sharing pictures or stories of how the lost loved one touched other’s lives) cannot be engaged....
Grief Evaluation
Below is an evaluation to help you see (acknowledge) how you are doing with the different challenging experiences that grief brings. At this stage in the journey, it is tempting to begin comparing your loss with others. Inevitably, we begin to think, “Others have it...
Taking the Journey of Grief with Hope
Grief is more than sadness. It is losing someone or something that was a part of you and then trying to answer, "Who am I now?" If we love, we will grieve. If we want to love one-another well, we must know how to offer care during times of grief. The goal of this...
Overcoming Anger Video 5
Below is a video from the “Overcoming Anger” seminar presented by Brad Hambrick through a cooperation between Bridgehaven Counseling Associates and the EQUIP series at The Summit Church (Durham, NC). NOTE: Many people have asked how they can get a copy of the seminar...