Grieving & Grateful: Giving God Your Complex Emotions | Jillian Benfield

What does it mean to live truthfully with complex emotions?  Author Jillian Benfield joins us to share how parenting two medically complex children led her to deeper honesty with God—and freedom in holding both pain and praise. This conversation challenges toxic positivity, explores biblical lament, and offers a powerful framework for living fully human through life’s hardest seasons.

Overwhelmed & Grateful releases on October 7th, 2025—order your copy today! 

Scripture and Resources:

• Psalm 13
• The Spirituality of the Psalms by Walter Brueggemann

Jillian's faves:
NRSV |  NIV | YouVersion

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Chapters

• 0:28 Introduction: When Emotions Are Complex
• 2:17 Disability & Unexpected Journeys
• 7:18 Making Space for Complex Emotions
• 10:44 Embracing the 'And'
• 14:17 What We Learn From Disabilities
• 16:19 A Spiritual Path Through Complex Emotions
• 18:25 Honesty and Gratitude in the Psalms
• 23:13 Order, Disorder, and Reorder
• 23:56 Resources and Guest Faves

Transcript

Ellen Krause: 0:04

At the Coffee and Bible Time podcast. Our goal is to help you delight in God's Word and thrive in Christian living. Each week, we talk to subject matter experts who broaden your biblical understanding, encourage you in hard times and provide life-building tips to enhance your Christian walk. We are so glad you have joined us. Welcome back to the Coffee and Bible Time podcast. I'm Ellen, your host, and I'm so grateful that you are joining us today.

Ellen Krause: 0:36

You know, life rarely goes exactly as planned. In fact, sometimes it throws us curveballs that literally shake us to the core. Health challenges, seasons of grief or unexpected detours can leave us questioning everything, and yet somehow there can still be beauty in the midst of the mess. Our guest today, jillian Benfield, knows that tension well. Our guest today, jillian Benfield, knows that tension well. Jillian is a former journalist and news anchor who holds a degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Georgia. She's also a mom writer, disability advocate and someone who's walked through some deeply unexpected circumstances. And today we're diving into what it looks like to hold pain and gratitude in tension with one another, to thank God without suppressing our grief, and to grieve while holding space from gratitude. Jillian, welcome to the Coffee and Bible Time podcast.

Jillian Benfield: 1:42

Thank you so much for having me. As I told you earlier, this is my first one, so I'm just super excited to be here. A little nervous, but I know that we're just going to chat like old friends.

Ellen Krause: 1:54

Exactly. Well, I can tell you after reading Overwhelmed and Grateful, this book just came exactly when I needed it, so I think it's going to hit a lot of people.

Jillian Benfield: 2:07

I'm so glad to hear that my goal was to write it in a way that it would apply to no matter what phase of life you're in, so thank you.

Ellen Krause: 2:14

Yes, absolutely. So we're here today to talk about this concept of and and you have the ampersand in the book and it's really the holding of multiple emotions together at the same time. So, as we dive in here, tell us a little bit about yourself and the circumstances that sparked your exploration of this topic.

Jillian Benfield: 2:40

Sure. So my first book is called the Gift of the Unexpected, and that was about my second child's Down syndrome diagnosis and how that really upended everything. It upended my world but also my worldview, my belief system, and I really had to deconstruct what I believed and reconstruct those beliefs based on disability being introduced into my life. And so I had already gone through this very upending transformative process for a couple of years alongside my son Anderson, and then, when he was not quite two years old, I had a miscarriage and then got pregnant again and we thought all was well. And then I went to a 14 week ultrasound and I told my husband not to come, because those are pretty typically, you know, there wasn't even supposed to be an ultrasound that day pretty uneventful, and this was my third child. But when I got in there they couldn't find a heartbeat again. Finally we got back to a room and this time his stomach was like almost double the size of his head and we knew something was wrong. And eventually, after week after week after week of doctor appointments, they diagnosed him with something called posterior urethral valves, which is a very serious and sometimes fatal condition. It's a blockage in the urethra and it affects kidney development and lung development, and we knew we were in for a very rocky ride with this pregnancy. And in the middle of this, at the time, my husband was military and so we were moving. So we got this diagnosis and then we were moving to Texas. Anyways, we got to San Antonio, where we were stationed, and realized we were going to have to deliver in Houston. I was going to have to live away from my other two children at a Ronald McDonald house in order to give birth to him, and then we were in the NICU and had fetal intervention surgery and all of these things. And we come to find out that he did not end up having a blockage in his urethra. He had all of these symptoms, but when they went to go ablate the valves, there were none there. And we thought we experienced and still believe we experienced this miracle.

Jillian Benfield: 4:48

And yet, even with that being said, he still had a very difficult first one to two years of life. And so that's where I was when I discovered this concept of, and I had a toddler with a disability and associated medical illnesses that were coming along with that disability at the time, and I had this infant who was very sickly. He had a nephrostomy too. He had clubbed feet. I had 18 specialists between the two boys at one point, oh my goodness, and I was drowning.

Jillian Benfield: 5:22

I mean it was just such a difficult time and yet I was grateful. I was because it could have been so much worse, right. And so I just felt this overwhelm. I felt this overwhelm of emotions because I should have just been being grateful, right, Because he could have. He could have died, he could have been way worse off, he could have had lung issues and he didn't. And yet it was still so difficult what we were going through.

Jillian Benfield: 5:46

And that's when I came across this article by another author who had lost a child and it was a baby, and her brother ended up having another baby and her therapist asked her how she was doing with that and she said well, I'm really glad the baby's healthy, but I'm also still very sad about losing my baby.

Jillian Benfield: 6:10

And the therapist responded and you're really sad, you don't have to choose. You can be really grateful that this nephew or niece, I can't remember, was born healthy and you are still allowed to be sad over your own loss. And I was sitting in my grandmother's hand-me-down recliner feeding my infant with my toddler, watching Sesame Street and we had already been to two appointments that day and I just started crying and I realized that I could be both. I could be sad over how hard my life was at that point and it was hard and I could also be grateful that the worst had not come to pass and that really started me on a journey of viewing life through an and lens, which has changed so much for me, both in times of complete turmoil, in times of rebuilding and in times like now where life is just kind of at a steady pace.

Ellen Krause: 7:16

Yes, I think there is something so freeing about that, to allow you to experience these multiple emotions at the same time and I just want to give you a little example. When I'm reading your story and at the same time, I'm experiencing my own sort of we're in a period of order where we knew things were expected, your children grow up, they get married, they move out and you become an empty nester and there is great joy in that experience of your children finding the love of their life and getting married and moving away perhaps. Yet at the same time, why am I so sad? Like I did have these very conflicting emotions, and you know understanding that it's okay to have both, like you're allowed, like one doesn't negate the other. I think it's just a step towards healing and I know you talk a little bit more about that as well.

Jillian Benfield: 8:25

I think so too. I think it is a step towards healing, because I think that we're in a culture, both on a large scale and also on a church scale as well, where we are often told to focus on the positive and, of course, you're happy for your children and their growth, and this is what's supposed to happen, and all these things are good things, and it's also sad that it's an ending and this transition that you're in and both of those things are allowed. And when we downplay the hard things, we're not being honest with God, we're not being honest with ourselves, and then what ends up happening is we're not being honest with other people too, and we end up making other people feel more alone when their sad things are happening and we just try to shine a light on the good things that are happening. They know good things are happening too, and maybe they do need somebody to help them see the light. Sometimes it's also okay for us to be honest about our dark things. I think that is healthy spiritually, mentally and physically.

Ellen Krause: 10:35

Yes, absolutely. You've really highlighted a lot of these different darkness and light. Highlighted a lot of these different darkness and light, difficult and beautiful from and to hope and trust, honesty and gratitude. There's so many of these that sort of bubbled up to the surface of the context in which you were talking about. Was there any particular example that's coming to mind in your life right now?

Jillian Benfield: 11:07

Yeah, I think now my youngest son, I have to say all of his medical issues have pretty much been resolved and he is very much living like a typical eight-year-old boy. However, my middle son, who has Down syndrome, is a lesson, a constant lesson, in living in the and, for instance, right now we're going through an advocacy struggle with the school where we want them to allow him to go on a hybrid schedule where he would receive therapy that they don't offer twice a week at an outside clinic and school the other three days a week, and we think we have the law on our side and research on our side and all of these things. And just one person at that meeting said no. And so I would say, like my and right now is I am mad, I'm being honest, I'm angry, I'm disappointed, and I am also grateful that we have the resources to keep pursuing this, that I have the kind of job with flexibility, that I know that I can make this work somehow, some way I'm going to find a way.

Jillian Benfield: 12:14

And also, just in general for him, like parenting a child with a significant disability is the hardest thing I've ever done and it is also one of my greatest gifts. That's just true, because of all the things that I have unlearned and learned and how I have transformed. Alongside parenting him, I am living in a constant state of and and I think really for all of us we probably have that to some degree, but I see it the most through parenting my son with a disability, and for that I am very grateful of children with disabilities in that our church sponsored an event.

Ellen Krause: 13:08

It was a prom event for people with disabilities and it was like even into young adults and some adults actually, and there were a couple hundred people at this event. Every disabled person had a volunteer partner who spent the evening with them at dinner and then they had dancing and at the end of that night I said to myself these parents of disabled children are. It's unbelievably incredible to be walking that life with that child into adulthood and, like you said, it's ongoing right With other children who grow and develop into adulthood. There's a different transition that takes place and I was just in awe. I was like these people are incredible, the disabled people, parents. It was just such an awesome, awesome event.

Jillian Benfield: 14:10

Yeah, I think the trick there is. There's always challenges with kids with disabilities, right, because there are societal barriers that they inevitably face and we face alongside them being their parents. And you know, there's these Instagram accounts and such that only focus on the shiny parts of disability, and then there's other Instagram accounts that only complain about being a parent with a disability, right and like. Neither of those are helpful. In my eyes, it's finding that honesty of those struggles and also's an aging parent that we're taking care of. Maybe it's becoming an empty nester, maybe it is a strained relationship with someone, maybe we've been betrayed by someone.

Jillian Benfield: 15:14

Everybody you know has something difficult in their lives, whether it's in the forefront of their lives right now, or maybe it's taking a background seat at the moment. But we all have struggles. And how do we move forward with those struggles? While not totally succumbing to the struggle, but also not ignoring the struggle and therefore ignoring our real heart and our real emotions and therefore ignoring other people's real struggles too? And I think the way we move forward in life where we can be alive to it all, is through an and lens the discussion of this topic around three phases.

Ellen Krause: 16:02

So order, disorder and reorder. Tell us a little bit about these concepts and how you came to use them.

Jillian Benfield: 16:17

Yeah. So probably the most influential book definitely the top three, for sure that I've ever read for me and my spiritual life was Walter Brueggemann's the Spirituality of the Psalms. And I read that book while we were living in Texas, while I was in the space that we talked about earlier, with a very sick infant and an also sickly toddler, as well as a four-year-old, typically developing daughter who had her own needs and everything. And so I came across this book that just gave me such permission through the Psalms that said the Psalms really teach us how to be in relationship with God. Over half of them are laments, and that was so eyeopening to me, because those aren't the Psalms that we're focused on in church or if you have a devotional there's, you don't see, you know they're not front and center. These Psalms that are lamenting and demanding justice from God and are it can be angry. And so through that book, walter Brueggemann says that we are all in a phase of either orientation, disorientation or reorientation, and I renamed that order disorder reorder for my book. And order is a place where things are just kind of humming along. I would say for most of us we spend most of our lives in a place of order. That's where we are right now, where we have struggles in our lives, but our lives have not been turned upside down. We're not in an upside down phase right now. Life is just kind of steady. That's order. Disorder is when that big, unexpected event comes into your life or maybe it is an expected event, maybe like a death of a parent or something but nobody can quite prepare for the grief that comes with even events that are expected. That's disorder. And reorder is when we are reacquainted with the goodness of God and how God has brought forth new life out of that seemingly dead situation. So that's how I structured the book.

Jillian Benfield: 18:18

It's like how can we practice this honesty that we see in the Psalms, no matter what phase of life we are in? And although the Psalms are such a radical act of honesty and often filled with lament, they're also so very full of hope and also so very full of joy and so very full of praise. Maybe not every single one, but often, like Psalm 13 is probably my favorite passage in the Bible. It starts with how long, lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? And then it ends after going through the lament it ends in, but I trust in your unfailing love that you are good to me, you know. So I think that the Psalms are such a lesson in, and they're such a lesson in being radically honest with God and also being completely alive to the goodness of God at the same time, and I think that's how we are called to live. I think we are called to be alive to it all.

Ellen Krause: 19:27

Absolutely, and sometimes we feel guilty about that, which I think that's what I love about that you're actually talking about it so that we can realize. No, we don't have to feel guilty for having this mixed set of emotions, and the Psalms are just. You know, that was a Psalm of David and he himself went through so many different trials and expressed his anger, sadness, all these different things, but in the end, like you said, he always looped back around and said but you, Lord, I will trust.

Jillian Benfield: 20:04

Right. I think the goodness of God is always somehow, some way at work, even in our darkest moments and even when we can't see it, and that's okay if we can't see it at the time. It's just knowing that somehow God is working beneath the surface in ways we cannot see, because God is the God of resurrection and will bring new life out of dead things. And if we can hold on to that in our darkest moments, knowing that God has there's no depth that he has not been to, I think that we can grieve and hold on to hope that somehow goodness will be seen, be made from this situation.

Ellen Krause: 20:47

Absolutely, and in the book you give wonderful scripture references to how Jesus himself experienced these very same things. Well, for people who are listening today, if they could take away just one thing from this conversation about overwhelmed and grateful, what would you want it to be?

Jillian Benfield: 21:09

I would say that we are meant to be full humans. We are meant to be alive to everything. If we only lean into the dark things, then we become hardened and cynical. And if we only lean into the light things, if we end up gaslighting other people and also ourselves into thinking that no life is great, then we lose our humanity, we lose our ability to connect with God in a real deep way and we lose our ability to connect with God in a real deep way and we lose our ability to connect with others. So what I would leave people with is that the and way of life is the life that we are called to live. We are supposed to acknowledge the darkness and we are supposed to also keep our eyes open to the light in and out of every single day.

Jillian Benfield: 22:04

And if we can just make that shift of maybe for me, I pray my and every morning before I start work.

Jillian Benfield: 22:11

So I tell God what is paining me, what is angering me, what is frustrating me, disappointing me, and I tell God how I am grateful for whatever it is that day. Sometimes it's connected to that first thing, like the example I gave you earlier where the advocacy thing with my son. Sometimes it's connected, and sometimes I can't find the light in that situation, and yet I can still be thankful for how the river in my backyard is sparkling that morning and seeing God in it, and so if I could leave people with anything, it's just that I think that we're supposed to hold the darkness and we're supposed to also keep our eyes open to the light, and I think if we do that, we become more honest and more grateful and the transformed people we're supposed to be. I think healing requires gratitude, and we are on a healing path that lasts our whole life, and so, if we can be honest and grateful, I think that's the path forward toward Jesus and toward a more full life.

Ellen Krause: 23:16

Absolutely. I was thinking, you know, as you were talking there, just that, how incredible it is that God put you with your son to be the advocate that he needs in that situation, and we'll be praying that it works out and we'll also be able to impact other children going forward that might be in the same circumstances. Thank you for just being willing to share those examples with us. Jillian, how can listeners find out more information about your incredible book and the work that you do?

Jillian Benfield: 23:57

Yeah, so I have a website, jillianbenfieldcom. I am on Facebook at Jillian Benfield and Instagram at Jillian Benfield blog, and my book is available for 30% off plus free shipping If you order directly from Baker books. It's actually 40% off for presale, but I don't know when this will air, and then it's also available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. So yeah, that's about it.

Ellen Krause: 24:22

Oh, wonderful, All right. Before we go, I have to ask you our favorite questions here for guests what Bible is your go-to Bible and what translation is it?

Jillian Benfield: 24:33

I would say the translation would be NSRV, also NIV, also NIV, and the Bible app. I do subscribe to YouVersion, the premium app, because I like to read the commentaries alongside scripture, especially when I'm writing, but I've found that to be for a while. I went to seminary. I'm not going to seminary anymore. I realized I couldn't add that into being a mom and a writer and everything. But it allows me to get better context and that's probably my favorite tool that I use.

Ellen Krause: 25:09

Okay, awesome. How about Bible journaling? Do you have any favorite Bible journaling supplies?

Jillian Benfield: 25:17

I don't. I think, because I write so much as it is day to day that I don't also journal, but I do start my morning. I just I heard on a podcast that people like one of the top 10 things people love to talk about is their routine. So I'm just going to tell you my morning routine and maybe you can get something out of it. So if you have a two story house, this has been a game changer for me.

Jillian Benfield: 25:41

We put like a little bar cart in our room with a coffee machine and I wake up and I go directly to the coffee machine and make myself coffee and then I get back into bed, which is delightful. It's such a nice way to start the day and I start that with my Bible reading and I kind of I don't stick, I kind of jump around at whatever I'm using, whether it's a devotional or a book of common prayer, but that's how I start my day while drinking my coffee, which is perfect for your podcast. Maybe you need to get coffee and get back into bed. I also start super early though.

Jillian Benfield: 26:20

So just for context, just because I like to work out before the kids get up and everything, so that's why I get back into bed, because it's very early when I wake up.

Ellen Krause: 26:30

Wow, I love that. That is such a fun tip. Thank you so much. Yeah, yeah, well, we appreciate you so much joining us today. It's been such a treat and just so encouraging for learning how to hold these messy, difficult feelings and circumstances honestly and faithfully before God and being grateful so to our listeners. If this conversation resonated with you, I highly recommend picking up a copy of Jillian's book Overwhelmed and Grateful and learning more about her writing and advocacy at her website. We will have all of those links in our show notes and if today's episode has encouraged you, would you please consider leaving a review and sharing it with a friend. It really helps support our work. Thanks again for being with us and we'll see you next time at the Coffee and Bible Time podcast. Thank you.