Vulnerable conversation with TobyMac about grief and loss.
What does it feel like to lose someone close to you? TobyMac’s son, Truett, passed away in October 2019 at 21 years old. In this video, TobyMac shares his family’s experience in this vulnerable video about dealing with grief and loss.
View this TobyMac video on and other Healing Out Loud videos in this YouTube Playlist.
To me grief comes in waves. Some days it hits you really hard and other days I can’t say it’s ever stayed off of me. But I can say that it’s given me… It hasn’t beat me up some days. Let’s put it like that.
So it comes in waves and you know. The truth is I didn’t know, grief. I just felt like everything was beautiful and perfect until the last few years. And then when we lost Truett everything changed and I met grief in the fiercest way.
Was God preparing Toby even before the loss?
I met a guy in Austin, Texas and he lost his son. And it was before I lost Truett, I actually was playing (a show in) Austin. He was a guy I had never met that said I could come play his golf course with him. When I went and played with him, he told me he lost his son.
And he told me all about a car accident. It was really interesting. He told me a few things that were like preparing me kind of. I’m not trying to overthink this thing, but you know, he told me that when you go through something hard and you have to grab onto something you can trust. And his thing was “grab onto a promise of God.” This, he told me after because he called me. He said, “You’re gonna want to grab onto a promise of God.”
And he goes, “But just make sure you grab onto something. God really promised us because when we’re in the darkest valley we might grab onto something that God never promised us at all.” He said, “You might grab onto something like ‘I shouldn’t be facing loss…’ or ‘God’s good and this shouldn’t happen to me on earth.’
But he said, that’s not promised that God. God didn’t promise us we wouldn’t face loss. He goes, “God promised us that he would never leave us or forsake us. That’s what he promised us.” So God doesn’t always take away the cold. He promises that He’ll be right there in it with us. That’s what I held onto. And I found Him there. Or He found me there.
God didn’t promise us we wouldn’t face loss. God promised us that he would never leave us or forsake us. That’s what he promised us.
TobyMac
I started to learn to laugh even in the first week, but not laugh as deeply. But I don’t know if I’ll ever laugh as deeply. I don’t know if I’ll ever smile as big. But I can smile and I can laugh.
I don’t know if it’ll ever be until eternity if it will ever be fully.
TobyMac’s son changed Toby’s view of eternity.
I don’t think I spoke about eternity before. But I never really thought about it deeply. I didn’t need to! I always trusted God, I always walked with God. It’s not a question of that, but to deeply think about it. But now I imagine the ones I love that we’ve lost there.
I always have the same kind of picture and it’s… if I don’t know if I can do this without crying, but it’s it’s, “Dad, if, if you could only see what I see right now.” And it’s not necessarily what heaven looks like. It’s how this thing all works.
If you are dealing with grief or loss, there is help and hope available here.
I’m reluctant to say some things, but how leaving this earth early isn’t necessarily a rip off. Like it’s “No, you don’t understand yet. Dad, you don’t get it. You don’t get it at all!” That’s what I see and hear.
You know, it’s, as I said, people grieve differently and I think. We’ve done a lot of things.
I think there’s a lot of beauty in counseling. I think it’s a wonderful thing. It’s a gift. If you can do it.
I also think that community is to me the most important thing. I mean to have loved ones, surround you in your darkest moment. And just love you just be with you. And then even the people that are a little more distant, the ones who have listened to my music, the way my family was prayed for, the way people loved us through social media posts.
We felt surrounded by love through, through the deepest, deepest, darkest, hardest thing we’ve ever experienced.
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And to me, that’s, that’s what the body crash should look like. So through what I’ve experienced and the grief I’ve experienced and what I’ve walked through, the raging storm, deepest valley, I just feel like I didn’t know, God stayed close in those times, but I’ve learned that he does. I really have.
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If you wrestle with anxiety, past pain, grief, addiction, broken relationships… you are not alone. The struggle is real… but so is help and healing.
