Emily Parker spoke with Alain Emerson about the loss of his first wife, how to process grief, and why he wrote Luminous Dark.

If we don't transform our pain, we will carry hardness in our heart, or numbness, or cynicism. So for that reason alone, it's important, but more intricately connected to my faith is the fact that at the heart of the gospel is a God who suffered our pain, who embodied our pain, our sin, and all the results of sin in His own body, but He overcame it and rose. So because of what He has done, and being the pioneer of our salvation through suffering, therefore there's a redemptive element to our suffering. Not only do I get whole, but what I touch of God's love in that particular time of suffering, can overflow for the benefit of others. It was discovering that, not in some theoretical way, but in a very real and felt way, that I became quite passionate about helping other people process their pain.

Even at a human level, we watch things on TV where people have suffered, and often the heroes that we look to, no matter how deeply our faith is entwined in their lives, we look at those people who have suffered and come back from it and allow their suffering to be used for the benefit and the comfort of others.

Emily: With where you are now, and being involved with 24/7 Prayer, looking back, as you say, grief goes through different stages; you'll never forget Lindsay, she's still a part of you. What does it look like now, looking back on that time, life having moved on?

Alain: What I talk about in the first part of the book is expressing my disappointment to God. I felt like I'd honoured God; I'd done what He wanted me to do in life, for the most part. I'd wanted to serve Him and Lindsay and I together wanted to serve Him, so it felt like His part of the bargain, if you like, He'd let me down. I felt for those first number of months disappointed, short changed, like I'd been given a raw deal; all of those things.

Then I started to realise, as I properly lamented, and properly talked this thing through with God, and brought my disappointment right up before His face, and even at times maybe even shook my fists in His face, but my strong desire would be that all of that is prayer. Prayer is not the nice, neat, tidy kind of articulated language that we use to impress other people, or to impress God. Prayer is the cry of our heart. As I did that and processed my pain by being brutally honest with God about where I was, it was like a slow epiphany started to happen in my mind, where I realised that while I had told God He could have my life and do with it what He wanted, and while I thought that meant a lot of the things we would normally think of, like teaching, or preaching, or leading a church, maybe for Him it was being allowed to love a girl who was going to die when she was 23, and to be the man who was allowed to love her and complete her and help her die, essentially, knowing she was loved. I started to realise that there was a mysterious kind of grace all wrapped up in that.

I started looking back on Lindsay's death and my process of pain, and it's one of those ones where I look up at heaven and shrug my shoulders and say to God, "I wouldn't have done it this way, but you know what, it's ok. If you want me to be the person who got to be involved with Lindsay like that, I think I would do that again." It was a privilege to be chosen, if you like, for such a task. I could never have comprehended that when Lindsay first died, but just being true to my pain and being true to the darkness and staring that darkness in the eye, rather than trying to get away from it, or just push it away somewhere, and allowing that to be transformed, being honest with that, and leaning towards the pain in a way that was going to be honest and true to it, I felt like it started to change my perspective on my circumstances, to the point where I actually saw glimpses of grace, that I could never have seen at the time.

Yes, of course, I carry beautiful, rich memories of Lindsay. In another way I feel incredibly whole from the whole experience, and it's only the grace of God that could have brought me to that place

Emily: When you went on to meet Rachel, how did you find sharing what you'd walked through with Lindsay and being able to be real and honest with her about your previous marriage?

Alain: I suppose I lost my confidence in a way. I was 27 years old, I was a widower, I was feeling like I'd got plenty of baggage and nobody else might want to really have to pick that up. But when I met Rachel she had known my story without really knowing me before. Northern Ireland, it's not the biggest place in the world. She had actually been involved in some prayer groups that had been praying for me at that time.

The first time we met we just started to have a conversation. To be honest, she was amazing. She had a perfect balance of being sympathetic and empathetic to me, but at the same time being her own person, and calling me forth into something beyond where I'd been. While it was a unique set of circumstances in one way, again I can only testify to God's grace in that process. It felt like falling in love with Rachel was kind of oiled with God's grace.

They were conversations that we had to have, because we tried to be mature and own our own insecurities within all of that. We managed to make it through and we are very much in love and grateful to God for one another, and the gift in this season of life. And I suppose realising that Lindsay was a chapter of my life that was full and rich and deeper than I could ever have imagined, and very much forms the narrative of what my life continues to be. This is another chapter and it's a great chapter and it's as good as I ever thought it could be, which was the furthest thing away from what I thought when Lindsay died. It's made me realise that the rest of my life didn't have to be second best. It's as good as I ever imagined it could be.

Emily: If anybody has experienced the loss of a friend or family member, what advice would you give to them as they walk through that grief journey?

Alain: First and foremost I think I would be encouraging them to be honest. Pain isn't necessarily the enemy. Sickness and death, theologically, is the enemy, but the pain that we experience in the grief and the trials of life isn't necessarily. Pain is just pain and it needs to be expressed; it needs to have a voice, if you like, in the appropriate context to let it out, to be true to it. To validate the pain that you're feeling in your heart sometimes just speaking it out to a trusted friend, or to a counsellor, or to someone like that, is really important.

Practically, journeying, and pilgrimaging a little bit. I walked and visited people and tried to keep on the move. It felt like almost in that physical action, it began the process of walking through something. For me it felt like a dark tunnel was in front of me, and if I was going to believe there was any light at the other end, I knew I probably had to enter into the dark as part of it first. So that analogy of 'walking', which I talk quite a bit about in the book, of leaning towards the pain even though it feels incredibly scary, allowed me to see the first shards of light.