Lament + Light

Paris Byrum | Between Grief + Glory
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There is a place most of us were never taught to stay in. Between the grief and the glory. This podcast is for the Christian who is still believing, still showing up, still carrying more than anyone around them knows. Host Paris Byrum — spiritual mentor, trauma-informed soul guide, and founder of Between Grief & Glory — creates space to slow down, tell the truth, and walk with God through the places that don't resolve quickly. Healing is not meant to be rushed. And you were never meant to walk this alone. www.betweengriefandglory.com

  1. Aug 31

    Episode 26 | Sown in Tears

    Episode 20 | Sown in Tears Summer of Sorrows, Episode 12 of 12 series | Season Finale of Lament + Light Some of what shattered in your life, you shattered. And some of it arrived pre-shattered, and you have been paying for it anyway. In the final episode of Summer of Sorrows, Paris closes the season with Psalm 30, the arc of a man who spent decades hiding from his own name, and the most personal thing she has said on this podcast. Aragorn was not afraid he would fail. He was afraid he would turn out to be the man he came from. So he went by another name and carried a broken sword he would not have reforged, because a broken sword cannot fail you at the crucial moment. What eventually moved him was not an argument. It was Elrond, who had watched him for decades and was willing to say what he had seen. It was Arwen, who staked her whole existence on her assessment of him. And then it was a mountain full of oath-breakers that he walked into on purpose, because the only way through an inherited fear is directly into the shape of it, and never alone. This episode names something the series has not named until now: the difference between the sorrow you caused and the sorrow that was handed to you, and what happens to a woman when the church gives her a repentance framework for a wound. Paris also shares, for the first time publicly, the shape of her own story. Not the scenes. The shape. Including where she actually is now, which is not healed, and not pretending to be. The episode closes with the lyrics of "You Turned My Mourning," a song built on Psalm 30, written by Paris with Caleb Morales and her daughter Amariah, read aloud for the first time. IN THIS EPISODE: Why Aragorn kept the sword broken, and what that has to do with the way you talk about your family The difference between inherited damage and inherited guilt, and why Ezekiel is more freeing than most of us have been told What Psalm 30 refuses to say about the night Why "what is your part in this" is the wrong first question for a wound Witness before formation: Elrond, Arwen, and the Paths of the Dead Aragorn crowned and Frodo unable to stay, in the same book, twenty pages apart Where Paris actually is, five years on SCRIPTURE: Psalm 30 (NASB95) Ezekiel 18 (referenced) "You Turned My Mourning" (Inspired by Psalm 30) Paris Byrum, original poem and lyrics, cadence and rhythm Caleb Morales, chorus and bridge lyrics, music composition Amariah Byrum (12), foundational musical composition Not yet released. Coming in the new season. RESOURCES MENTIONED Books referenced in this episode:The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (one-volume edition) The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien (for the fuller history of Isildur and the Ring) The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter (for Tolkien on allegory, faith, and his experience in the First World War) Tolkien: A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter Referenced across the Summer of Sorrows series: Landscapes of the Soul (attachment and formation) The Cry of the Soul by Dan Allender and Tremper Longman III A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis (Episode 8) WHERE TO GO NEXT The podcast is on break for four months. Refuge is not. Refuge is the membership where this work continues year-round. It is built for women who are doing this in the middle of ministry, leadership, and everyone else's needs, and who need somewhere that is not another thing to perform for. Join Refuge Free workbook: What Are You Really Feeling Spiritual direction with Paris If anything in this episode surfaced something heavy, please reach out to a licensed professional or a trusted person in your life. This podcast is companionship, not treatment, and the two are not interchangeable.

  2. Aug 24

    25. When Suffering Doesn't Let

    Join Paris live for Seen in the Wilderness, August 27–28 at 3pm PST.  The Song: God Moves in Mysterious Ways Some suffering does not have a clean ending. In this episode, Paris sits with William Cowper, who wrote one of the most beloved hymns in the English language from inside a breakdown, and with Hannah Coulter, whose faithfulness accumulated quietly across an entire lifetime of ordinary loss. Together, their stories refuse two common lies about suffering: that God simply ordains it and expects silent endurance, or that enough faith will always pray it away. Paris walks through Romans 8 and Second Corinthians 4 to offer a truer, more durable frame, and reflects on why Between Grief & Glory exists in the first place. In this episode: • The two lies most Christians are taught about long-term suffering • William Cowper and John Newton's friendship through decades of depression • Hannah Coulter and the faithfulness of staying through accumulated, ordinary loss • Romans 8:18–29 and Second Corinthians 4:16–18, held together honestly • Why self-compassion and receiving empathy from others is not a failure of faith • The invisible shape this whole summer series has followed, named for the first time On empathy by Bill & Kristi  Deeply Loved: Receiving and Reflecting God's Great Empathy for You

    25. When Suffering Doesn't Let

  3. Aug 17

    24. The Curse Spoken Over You

    Register for Seen in the Wilderness At the beginning of the Sleeping Beauty story, a curse is spoken over a child who is days old. She cannot consent. She cannot refuse. And she grows up inside the shape of a sentence she never heard. This week we sit with what was spoken over you before you had language to refuse it, and with the vow you made underneath it in order to survive. That vow was not sin. It was arithmetic done in the dark by a child who got it right for the room she was in. But you are not in that room anymore, and the vow does not know that. Paris shares the first decade of her mothering, the fear-based control she carried out of a childhood war zone, and what it cost the people she loved most. Psalm 42, Julian of Norwich writing from a sickbed she expected to die in, and the woman who cursed a girl she had never met. In this episode: ​Psalm 42 and what "deep calls to deep" actually means when you read it inside the stanza about drowning​Why the vow you made as a child was survival and not sin, and why it still has to be named​The first decade of Paris's mothering, and why there is no single incident to point to​More is caught than taught: what your children learn from your grip rather than your words​The woman who cursed the girl, and the difference between having a wound and staying at war​A word for listeners who come from traditions that dismiss the spiritual dimension, and for those who assign everything to it​Julian of Norwich, thirty years old and dying, holding the reality of suffering and the goodness of God in the same two hands​Teshuvah: what repentance actually means in Hebrew, and why "return" is not the same word as "grovel"​The Father who runs before anything has been fixedScripture referenced (NASB95): Psalm 42:1, 3, 7, 11 | Proverbs 18:21 | Ephesians 6:4, 6:12 | Colossians 3:21 | Hosea 14:2 | Luke 15:11-32 Companions this week: Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love The Sleeping Beauty tradition, and its retellings What was spoken over you that you have been living as though it were true? Not what was done to you. What was said. Write it down in the words it was actually said in, not the cleaned-up version. Then, if you can, write down what you decided to do about it. There is always a decision underneath. Something in you answered that sentence, and the answer is probably still running.

    24. The Curse Spoken Over You

  4. Aug 10

    23. The Retreat Felt Like Punishment

    Seen in the Wilderness Registration: Free to Join, Click here There is a version of tired that sleep does not fix. In this episode we sit with why rest can feel like punishment before it ever feels like rest, and why leaving what is familiar, even when it is harmful, is so much harder than it looks from the outside. We meet four women in a rented Italian castle who never went looking for healing, a hymn writer who wrote about safety from inside two losses that never resolved, and a night on an empty apartment floor where breathing became possible again. This is an episode about shelter that does not require the wound to close first. SCRIPTURE “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the LORD, ‘My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.’” (Psalm 91:1-2, NASB95) “He will cover you with His pinions, and under His wings you may seek refuge; His faithfulness is a shield and bulwark.” (Psalm 91:4, NASB95) IN THIS EPISODE ​  Why slowing down can feel dangerous, and what usually surfaces when it does​  The difference between a nervous system reading unfamiliar as dangerous and a place actually being unsafe​  When a therapist, spiritual director, or retreat becomes a bridge rather than a fix​  Lotty, Rose, Mrs. Fisher, and Lady Caroline, and what each woman's exhaustion was telling her​  Fanny Crosby, her father, her daughter, and the hymn born out of an emptied pair of arms​  A retreat that felt like punishment, three failed moves, and the night the breath came back REFERENCES Suffering Saint Fanny Crosby (1820 to 1915). Blinded at six weeks old. Fatherless before her first birthday. Lost her only child in infancy. Wrote thousands of hymns, including Blessed Assurance and Safe in the Arms of Jesus. Literary Companion The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim, published 1922. Four Englishwomen rent a medieval castle on the Italian coast for the month of April. FOR YOUR REFLECTION What do you need around you to feel safe enough to let something heal? If your exhaustion could speak plainly, what do you think it would say it is actually about? GO DEEPER What Are You Really Feeling? A free guided workbook for naming what is underneath. betweengriefandglory.com/What-Are-You-Really-Feeling Storyline: Seen, Known & Restored. A nine week group experience for women. betweengriefandglory.com/storyline Spiritual direction with Paris. betweengriefandglory.com/offers/WARKxCMy/checkout NEXT WEEK Episode 18: The Curse Spoken Over You. Psalm 42, Julian of Norwich, and the words spoken over your life before you had language to refuse them.

    23. The Retreat Felt Like Punishment

  5. Aug 3

    22. They Quoted Psalm 42 at Me to Make Me Stop Crying

    Register for Seen in the Wilderness Aug 27-28 Someone once stopped me at the door of my church to ask why I still had tears in my eyes after fifteen years, and quoted Psalm 42 at me to make them stop. This episode is about the face you have learned to hide, why hiding was intelligent rather than faithless, and what Psalm 103 says about a God who is never flustered by a sorrow that lasts longer than other people's patience. IN THIS EPISODE ​  Why a psalm about unresolved weeping gets used to stop people from weeping​  The difference between hiding that grows from within and hiding you were taught​  What Till We Have Faces actually says about being seen​  The part of Corrie ten Boom's story almost nobody tells​  Psalm 103 and a God who is slow to anger and knows our frame​  Why the church can hold a crisis but struggles to hold long suffering​  How to tell a safe person from an unsafe one, and why this takes wisdom​  Why forgiveness and reconciliation are not the same thingREFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE ​  Psalm 42 and Psalm 103, NASB95​  Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis​  We Wear the Mask by Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1895​  The life and later writing of Corrie ten Boom​  Episode 13, Count It All Joy Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means​  Episode 12, The Vow You Made to Survive What is the complaint you have not been able to bring to God, and who in your life has actually earned the right to hear it?

    22. They Quoted Psalm 42 at Me to Make Me Stop Crying

  6. Jul 27

    21. Your bones already told God what your mouth wouldn't

    Your body has been keeping a record your words have not found yet. This week we sit with Psalm 6, where David's prayer begins not in his thoughts but in his bones, and we follow the way grief moves through the body in very different people. Jane Eyre, whose body spoke the moment she was harmed while her words took years to catch up. Ivan Ilyich, whose body forced into the open everything his polished life was built to avoid. And the diary of missionary David Brainerd, whose failing body and spiritual darkness lived in the very same sentence. Along the way we ask the harder question: what actually meets a body that has finally told the truth. The answer Scripture and story keep landing on is not fixing. It is witness. We close with the hymn writer Anne Steele, who brought a body well acquainted with grief to the throne of grace and was received there, exactly as she was. SCRIPTURE REFERENCES (NASB95) “Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am pining away; heal me, O LORD, for my bones are dismayed.” (Psalm 6:2, NASB95) “And my soul is greatly dismayed; but You, O LORD, how long?” (Psalm 6:3, NASB95) “I am weary with my sighing; every night I make my bed swim, I dissolve my couch with my tears.” (Psalm 6:6, NASB95) “The LORD has heard my supplication, the LORD receives my prayer.” (Psalm 6:9, NASB95) BOOKS & RESOURCES MENTIONED The Diary and Journal of David Brainerd Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy Hymn: “Father, whate'er of earthly bliss” by Anne Steele GO DEEPER If this episode named something you have been carrying without words, the free workbook What Are You Really Feeling? is a place to begin putting language to it. Free workbook: betweengriefandglory.com/What-Are-You-Really-Feeling CONNECT Website: betweengriefandglory.com

    21. Your bones already told God what your mouth wouldn't

  7. Jul 20

    20. My Times Are in Your Hands

    Episode Summary David wrote Psalm 31 from inside a crisis that had not resolved, and he anchors his trust not to a change in his circumstances but to the character of God Himself. This episode follows that thread through Amy Carmichael, who spent the last twenty years of her life largely confined to her bed and wrote letters of comfort to the suffering from that room, and through Shasta's night journey in The Horse and His Boy, where he discovers that the presence he feared in the dark had been protecting him the entire way. Scripture Referenced (NASB95 ) “Into Your hand I commit my spirit; You have ransomed me, O LORD, God of truth.” — Psalm 31:5 “You have not given me over into the hand of the enemy; You have set my feet in a large place.” — Psalm 31:8 “But as for me, I trust in You, O LORD, I say, ‘You are my God.’ My times are in Your hand.” — Psalm 31:14–15 “As for me, I said in my alarm, ‘I am cut off from before Your eyes’; nevertheless You heard the voice of my supplications when I cried to You.” — Psalm 31:22 “All the paths of the LORD are lovingkindness and truth.” — Psalm 25:10 “In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.” — John 16:33 Mentioned in This Episode •  Amy Carmichael, Candles in the Dark (letter collection) •  Saint John of the Cross and the dark night of the soul — referenced from Episodes 4–8 of this series •  The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis •  The free ebook What Are You Really Feeling? — a guide for naming the anger, shame, and anxiety underneath the struggle to trust God's timing, as a first step toward Him rather than away from Him Links •  What Are You Really Feeling? (free ebook): betweengriefandglory.com/What-Are-You-Really-Feeling •  Spiritual direction & soul companionship: betweengriefandglory.com Coming Next What your body has been holding that your words haven't found yet.

    20. My Times Are in Your Hands

  8. Jul 13

    19. How Long, O Lord, The Saints Who Stayed in It.

    Invitation to Refuge: https://www.betweengriefandglory.com/Refuge David asked God how long four times in Psalm 13, and never got an answer inside the psalm itself. This week, Paris sits inside that unresolved space alongside George Herbert, Charles Spurgeon, Joseph, Asaph, Job's friends, and C.S. Lewis, asking what it means to keep trusting God when the promise has not changed but the waiting has no visible end. SCRIPTURE REFERENCES (NASB95) Psalm 13:1-6 | Psalm 73:2-3, 16-17 | Genesis 37:5-11 | Genesis 41:46 | 1 Samuel 22:1-2 | 1 Samuel 24 | Job 2:11-13; 4-11 BOOKS REFERENCED A Grief Observed — C.S. Lewis | The Problem of Pain — C.S. Lewis | Lectures to My Students — Charles Spurgeon | The Temple — George Herbert RESOURCE LINKS Refuge —https://www.betweengriefandglory.com/Refuge | Between Grief & Glory — betweengriefandglory.com SOCIAL instagram.com/betweengriefandglory EPISODE NAVIGATION Previous: Episode 12 — "The Vow You Made to Survive" Next: Episode 14 — "My Times Are in Your Hands"

    19. How Long, O Lord, The Saints Who Stayed in It.
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About

There is a place most of us were never taught to stay in. Between the grief and the glory. This podcast is for the Christian who is still believing, still showing up, still carrying more than anyone around them knows. Host Paris Byrum — spiritual mentor, trauma-informed soul guide, and founder of Between Grief & Glory — creates space to slow down, tell the truth, and walk with God through the places that don't resolve quickly. Healing is not meant to be rushed. And you were never meant to walk this alone. www.betweengriefandglory.com

Information

  • Creator
    Paris Byrum | Between Grief + Glory
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    26
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Paris Byrum | Between Grief + Glory
  • Show Website
    Lament + Light