After Holli died, the evenings were the hardest part of the day.
The nights stretched on and on. You can only watch so much television and read so many books before there is nothing left to do but be lonely. Some nights it felt like the dark could put out the small light still left in me.
On one of those nights, trying to make the time pass, I was reading the book of Isaiah. I found something about God I had never really noticed before.
“He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.” (Isaiah 53:3, BSB)
I had read that verse many times. It was information. I knew it the way we know a phone number.
Before Holli’s death, I focused on what Jesus did. His miracles, His teaching, the cross. After she was gone, I started noticing how He felt.
Jesus cried over Jerusalem. He wept with Mary and Martha at their brother’s grave, even though He knew what He was about to do. When He heard that John the Baptist had been killed, He went off by Himself to a quiet place.
I understood that last one. I pulled away from people more times than I can count that first year. The grief was so heavy I needed quiet, with nobody asking me how I was doing. I needed time to take in what had happened to a world that had suddenly gone dark.
But here is where I was not like Jesus. My grief covered God’s presence like a thick fog, and the fog stayed for a year.
I did not have a big breakthrough. I had one short prayer, the one a desperate father prayed when he brought his son to Jesus: I believe; help my unbelief. I said it over and over. And slowly, one step at a time, the fog began to lift.
When it did, the first thing I saw was my Savior with tears running down His cheeks. For me. For my family.
That picture changed me forever.
Jesus is not standing at the edge of your grief, waiting for you to get it together. He is a man of sorrows. He knows exactly how this feels, because He has felt it. And because He has walked this valley Himself, He knows the best way through it.
If you are in the fog right now, you do not need a big prayer. Borrow that father’s. I believe. Help my unbelief. Say it tonight, and tomorrow night, and the night after that.
The fog will not stay forever. And when it lifts, you will find Him right where He has been all along. Close enough to see His tears.
Death is a Liar