where waves grow sweet

Hello! I’ve missed connecting with you and pray you are well. I am still savoring the full, rich, people-filled summer we’ve had, but am also so happy to be here, in my sweet little writing shed, to get some thoughts down for the first time in a very long while. What I’d love to share today is a palm-full of hope to those who have experienced loss or, really, pain of any kind. 

The anniversary of Cole’s death swung around again this summer, as it seems to do every year. I’ve never wanted to make a big to-do about the specific date because I don’t want it to be forever memorialized in my heart as a bad day; one filled with sorrow and dread. Still, I know when it is. And the past few years have borne some struggle as that day approaches. This year, the fourth since his death, was different. I nearly forgot. I was reminded in the morning by an email from the Navy offering a kind remembrance, which instigated a moment of fear that I would now feel the weight of pain, but I didn’t. And the implications of that email were quickly forgotten as the day’s activities unfolded around me and then carried me off to bed. This does not guarantee me freedom from future struggle, but it was a gift that held hope.

When I first lost Cole, several people with personal experiences of loss told me that it would hurt forever. I certainly knew that it could; that it was the natural way of things. But it didn’t make sense to me in light of the God I serve. I had seen too much of His restoration in my life, from all the damage done by myself and others, to think that the damage done by Cole’s decision to take his life would be beyond God’s reach. When Jesus healed people in the Bible, they weren’t left with symptoms of their disease or brokenness or suffering. So I trusted that as God healed my heart from this loss, I would not be left with the symptom of pain.

So, when someone recently said, “You must hurt every single day,” I was able to answer that no, I don’t. Honestly, I don’t hurt most days. It’s not that I have forgotten Cole or shoved the memories of him into some far-off corner of my mind. And it’s not that I never hurt or cry or have days of longing as I continue to work things out with the Lord. But God has been so incredibly faithful in showing up in every moment of hurt, confusion and sorrow, healing me gently and expertly with His very presence, that I stand humbly astounded at the joy my life holds and at the hope I get to hold for others in their suffering. 

I offer up that hope to you today and challenge anything you’ve believed that says you’re stuck with pain for good. Because God loves to heal. There’s no pain too deep; no loss too devastating that He is not able – and willing – to pour His powerful, loving balm over and restore you to joy.