These Past Eleven Months

As the sun settled below tonight’s horizon, I sat for a few minutes in the fresh, cold air on a screened-in porch overlooking a giant lake, absorbing its stillness, and its utter quiet.

Today is the 11-month anniversary of the day my mom left this earth. It’s hard to believe that much time has passed because the event of her death still feels recent and shocking.

But I can tell that time has passed, and that time—these past 11 months—have yielded new thoughts, feelings and experiences as I’ve traveled through grief with the Lord.

I’ve found that in my time of deepest and lonely sorrow, He has been my closest friend. No one is gentler, kinder, or more understanding toward the broken soul and breaking heart than the one whose heart was pierced.

I am weaker than I ever realized, and needy. I need Jesus. Even more than I know. Not because I am grieving, but because I am human. How much greater seems the gulf between creature and Creator; how much more clearly I see His mercy that fills the widening gap.

He’s taught me that resting, grieving and weeping are just as much a part of perseverance as praying, worshipping and Bible-reading. In fact, they are a vital part of relationship with Him, intertwined with prayer, worship and Bible reading.

It has been a sorrowful season. Challenging, painful, hard. But it has not been without blessings or goodness or moments of happiness. I hardly stand at the end of grief’s journey. But I have moved forward on its path. And I know it is the things I encountered on that path that lead me to anticipate deepening relationship with God in the season ahead.