Reflections for the Grieving Soulنموونە

The Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of sorrow will end. ISAIAH 60:20 NIV

I’ve discovered that the things you really miss when you lose a loved one are the not-so-obvious ones.

I mean, of course you miss the obvious things—her touch, her laugh, seeing her smile when you walk into the room, the warmth of her frame pressed into yours, holding her hand, the scent of her life filling your home, the gentle weight of her body sleeping quietly beside you. But you also miss the unexpected things:

The joy of anticipating her arrival home.

The way her spirit filled your house when she was in it.

The comfort of feeling obligated to someone because you just longed for nothing more than to be obligated to her.

Those little, loving obligations are what I’m missing most right now. I find when I go somewhere, I want to text and tell her I made it there safely. But there’s no one who cares that I made it to Walmart today. When it’s almost time for dinner, I want to ask her, “What do you want to eat tonight?” But of course, no one cares whether I order Chinese takeout or have cold cereal for dinner.

I want to tell her, “Hey, I made your Academy Awards ballot today!” and, “Let’s take Friday off work and go see that movie you wanted to see” and, “I put gas in your car so you should be fine going to the airport and back on Thursday.” And I’m realizing that the reason I struggle to write now is that, despite what I pretended, I always wrote for her.

Every book, every article, it always mattered to me because it mattered to her, because she wanted me to do it because she thought my writing was worth reading. I have no one like that in my life now, no one who makes me want to work so, so hard to delight them with silly words strung in rows on a page.

This is what I miss right now, the salvation of all those little obligations, the unfiltered joy I felt from just being able to make her happy. That, I’ve learned, is what made me happy, what gave me purpose.

It is tempting to think I will always mourn these little losses, to assume my best days are behind me and that only sorrow awaits in my tomorrows. I have believed that from time to time these past lonely months.

But today I saw Isaiah 60:20. It felt as if I were reading it for the first time:

The Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of sorrow will end.

Did God really say that? Can it be true for a broken thing like me?

If this Scripture is true (and I know that it is), then sorrow has something in common with the cancer that killed my wife: It is terminal. It cannot go on forever. This must be why the ancient prophet coupled the symbol of God’s undying light with sorrow’s fatal diagnosis. As my theology books report about Isaiah 60, “While darkness signifies despair, light signifies hope” (italics mine). [1]

It has been hard for me to have any real hope for my future since my wife died. This morning, though, I read a promise of Scripture and almost believed it for myself. That feels new. Those words from Isaiah have given me something today that seems different than yesterday:

I have hope that someday I’ll have hope again.

Hey, it’s a start, right?

PRAYER FOR TODAY God, You promised that days of sorrow would end. I know that takes time, but how about if You and I work toward that a little more today? Amen.

[1] John H. Walton, general editor. Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, Volume 4 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009) 180.