A few years ago, I wouldn’t have believed I’d be writing this. Not even a few weeks ago. I’m glad I am. I’m glad I have the space to be open, and I’m glad knowing I’m not alone in this. This is a hard and deep post, and I won’t tie it up in a tidy little box for you or for me.

Within the past month, within two weeks of each other, dear friends and acquaintances of mine have lost their sons. First, it was our dear friends losing their 24 year old son very suddenly. Then 2 weeks later, our friends lost their 3 month old grandson and nephew within 48 hours after finding him unconscious during a nap.

It’s been a heavy and hard year and a half, and I’ve undergone many “why” moments in that time, but I never thought it’d be 2nd hand grief that would completely break me.

I sat at that first funeral of the month, staring at what seemed like the hundredth wooden casket, looked over to my weeping friends, and back to the casket, and it was then that something incredibly thin snapped inside me. 

Tears streamed down my cheeks as my heart cried out these eight words to God:
“I don’t know how to do this anymore.”

*THIS* was life. *THIS* was death. This. I don’t know how to live this anymore.

I wasn’t grieving for me, but I was grieving. I barely made it through the next week and a half, crying in the night, weeping in prayer, begging for comfort and mercies for my friends, and leaving myself quite out of the healing process that should accompany grief.

Only I wasn’t out of it. I was in it. In it and utterly unable to remove myself from it.

I went to a baseball game with my friend at the end of that unbearable week(s), only to have my friends lose their little 3 month old baby boy the very next morning.

I drove 7 hours to comfort my friends with hugs and tears, and no words; truly, there are no words in this kind of loss and pain. The wind fluttered pictures of his sweet life of 3 months that were hung up around the chairs of those who had gathered to celebrate his life. Onesies he would never wear again danced in the breeze; worship songs rang with hope we would not let go of. A monsoon sized storm darkened the skies and fittingly as we left it opened up and drenched the grass that held our tears.

So much deep loss, so much clinging to Jesus, so much pain, so much hurt, so much sorrow….the darkness has been deep and inescapable, and I recognize my footsteps in the valley that I’ve walked many times before. The days the darkness will not lift are the days you need Jesus the most, and yet I’ve been without a way to put words to the night.

Today was the first day in a month where I woke up and didn’t feel like I was dying. 
Unable to write or work or share my heart without bawling, today was the first day I didn’t feel like a hypocrite to share 5 ways to make it through the darkness.

So here we go:

#1. Stay in the Word however you can

Listen, I’m not here to tell you that every day you need to stick to a strict schedule of memorize the entire book of Psalms, but I am telling you that you need to stick to a committed schedule of, at the very least, opening the Bible once a day.

Why? Because when you’re dying, you need life. 

You aren’t going to gain LIFE back into your soul faster than dwelling on the words of God, Who is the fullness of Life. You need this more than air, more than water and food.

I’m calling you to dwell, not conquer. Often it’s the same verse for days. Over and over and over again, hundreds of times. Find what comforts, find what pierces, and dwell.

You are in pain, don’t deny yourself the medicine you need.

#2. Preach the Truth to your soul

You are in a battle between what you FEEL and what you KNOW. Constantly trusting either truth about the God you believe or what you see around you right now. When you’re surrounded in darkness and can’t see a way out or any glimmers of light, preach to your soul that there is a God Who loves you and is with you in the darkness.

The darkness might feel like the most pointless holding pattern and an empty desert that isn’t producing the fruit you feel like waiting should produce, and it might feel like a million losses that have piled up that are crushing you. You need something to hold onto. 

Make it Jesus. 

In the night, in the day, in the weeping, in the laughter, in the sorrow, in the loss. Come what may…..remind yourself that there is an answer to your pain, and it isn’t anything this earth can give you. It’s the One Who is trustworthy, the One Who is sovereign.

Don’t ground yourself in something that will not hold you forever secure. It will not comfort. C.S. Lewis writes this: “To what will you look for help if you will not look to that which is stronger than yourself?” 

We are not strong enough to lift the darkness or tear the veil. Jesus is. Preach it to your soul.

#3. Reach out with both hands

Yesterday I shared openly and honestly with two dear friends and mentors about how everything seems completely overwhelming and I can’t do it anymore. Within a half hour, I was beating myself up for sharing my heart. Don’t do that. Reach out with both hands.

Text your friends. Be honest. Be specific. Be raw. Ask for prayer. Ask for lots of prayer. Ask for prayer that won’t have a tidy bow in a week and let them know that.

Let your community know your hurts and the darkness you see. There won’t be a lot that will be able to handle it without wanting to fix it, but there will be a few. They may be scattered in different places, but reach out and let them minister to you in this season.

Don’t weep alone when we’re called to weep together. Do not feel as though you must fix it before you share, because you can’t fix it, and neither can they. Only Jesus can.

On a practical note, realize that there WILL be something in the dark that brings joy. If it’s hymns/worship music, play those on repeat, if it’s being outdoors, go. If it’s the ocean: get there as often as you can, if it’s mountains: hike, if it’s creating beauty by hand on a rainy day, create. Find what heals, and DO IT. You are worth the healing. Reach for it.

#4. Don’t let go of Hope

Ohh, this one. Could there be something else so vital to life besides hope? I’m not sure there is. Don’t let go of Hope, no matter what you do. Don’t let yourself let go.

The Hope we have been given is an everlasting, never changing, never failing hope.
It lives in Jesus and His triumph over sin and death. It’s the hardest thing to do when you feel like you’re drowning in the dark, but there IS hope. There is always, always, always hope, because Jesus lives and reigns. Hope is alive even when you are hidden in the darkness and cannot see it.

Do not depend on your finite vision when you trust an infinite
and sovereign God with a Hope that will not be taken away from you. 

“And now, Lord, what do I wait for? My hope is in You.” – Psalm 39:7

“For in You, O Lord, I hope; You will hear, O Lord my God.” – Psalm 38:15

“Preserve me, O God, for in You I put my trust.” – Psalm 16:1

“Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? 
Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance.” – Psalm 42:5

“For You are my hope, O Lord God; You are my trust from my youth.” – Psalm 71:5

“Uphold me according to Your word, that I may live; and do not let me be ashamed of my hope.” – Psalm 119:116

“I rise before the dawning of the morning and cry for help; I hope in Your word.” – Psalm 119:147

“I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His word I do hope.” – Psalm 130:5

“For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Is it not even you in the
presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming?” – 1 Thess. 2:19

#5. Trust the One Who brings light out of darkness

“If I say, “Surely the darkness shall fall on me,” even the night shall be light about me;
Indeed the darkness shall not hide from You, but the night shines as the day;
the darkness and the light are both alike to You.” – Psalm 139:11-12

Once upon a time, the God Who made everything created light out of darkness. He spoke light into being: “Then God said, “Let there be light”, and there was light.” {Genesis 1:3}

When sin brought darkness, He sent His Son to permanently shatter the darkness by His presence: “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and upon those who sat
in the region and shadow of death LIGHT has dawned.” {Matthew 4:16} and “to give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” {Luke 1:79}

This is the same God Who is with you in your darkness. Do not equate the darkness with His absence. He is present. He has promised never to leave you and has given you the Holy Spirit as a promise. You are not alone. You never were. He is with you always.

The darkness cannot cover His light. The darkness cannot fully triumph where the Holy Spirit reigns. Yes, you may see it and feel it, but trust that the One Who has conquered this darkness once and for all LIVES IN YOU and has defeated that darkness already for you. Look to the sunshine of His countenance and trust that one day, that light will again dawn upon your face. Indeed, it shines in you even now, albeit weakly on hard days.

“He knows what is in the darkness and light dwells with Him.” – Daniel 2:22

“When I fall, I will arise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me.” – Micah 7:8

“Be of GOOD COURAGE, and He shall strengthen your heart, all You who hope in the Lord.” – Psalm 31:24

“O for grace to lay down all my dreams in Him be found,
O for faith to keep it true and never stop believing You,
And when it’s strong or when it falls through,
Oh Lord to know my answer is You.

And oh for love to trust some more, to fix my eyes on Heaven’s shore,
and for hope with every step, every word, my every breath,
And when it’s strong or when it falls through,
Oh Lord to know my answer is You.

For Your life, I lose my home,’cause I’m not staying here, I’m moving on,
so give me strength to hold on tight through stormy gales ’till morning light.
And when it’s strong or when it falls through,
Oh, when it’s strong or when it falls through,

When it’s strong or when it falls through,
Oh Lord to know the answer is You.
Oh when it’s strong or when it falls through,
Oh Lord to know my answer is You.”
– Brady Toops (2017)

Last night I made pizza and the crust refused to get crisp. I happily put together all the delicious ingredients and spread them on top of a Trader Joe’s pizza crust. I plopped it onto a pizza stone, put it on the bottom oven rack and put the timer on. The time came up, yet no crispy pizza. A tad exasperated, I tried bumping up the oven temperature, over baked the rest of it, and yet it stubbornly stayed chewy. We ate it anyway, to my parents kind words.

Honestly I wasn’t that surprised, more confused and disappointed.

It fit right into my week. Unexpected terrible that I had no control over making better.

I spent most of last weekend crying, weeping for our friends’ deep loss of their son at a funeral. It did not ease Sunday morning as I wrapped myself up in a shawl and felt the sadness wrap around me, and yet the closeness of God’s love envelope me in that sadness. All the hymns seemed closer and sharper in the midst of grief.

I cried most of Monday morning. Overwhelmed, I pulled out of church activities and a Bible study.

Tears still slip down my face most of these days, and I can’t pinpoint all the reasons why I’m crying, I just know that grief sometimes stays heavy and won’t let go.

The Very Muddy Middle

As Christians, we talk about the now and the not yet. It’s the theology simply stated that we live between when Christ has come and will come again. Between Christ’s saving work on the cross and the day when He will come again to make all things new. We live in the unseen of what will be, yet with the “seen” revelation through the Bible. We live in the middle of that; we live in the Now.

The very confused middle most days. The Now is a muddy middle, and a lot of days it doesn’t look like brilliant sun rays of glory and peace. It looks like a mess. It looks like we screwed everything up. It looks like a toddler got ahold of all the wrapping paper and glue and tissue paper and (while covered in sticky pudding fingers), put together a picture that resembles nothing what you thought life would be. You can’t tell if it’s up or down, whether that’s you or not, and whether you’re in a peaceful ocean or an angry sea of lava.

We hate the muddy middle because we love the brilliant glory of clarity and comfort,
but we lose ground hard won when we rush ahead to the future glories without remembering the fruitful seasons of the past.

Resting on either side will exhaust us for different reasons, which is why they need to be connected. They both matter.

On each side, the Now and the Not Yet, there is hope, but it hasn’t ever and won’t ever lie in us.

This is because the Now, the Muddy Middle, and the Not Yet is not about us. 

We Forget What Came Before Us

We have a brief span of years here on this earth, but when we stay self focused, we lose sight of those who have gone before us. From the Israelites wandering in the desert for 40 years, to the period of 400 years when the Israelites thought they’d never hear the voice of God again, to the pilgrims at Plymouth who thought they were finally free and lost half of their family and friends that first year.

Whenever I think of those periods, I think of how much they must have felt plunged deep into the aching, dark, muddy middle. Confused. Lost. Devastated. Weary. Broken.

The Now stings so much when it’s painted with grief and loss. 

Yet no days have ever been so dark than the days before Resurrection Sunday. The shock that must have ripped through the Christians homes. That thousand yard stare in their eyes as they tried to put together some comfort amid the realization that their Redeemer and King lay in a tomb. Everything they thought would come true was dead and gone.

They couldn’t see ahead any better than we can 2,017 years later.

We Can’t Lose Sight of What Is Coming

It’s so easy to get lost in the dark of the middle. Some days it feels like I’m wading through waist deep mud, and can’t breathe from the weight of all that has happened. The despair will tie me to the bed and the ache in the middle of the night will crush my heart.

It’s so hard to look forward when you feel so utterly overwhelmed by the past.
It’s so hard to keep walking forward when you don’t want to lose the people in the seasons behind you.

But we do not bear up under grief by pulling ourselves out by our bootstraps or good will.

We bear the dark and unseen Now by keeping our eyes on Christ and what is coming. 

We bear it by knowing the One Who came before us has paved the way ahead with glory,
because Jesus trod it for us and has walked every path we will walk, with holiness.

We bear it by knowing that what comes ahead will be not only the fulfillment and redemption
of the muddy middle of the Now, but ALL of History, when Jesus makes ALL THINGS NEW.

But most of all, we bear it by knowing that Jesus already reigns, has always reigned.
God has put “all things under His feet” (Eph 1:22), which means ALL things in His control,
and all things under His sovereignty. ALL things, friends. All things for our good and His glory.

Walking in Hope Through the Now

The Now is filled with joy and sorrow, but has always been, friend. Our days are not new to the span of history, although filled with different stories. Our days are not a surprise to our God. Our trials are not meaningless, our suffering is not wasted, our tears not unseen.

When we keep our eyes on Christ, we can’t stay in the grief of the Now
without looking ahead to the Joy and Hope of the Not Yet.

It is a tension, yes, a necessary tension in a tug of war between the two:
balancing grief and joy, feeling the weight of the grave while looking toward Heaven.
Neither to be abandoned or discarded, but both to be measured and counted, balanced, and lived well.

The grief of the Now gives meaning to the Hope of the Not Yet.
The Joy of the Not Yet gives strength to the hard days of the Now.

So while we live in this tension, let us cling to the Hope that
will not change on the worst days: the Hope in Jesus.

“So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the 
unchangeable character of His purpose, He guaranteed it with an oath, so that by 
two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for
refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the HOPE set before us. 

We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into
the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf.”
– Hebrews 6:17-20

This Hope, is unchangeable. It is unchangeable because it is in Christ.
Jesus, the Hope that will never change. His love has been set upon us
throughout all our days and will never be removed. His Hope is our Hope.

He is making all things new, and one day….we will see it for what it really is.

One day it won’t look like a glued painting done by a toddler where you’re drowning in an angry sea.

One day….it will be the most beautiful painting and story you’ve ever seen,
and never ever could have dreamed it would be while you were standing broken in the Now.

“Behold, I am making all things new….” – Revelation 21:5

You’re going to be shocked when I tell you this:

I’ve had my funeral planned since I was 13.

I don’t think I’m usually so opinionated about parties that I *ahem* won’t be attending, but my gracious, I was very opinionated about my funeral. I wrote it up on a sheet of double-lined paper, with large letters saying: “NO carnations or daisies, I hate them.”.

Before you think I was a morbid child, you have to realize that at the innocent age of 13, I  lost my Sunday School teacher the day after 9/11, and my beloved grandparents the next year (within 10 months of each other). The hymns that carried me through those days would solidify the hymns I wanted people to remember singing at my funeral. The hymns that sang of being carried, of resting beside still waters, of all Jesus was to us, and dwelling in the house of the Lord forever.

For all my days.

“Make it to 30”, used to be my mantra. Still is, since I’m bordering on 29. A lot of days I wasn’t sure I’d make it to 30, like the time a garbage truck crushed my car and sliced metal ribbons through the hood and stopped within inches of my windshield. Or the time I hit a deer in the dark night on a county road, miles from a fire station. Or one of the many times I could have sworn my heart would never beat right again, for it was so broken in sorrow. But the Sustainer of life would breathe into me, and my heart would go on beating.

So it seems logical that when I traveled to China in March of 2016, I updated my living will, and re-wrote my funeral plans. I cried for a week, writing goodbye letters. I would be up late at 2am, bawling my eyes out and writing words you give in eulogies, the best of the best that you save for special occasions. My friends all thought I was crazy. It wasn’t that I expected anything to happen (I mean, it’s halfway around the world. Anything could happen, haha), or thought we’d fall out of the sky, but I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving without saying what my heart has known for so long.

My days don’t end here.

We were made for more. I didn’t want my parents thinking this dream trip had ended a beautiful life. I wanted them to know that I had merely slipped from one realm of Earth to our better and true Home in Heaven, and I was doing what I’d waited and dreamed of and prayed over since I was 12: visiting orphans. It was so important to me that they knew I wouldn’t be disappointed at all if in the midst of one calling, He called to me in another way. I wrote amid streaming tears that I would be more alive than I’d ever known. The “more” wouldn’t end, it would forever go on and on….with Jesus.

Because life is more than this world.

Life.…isn’t air. It isn’t health. It isn’t family. It isn’t planet Earth. It isn’t blessings. It isn’t dreams come true. It isn’t how many people you meet or how many countries you visit.

Life, the very core of Life, the very BEING of Life, the Giver of Life, the Creator of Life…

LIFE is Jesus. 

And it’s nothing without Him.

Albeit a little paraphrased, it’s what I wrote in my funeral plans and in my will. It’s what I want sung at my funeral. It’s what I want people to remember in my lifetime span in this world: Jesus was my everything.

Worth more than all my dreams or business plans of success or glory. Worth more than traveling to England and China one more time, worth more than seeing Scotland in person, worth more than walking down the aisle, worth more than having children, worth more than adopting, worth more than anything I could dream up.

So fill your days with Jesus.

If your days may not be long, let them be spent for Christ.

Don’t live restlessly in a world you fill up with things that cannot go Home with you. Trust your future to a known God. Spend every day making the relationship with your Savior deeper and closer. Don’t rest on your pillow at night sorrowful of all the dreams you haven’t yet accomplished, but instead rejoice in all He has prepared for you. 

Live for the glory of Christ and His kingdom. Live in the expectant joy of the span of endless days in the light of His brilliant splendor, finally dressed in holiness and radiant with wonder at the sight of Him. Live for Jesus. Let all else go. 

And sing at my funeral one day if you get the chance ….

“The sure provisions of my God, attend me all my days.
Oh may Thy house be my abode, and all my work be praise.
There would I find a settled rest, while others go and come,
No more a stranger, or a guest, but like a child at Home.” 
{Isaac Watts}