Grief manifests in so many ways these days. In the early days of losing my son, it was tears upon tears. But it doesn’t look that way everyday anymore. The tears don’t come everyday anymore. It looks different now.
It looks like rush of fear when one of your other babies falls or hurts themselves. It also looks like a new wave of anxiety in moving. It’s as if grief shines a huge light on those little moments of wavering in my heart. Before it was just a bit of fear or a bit of worry but I could logically walk back out of it.
But with grief shining on it, no amount of logic can walk you out of those big feelings. The irrational seems rational. All that’s left is the truths I know to be true of my Father and my King.
When the movers first came to the house, I felt frozen in a lot of ways. Worried, asked them a million questions about our move, all the things. But I had called on dear friends to lift me in prayer this week because I knew. I knew it was bubbling.
The morning the movers came, we walked outside to see the first of the flowers we had grown from seed for our Enoch had bloomed. A beautiful pink flower to remind us there is actual beauty for ashes. I stopped and thanked the Lord for the tangible gift and for the prayers of my friends. A small burden lifted off of me.
Three days later, my heart was heavy again as a new crew came to take our things away on a huge truck. My flesh fell back to worry highlighted by grief. I’ve always been able to rest in the reality that they are just earthly things and what makes it to the new house, makes it. But no amount of saying that this time could ease my heart. I was having so much trouble believing that so I could rest.
But here is what I do know. God grieves with me. He knows my heart and He meets me where I am to pull me deeper into the kingdom. Around the time I stopped crying everyday and grief turned different was around the time I could see the world move forward with me stuck in this place where my heart was still not mended. It can easily feel like the world forgot as if they aren’t supposed to move forward either. This lie in itself is selfish, I know, but it becomes believable when brokenness is so close to your heart you guys. The enemy does not whisper unbelievable lies to our ears.
BUT it’s when this transition happened I realized just how incredibly loving our Father is. Because He stays with me. He sees the way grief has changed and does what He has always done: stays faithful to His daughter. He holds my hand and walks me through moment by moment. Offering tangible things like a blooming flower to remind me He is holding me.
The new crew on the last day moved quick. Over lunch I was talking to the driver of our things, we’ll call him Mr. T for privacy. We were sharing stories and He said “you know, you don’t play as a mom. Your girls are good kids.” My heart swelled as I teared up and said, “Thank you, our desire for them is to love The Lord and love people.”
Little did I know Mr.T preaches when he’s home at his church. The conversation continued and eventually he stopped and said you know I preached this a few weeks ago and I’m going to share it with you. He went on to preach to me, in our kitchen, on nothing other than the heart of Hannah.
If you’ve followed me on social media or have spoken to me in person, you know Hannah has such a special place in my heart because she is who the Lord brought up the night I was able to hand our son over to our Father. You know my daughter prophetically spoke words to me on Hannah months before we lost our son.
Right there, in our empty house, in our kitchen, I lost it. Mr. T didn’t know all of that, I hadn’t even shared about Enoch with him. And yet when he was done he told me, “Hannah was blessed because of it. The time is now daughter to be blessed because of your heart.”
Forget our stuff, I was floored. All I could do was be thankful to our Father for the gift He just delivered. The driver of our stuff no less. How incredible our God is to see my heart weary and tired, to see me cry out to Him to carry me further. Only to deliver one of His children to speak life into me again AND be the earthly keeper of our stuff. Guys, I’m still not over that moment. Such a beautiful gift.
I wrote all of this because in the early days after losing Enoch, Psalm 34:18 was sent to me often. And I knew it then. My heart was shattered and the Lord was near. But here where my broken heart looks different than the early days, that verse means even more. Though my broken heart doesn’t always look broken from the outside and doesn’t always feel broken, it still very much is and it surfaces in all different ways now. But God doesn’t change. His word is true now just as it was then. And what this past week has shown me, in blooming flowers and preaching in my kitchen, is that God IS near to the broken hearted, no matter how that broken heart may look.
If you’re praying this week would you say a blessing over Mr. T as he drives all over next week for his job and just thank the Lord for his sons faithfulness?
And if your broken heart looks different these days, I pray you know the Lord is near.
“The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”
Psalm 34:18
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