It first arrested my attention over a year ago, and I have written about it several times, but there is a branch suspended in the air above my husband’s grave that never ceases to offer comfort and hope.
It has been there through storms that should have torn it down, through winds that should have carried it away, through changing seasons that should have left it brittle and broken. And yet, it remains—held, sustained, unwavering, even when logic says it should have long since fallen.
Every time I visit Jimmy’s grave, I look for it. It has become a touchstone for me—a living parable—a silent testament to what I have come to know deep down in my bones: that even when the world shifts and everything familiar falls away, I am held. That even when all about seems perilous and precarious, I am protected.
For a long time after Jimmy’s death, I didn’t know if I would ever feel safe again. Grief flattened me. Sorrow sidelined me. Loss unraveled many of the certainties I had built my life upon. The aftermath shattered the structures I thought would stand forever. And yet, through all of it, I found an abiding safety—rooted not in the ephemeral, tangible things that can be stripped away, but in the One who never lets go.
That branch, suspended in defiance of gravity and time, mirrors beautifully the way God has held me. I have walked through the kind of sorrow that permanently alters—that rewrites your very being. But I have also been tended to. Kept. Sustained. Not in a way that erased the pain, but in a way that made it count for something. In a way that whispered: You are not alone. You are not forgotten. You will, once again, know safety and purpose and joy.
On Valentine’s Day, I went to Jimmy’s grave, and there it was—still there, still defying everything that says it should not be, and so am I. Not because grief has disappeared, not because the road has been easy, but because I have been held by arms that neither falter nor fail.
There is a safety that does not depend upon circumstance, a security that is not rooted in what this world can give or take away. I have found it in the abiding presence of God. I have seen it in the unyielding faithfulness that has carried me through. And I see it still, in a branch that should have fallen but hasn’t, a constant, quiet reminder that just as it endures, so will I. Just as it perseveres, so will I. Just as it is cradled, so am I, held firmly in the grip of the One who has yet to let me fall.
I’m not sure what would have become of me without Him. I am so grateful I never had to find out.
“The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.”
~ 𝐃𝐞𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐲 𝟑𝟑:𝟐𝟕