The question occurred to me recently: How many deaths have I mourned in the last four and a half years?
The question startles me, not because I don’t know the answer, but because I do. Too many to count, and yet, I remember each one. Some were sudden and seismic. Others came gradually, but with a finality that drained the color from my life. With each unexpected departure and each unspoken farewell, my world became more and more one I simply did not recognize.
I’ve mourned the losses of my husband and my daddy, of course—their absences still echoing through every room they once filled. But I’ve also grieved the death of relationships I once believed as sure as the ground beneath my feet. I’ve mourned the death of community, as my circle grew smaller and smaller. I’ve mourned the death of certainty, of innocence, of believing that truth would prevail and faithfulness would endure.
I have been forced to carry shame that was not mine to bear—shame cultivated by those whose abandonment spoke louder than any unfounded accusation.
And still, I bore it.
Not because it belonged to me, but because it clung to me—foisted upon me—reshaping the way I moved through the world. There was now a reticence, a hesitancy, a quiet fear. Who might I encounter? And what have they come to believe about me? Disheartening questions both, for one who had always walked well and above reproach.
Still, if death is the end, it is also the beginning. I know that now—not just in theory, but in my bones. Because what has died in me has also made room for something new. What I lost cleared ground for who I am becoming. And resurrection, I’ve learned, isn’t always heralded. It doesn’t always shout. Sometimes it comes like a whisper, quiet but persistent. A breath where there should be none. A flicker of hope amidst the rubble.
I also believe in actual, literal resurrection. Frederick Buechner once wrote, “Resurrection means that the worst thing is never the last thing.” I hold those words close because they point me to the deepest promise of all: that life continues beyond the grave. That death does not get the final word. That one day, everything lost will be restored.
In the meantime, resurrection is still unfolding all around me. In the dogwood that blooms after a season of barrenness. In the quiet healing that continues when the pain flares. In the strength I did not know I had. In the slow rebuilding of a life I did not want but have learned to embrace—living not in spite of the losses, but through them.
So I allow myself to mourn. Every death deserves that.
But I also hold space for resurrection. I watch for it. I wait for it. I name it when it comes. Because somehow, against all odds, it keeps breaking through—like the dogwood in spring, like hope from hollowed ground, like the promise Buechner named: the worst thing is never the last thing.
Losses come in myriad forms and are equally worthy of our grief—but they are also worthy of our hope.
If you, too, know the sting of loss, or injustice, know this: you are not weak for feeling it, and you are not alone in carrying it. Others have walked through their own devastation and found life on the other side—not the same life, no, but one still marked by meaning, by resilience, and by moments of unexpected joy. A life still unfolding. A life still eminently worth living.
So, beloved, won’t you join me? Let’s cast off our sackcloth, let’s don our garments of praise, and let’s commence to dancing, even if our limp never fully leaves us.
We were meant for so much more, and it is to God’s great glory that we remain open to the joy and the purpose that still find us, even in the places we once thought beyond redemption or repair.
In His hands, nothing stays broken forever.
“You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.”
~ 𝐀𝐧𝐧𝐞 𝐋𝐚𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐭
“If the pain was deep, you will have to let it go many times.”
~ 𝐘𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐏𝐮𝐞𝐛𝐥𝐨