Surviving Sorrow: Devotions for Parents in MourningExemplo

I know you can’t imagine a single day without pain right now. I know. To be honest, most days still begin and end (with some stabs in between) with a bit of pain for me, even so many years later. 

It’s not in this life that I expect to be free from pain. My heart is clinging to the steadfast Scriptures where God promises to fix what’s broken. Someday, your broken heart will be no more. One day, death will end forever. There will be no graves in heaven. When God creates the new heaven and the new earth, there will be no hospitals, no funeral homes, no cemeteries. Oh glorious day! 

Can you imagine such a place? For a moment, try to picture a world with no accidents to steal life away in a moment. No bodies to break down and shut down. No cancer. No birth defects. No evil to battle. No addictions. No sin. No heart disease. No kidney failure. No rebellion. No murder. No overdoses. No suicides. No infertility. No miscarriage. No families left behind. No empty beds. No empty seat at the table. No more pain. Sadness won’t exist. Depression can’t creep in. Anxiety can’t steal joy.  

If you believe in God the Father and Jesus the Savior, you can rest in the fact that heaven will come. Someday, heaven will be your reality. Whenever I think about heaven, and I think about seeing God face-to-face, I wonder if I’ll ask Him. I wonder if the question will still be on my heart, if it will escape out of my lips: why? Will I ask God why my child had to die? I don’t know. 

Often, I think heaven will be so amazing and perfect that I’ll somehow understand how broken this earth and human life really are since they are separated from God. Losing Austin will somehow make sense to me. Other times, I picture God making room beside Him, room for me to sit next to my Father God and have a long talk about my life, Austin’s life, our time on earth, and how He used everything for His glory. 

I picture Him with sorrow in His eyes as He talks with me, His child. He shows me the bottle where He collected all my tears. A book is opened that recorded every single day of my mourning, every single tear. There are reasons. Some have nothing to do with me, but everything to do with Him. 

I’ll suddenly understand that all things on earth belong to Almighty God. All things happen for His Kingdom, for His glory. My life, my child’s life, my family, we are only part of His story. The ending of His story, however, is what my heart longs for—eternal glory, no more death, no more sorrow. 

Until that day, we have to keep trying to imagine it! Let your heart be lifted up by imagining heaven today. Allow your mind to be settled by a glimpse of glory. Find a place to let the sun shine on your face, close your eyes, and try to picture the world that awaits us. Imagine the day when you will see God face-to-face: 

“No longer will you have the sun for light by day, Nor for brightness will the moon give you light; But you will have the LORD for an everlasting light, And your God for your glory. Your sun will no longer set, Nor will your moon wane; For you will have the LORD for an everlasting light, And the days of your mourning will be over” (Isaiah 60:19–20 NASB).