Surviving Year One: After the Death of Your SpouseSample

He Holds You Close

Eight days after my husband died, I turned on the live-streamed church service we’d been watching since the pandemic began eight months before. I sat on the couch without my husband and dissolved into tears. The joyful words of the worship songs burned my sorrow-sick soul. After just a few minutes of the sermon, I turned it off. I couldn’t concentrate anyway.

My brain was screaming, “He’s dead!” My heart cried, “Why God?”

I stopped watching services, and it was months before I was able to read my Bible again. When I did, I found the solace I needed in the Psalms. Their words mimicked the cries of my heart: Why God? Why do you hide your face from me? Why do the wicked proposer? Where are you? Don’t you even care?

I was in a pit of sorrow deeper than anything I’d experienced before, and I needed God to rescue me.

When we face this depth of devastation, we cannot rely on our spiritual disciplines to get us out. Prayer, corporate worship, and Bible reading are wonderful, but what do we rely on when they feel impossible? What if our heart is full of anguish and anger at God? What if we can’t bear the thought of attending a worship service and being seen by others when our loss is so fresh?

Spiritual disciplines help us connect with God, but they are not God. In our darkest moments, it is God’s faithful presence that will carry us. With the tiniest bit of faith, we can look to Him and find Him faithful. God has promised to lead us through the deepest pit, even death itself.

We cannot outrun God or hide anywhere that He can’t find us. He upholds us, and we cling to Him. Like a parent who pulls a child out of crashing waves, we cry for help, and God grabs our hand and carries us safely to shore.

If you are lost in sorrow, take comfort: He will find you, He will carry you, and He will bring you safely back to Him.