For you, baby girl
Holding hands with grief and Love
“Occasionally weep deeply over the life you hoped would be. Grieve the losses. Then wash your face. Trust God. And embrace the life you have.” John Piper
—
Grief approached me like a brazen stranger in 2013. Like the kind of friend you didn’t know you were about to have, with wild pink streaks in their hair, tattoos up and down their arms and pointy little elbows that shoved you aside so they could squeeze right into your space.1
I never asked for it, never felt empty without, never once trained my eyes to find their pink hair in a room full of friends.
Grief found me. And when I was sure they were my worst nightmare come true, grief tucked their elbows in and offered me a hand.
I consider now that God may have sent this shameless little pixie straight to me. He might have given them a print out of their assignment: bring her to me. And they took it, nodded once, and tucked it into their pocket.
Then did exactly as He said.
—
Love2 offered me a pinky the day I was born.
I imagine He smiled gently at my scrunched up newborn face, tracing with His eyes all the lines and curves He knit together. I imagine He saw, even then, His own image reflected back at Him, just a glimpse at real wonder and beauty.
I didn’t yada3 Him then, only knew the prayers my parents offered up to Him, the Truths they told me daily about Him, the songs I loved to sing about Him.
Love became a gentle warmth on the small of my back, a scarred hand to hold, kind eyes to still the crashing waves around me, whispers of Truth to ground my heart. Love saved me.
The child didn’t yet know how desperately she would cling to Love over the mountains and across the valleys. The woman dares not swing her feet over the side of her bed without first finding Love, securing her hand in His.
—
Summer, 2021
My weak knees bend towards the earth as I fall. My husband and I sit there, disappointment crowding our vision, bitterness filling our noses.
How long, O Lord? Will you forget us forever? Do you love us at all?
Face in my hands, I let the tears come. Grief sits so close our thighs are touching, their hand resting on my muddy knee. I didn’t ask them here, but these days they’re always around.
Words come, but they don’t make sense as we try to wrap our heads around the enormity of this fresh bitter sadness. Over and over, we ask each other, we ask the Lord, we look at grief with rage in our eyes:
Is there love? Is this love? Are we loved? Why, why, why?
Grief’s pressure on my knee is so great that I don’t feel it when Love settles His scarred hands on the back of my head. Warmth floods my body but I don’t understand it is Him. Tears fall from His eyes too.
I am Love, He says.
You are loved. I have not forgotten you. There are things you cannot see.
—
If grief was sent to bring me to the feet of my Savior, Love was sent to do the saving.
Love has always been and will always be: purposeful, ever near, gentle and lowly.
Though both were always present, grief was louder for years; its hand squeezing tighter, its scent stronger, its gaze more piercing. It was a daily fight to keep my grip on Love in the presence of grief that felt so heavy.
And yet, I don’t resent it.
Grief never let me stray from the Love I knew would always win the day.
And Love never left me. Not once.
I know the lines of His hand like I might never have otherwise. I know intimately of His capacity to work all things for our good, for His glory, for her.
I catch my foster daughter’s eyes in the rearview mirror today, just as a song about the faithfulness of Love comes through the speakers. On a dreary, ordinary winter day, tears fill my eyes as the sweet scent of Love fills our car.
Grief may still be buckled in the backseat, but Love is at the wheel. And it’s Love who whispers meaningfully to my heart:
It was never in vain. It’s for her.
Every no and not yet, our time with grief, our experience of Love Himself saving and keeping and holding us daily - has changed our lives and will be for her good too. He shows us His great love and we delight to pass it on.
—
Winter, 2025
Sunbeams slant across the floor.
There’s a little green spinner suctioned to our window. Baby girl is sitting parallel to it, her little hand raised, ready to flick the spinner as soon as it slows. But her eyes aren’t on the spinning toy, they’re watching with wonder at the moving shadow it creates on the floor.
She can’t even sit facing the window on a sunny afternoon for the way direct light pours in. The minute she tires, she’ll blink, squint, and turn to bury her head in the carpet. She sits parallel with her arm pressing against the glass; that’s how she discovered the shadows.
Her hand, the spinner, the lines on our patio doors - all lovely little shapes on the carpet. She flicks the spinner and then quickly reaches her fingers away from it, toward the shadow that dances before her.
Her eyes are wide.
Every now and then, she’ll turn to me as if to say mama, are you seeing this too? I meet her gaze and a smile lights her face as soon as she registers that she is seen. There’s a whisper of a prayer that leaps from my heart.
May she stay fearless in the shadows, confident in the Love that has overcome.
This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Love."
I imagine your personification of grief may look different than mine. This isn’t meant to be a description of all grief, but this is how I picture the companion that’s walked with me for many years now.
1 John 4:7-8: “Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love.”
1 John 4:16: “God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”
“Yada, the Hebrew word meaning, “to know,” is used multiple times throughout scripture for a variety of different topics. However, when the term is used to define the yada, as the relationship between man and God, it speaks of a deep intimacy that the Father longs to have with His children.” https://www.curtlandry.com/yada-cultivating-intimacy-with-god/