As the Old English proverbs goes, “We never know the worth of water till the well is dry.” Layman’s terms? You don’t know what you have until it is gone.
Possessions?
We all have lost them.
Opportunities?
People?
We’ve all lost those, too.
I don’t think people think of the losing of themselves.
But here I am, over a year after my mom’s passing, months after my dad’s strokes, realizing that somewhere in the avalanche of grief and survival mode, I lost something pretty precious (to anyone, but maybe more to someone who has degrees and a livelihood in what I do…)
I lost my words.
Not all of them, of course. I still had the necessary ones—the “good morning” to my children, the lesson plans for my students, the “how was your day?” that keeps a household running. But the other words? The witty ones that used to flow from my fingertips onto pages… the more introspective ones that helped me make sense of the world? Those went silent.
It’s strange how grief doesn’t just take what’s obvious.
It reaches into the corners of who you are and quietly pockets pieces you didn’t even know were connected to what– to who– you lost.
I haven’t written here in longer than I care to admit. (A fast scroll to the date of the previous post tells you that.) It would be nice to say that I tried to open a post to write, and the blank page would just stare back at me, and the cursor would blink– ever patient and persistent– and I would just sit here and try to squeeze words out like water from a stone.
But that’s not what would happen.
I didn’t even open to write a post.
Not until this morning.
I didn’t even try.
I did try in my personal journal. But the topics bounced around the obvious. I could casually write about my day, or what the kids did. This, that, and the other.
The irony wasn’t lost on me. Everyone kept saying I should journal through my feelings, that writing would help me process the grief, especially my friends who have walked similar paths. I went to a program called GriefShare, which also praised the virtues of writing as a healing exercise. Articles online and social media all say the same thing: “Write it out. Put pen to paper. Let the words heal you.”
Me?
Proverbial Crickets.
It’s a good thing God doesn’t need my words, because He wasn’t immune to the silence, either. To be honest, I’ve always struggled with prayer a bit. I want to be a woman of prayer. More than that, I guess I want to be a woman that accepts the answers to prayer with faith, not faltering. It is a hard thing to pray hard for things– miracles and mundane alike– and just get No’s. Or Waits with an undetermined timeline. Especially when other prayers from other people seem to get the replies you pray and wish for. He’s all of our Good Father; and it is His prerogative to do as He wills. I just wish I had (have) a stronger faith to immediately take the His No’s, no questions asked, and still feel just as loved and cherished as the children that He says yes to. It’s was a Struggle. It still is.
So I borrowed words. I let David carry my complaints in his psalms. I found myself in Job’s questions. Habakkuk’s wrestling became my own—asking for answers from heaven while simultaneously declaring trust, even when you look around see emptiness where fulness used to be.
On Sunday mornings, I borrow the words straight from the worship music. I lift my voice, often wobbly. I lift my face, often wet with tears as I sing. Meanwhile, my brain is busy– stacking circumstances like pieces of evidence, crafting careful arguments against every word my mouth shapes:
“All my life you have been faithful…”
Mom’s empty chair.
“All my life you have been so, so good…”
Dad’s strokes.
“With every breath that I am able…”
Bed-bound. Slurred speech.
“I will sing of the goodness of God.”
The way what used-to-be-fun Thursdays now felt like a mountain to climb.
But I sing anyway.
Because faith isn’t by sight.
Because someday it will be.
Because truth isn’t determined by how I feel on any given Thursday.
Because sometimes the most honest thing you can do is let ancient words carry what your own voice cannot, trusting that the God who inspired them understands the difference between your doubt and your disbelief.
So I kept to the main things. I maintained my home as much as possible—though “maintained” is generous. (Ignore some doom piles and dust bunnies, please.) I poured myself into homeschooling my children, determined that their education wouldn’t suffer because their mom was drowning in sadness. I showed up for my students, crafting lessons and grading papers, channeling what felt like the last reserves of my professional self into being the teacher that I wanted to be, and that they deserved.
Honestly, some days, even these “main things” felt (feels?) like too much.
Some mornings, getting dressed felt like a monumental achievement and the simple act of making breakfast required more emotional energy than I thought I had. But I did them anyway.
I’ve learned keeping going isn’t grand gestures.
It’s stubborn insistence on putting one foot in front of the other.
Grief is like living in a fog—not the romantic, misty kind you see in movies, but the thick, disorienting kind that makes you wonder if you are going to trip at every step.
I’d find myself standing in my kitchen, completely forgetting why I’d walked in there.
I’d start sentences and lose them halfway through.
(I still do.)
But I have noticed some words are trickling back slowly, tentatively. A bit like birds that come back after being scared away. They’re different now—maybe quieter, maybe more timid. This post itself is proof of that; these sentences that fought their way out despite everything. Maybe, just maybe, they were singing “a tune without the words.” Maybe they “never stopped at all.”
To anyone else who’s lost pieces of themselves in the wreckage of loss—whether it’s your words, your joy, your sense of purpose, or something else entirely—I want you to know that those pieces aren’t gone forever.
Maybe they are just rearranging themselves, learning how to exist, to come back to a world that’s been fundamentally changed.
Be patient with them.
Be patient with yourself.
Be patient with your faith– the fumbling, the clinging–
Be patient with Frowning Providence, when He hides.
Be patient.
We’ll see the Smiling Face.
embracing essentialism 