I often think of those early days after Mason died when we were completely overwhelmed with love by the people around us.
I learned many things in those days. The importance of being in community, the value of friends and family, the beauty of the unique gifts God has given my loved ones…
God has put in my life a beautiful assortment of people. People who knew best how to love us, how to serve my family. What to say, and more often than not, what not to say. Some were just really, really good at knowing what kids need and how to best give them a break from grief. Some knew the last thing I wanted to do was figure out what to wear to my son’s funeral so they brought me bags from their own closets and shopped for clothes I would never want to pick out for a day I didn’t want to happen. Months of meals were organized, groceries were delivered, our freezer was soon filled and there was a corner in my dining room brimming with an assortment of snacks to sustain my kids and their friends at any given moment of the day.
There wasn’t just enough food at my house to feed my family. There was enough to feed an army.
But that is what it was like, an army. An army of amazing people fighting away the oppression and shock of grief for us, shielding my family. Surrounding us and doing all sorts of things… installing a backyard zip-line, cleaning my house, fixing things, running errands, replenishing coffee, homeschooling my kids, covering us in prayer. There was a revolving door of people coming to love us.
People put their lives on hold so ours wouldn’t fall apart.
And then there were the people who loved my friends and family and helped support them so they could support us.
These people are all beautiful tools of God’s faithfulness to me.
Almost every day in the first couple weeks, there was something new-found on our doorstep, anonymously left by some kind soul who was led by the Lord knowing exactly what we needed. New kleenex boxes appeared just as the old ones were depleted. Breakfast pastries when no one could think about preparing food. Scented candles when I had just started thinking so many bodies in my warm house wasn’t smelling so great. Toys for my kids when they needed a distraction. Family board games. More food. Fresh produce. There were things we thought about needing that we never had the chance to speak out loud and they appeared at the doorstep. I mean, it truly was a beautiful thing to just see the faithfulness of the Lord play out in big ways and in small ways. And in the moments of suffocating grief, even the small ways become massively big ways.
There was, and still is, a haze surrounding those moments. A very surreal, “Wait, this cannot possibly be my life” feeling. So I still filter through these memories of people who came to love us. The cards and gifts and flowers people sent. The kind words. The faithful friendships.
Sure, there are plenty of other memories that rush in… The tears. The shock. The sounds of my kids crying, The moment I sat at my table, staring at Mason’s backpack hanging on the wall, realizing he’d never put it on again. Longing for the sound of his laughter. Dropping off his clothes at the mortuary. The deep-gut, nauseous pain that made me think I was moments away from throwing up… or shattering into a million pieces. The haze of exhaustion and the weight of sorrow. A devastating awareness that my future had been horrifically and irrevocably altered, without my permission or acceptance.
While many aspects of the last few years have been intense and overwhelming and the stress and anxiety is nothing I am equipped to handle without daily dependence on God, there are also many days and many seasons of mundane weariness. And I sometimes wonder how I got here and what the rest of life will look like. And honestly, I just long for eternity and the beauty and perfection that await me. But how do I keep going here? How do I keep the filter I use to see this world from being clouded by bitterness, or defeat, or despair?
What will I dwell on? What will I long for?
Trust in the Lord, and do good;
Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness. Psalm 37:3
A few years ago I read this verse and wondered, what does this look like for me? How can I feed on the faithfulness of the Lord?
That is when I started journaling the different ways God has been faithful to me. On especially hard days when the pain of losing Mason creeps up to crush me again, I choose to relive those dark days by seeing God’s hand in all of it. How he never left my side.
Sometimes its just a list of things. Or lists of names, those people who surrounded me to soften the hardest of all blows. Lists of ways God provided. Bills that were paid, details the Lord took care of.
But when anxiety attempts to gnaw at the edges of my hope and my own memories become clouded by a blurring pain, I read the accounts of others and feed on the faithfulness of a God who existed before the universe and has been intimately involved in every age of mankind since.
I open God’s Word and I list examples of his faithfulness. Because while it feels like the future is unpredictable and things have changed in terrible ways I never wanted, God is never-changing.
I read of the widow of Zarephath whose oil jug and flour jar never became empty. Joseph, retrieved and redeemed from all his lonely years in a dark prison cell. Rahab, who must have stared in awe when the walls around her began tumbling but hers stood firm. Ruth, the widow in a foreign land. The childless women… Sarah and Rachel and Hannah, whose arms were full after many years of longing.
Joshua, the new leader of a meager army who needed courage to invade a land filled with giants. And Esther, who needed courage to step where she didn’t belong and appear before the king.
He is faithful in a lion’s den, a devastating flood, a desolate famine, a burning furnace, the unknown, the unpredictable, through sudden death, through betrayal, in all things, in spite of us, and for all eternity.
Perhaps the account of the Lord’s faithfulness that has spoken to me the most over the last few years is the provision of manna for the Israelites.
Every single day for 40 years they walked outside their tent and were greeted with food. God’s faithfulness was so tangible and beautiful. Immediate and life-sustaining. The bread of angels. Every. Single. Day. And a double portion before the Sabbath.
As much as they needed. But never too much that they became independent of needing it. Because the excess would spoil every night, the Israelites were forced to take just enough for the day. And live with faith that God would provide it tomorrow.
If they could hoard it for days or weeks or even years, they would rely on their own storehouse, their secret stash. Not on the supernatural provision of the Lord. They could easily become independent and take their eyes off his faithfulness.
But every morning was a reminder of his faithfulness. His provision. His presence. His promise.
And every single day, they had to step outside their tent and collect it. Every morning was a renewed step in receiving God’s faithfulness. It was everywhere. Covering the ground. Overwhelming quantities. But the Israelites still had to receive it. They had to get up, walk out, see it, and collect it. They did play a part in the story of God’s faithfulness. They had to choose to accept it. Choose to feed on it. And choose to believe his faithfulness would continue day after day after day.
And his faithfulness in daily provision did not end with their desert wandering. And it hasn’t ended for me even 3 1/2 years after burying my child.
The presence of the Lord is constant. To persevere in the weary seasons, in the painful trials, the unknown. The predictable and the unpredictable.
Just as the Israelite children were daily fed the faithfulness of the Lord, I too want my children to grow up with a daily consuming of God’s faithfulness. I want to feed them the faithfulness of my own testimony, the steadfastness of the Lord through the Bible. I want them to know of the miraculous as well as the mundane.
I want to teach them to not wait until devastation appears to go in search of this life-giving bread. Don’t wait until their stomach is empty because desperation may drive them to fill it with what isn’t life-giving. I pray they learn now to be in the practice of filling their soul with the supernatural sustenance of God’s Word. Because when tragedy strikes and horror keeps them from being able to see straight, their heart will already have been fed and they will know with assurance where to go to be filled.
Feed on faithfulness. When they are desperate and lonely, yes. But also when they are content and full. Begin the practice before they need it. Stay steadfast in the discipline of knowing truth.
Always look for it. Step out of the tent and receive it. Every day. And when times are darkest, and life deals the most painful of blows, never forget his faithfulness is there. In abundance.
He is good. He is faithful.
Always.
Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not.
They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“Therefore I hope in Him!”
Lamentations 3:22-24
