When I awake

After the loss of a loved one, most don’t want morning to come. Somehow escape the pain in sleep. But morning comes. There have been a number of ‘big name losses’ this past year, Charlie Kirk and Kyle Busch among them. Yet there have been too many to count without ‘big names’. Each as tragic to those left behind.

Knowing it was coming, I literally grieved my way through three and a half years from diagnosis to the passing of my husband. And still, when my once vibrant man lay motionless, my world turned to a dense fog of unbelief and uncertainty. And those familiar lines from Psalm 139 echoed in my mind: “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me…” (vs 11 NIV)

But Jesus. The Light of the world. Verse 12 – “even the darkness will not be dark to You; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to You.” God didn’t let me hide in the darkness, for that is not possible for one of His children. When we say yes to Christ, we say yes to never walking or becoming lost in darkness.

First light and sunrise come early this time of year in South Florida. Just a few more days and it will be light before six in the morning. And being an early riser all my life, I love it. As outlines of trees and clouds begin to take form in that quiet time of dawn, it’s like hope once again says ‘good morning’.

“How precious to me are Your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.” (vs 17-18b) When I first read these verses, they seemed to confirm that God’s thoughts are unfathomable, and they are. But in this case a more literal reading is: “How precious concerning me are Your thoughts, O God!” We can’t begin to comprehend that we are never out of His thoughts.

At first, each morning felt like I was all alone. No one making coffee. No one sitting with me. Just me. And I sobbed most of those mornings. For me they were much harder than the evenings. Today there are moms sobbing over children gone too soon. Wives wandering around with tears on their cheeks. But those who call God our Father know all is not lost. Our weeping is painful, but someday we will hold them again – and we’ll know death can never take them away.

The aha moment of these verses is found in 18b: “When I awake, I am still with You.” Oh, the depths of comfort those eight words bring. Jesus doesn’t leave us when we shut our eyes in sleep. He doesn’t leave us when the worst happens. There is never a place He leaves us alone. That verse can’t be read as if He comes right back when we wake up, because the key word is: ‘still’.

Right beside us all night long. Right beside us in the heartache. Right beside us in the fog of loss. Right beside us as the day dawns. Right beside us on this earth journey. Someday our faith will become sight – our last breath here will be our awakening to His face.