Several years after the death of my seventeen-year-old son, Joseph, I could tell I was plunging further into a darkness from which I might never emerge. I had to make a choice. I had to trust God in the dark.
Trusting God in the dark is believing that no matter what I am enduring, it didn’t catch God by surprise. It is knowing that He will hold me because I am His.
Climbing out of the dark tunnel of grief required grit and grace. I was clueless as to how to muster up either. The process wasn’t pretty or painless. There’s no doubt in my mind that it was solely the prayers of my friends that pulled me out.
For decades, I’d claimed to believe in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I had put my confidence in Him. The hot crucible of grief was my place to back up what I said I believed and admit to myself who my God is. Was He the God I claimed to know, or a false god who can be manipulated into resolving my life’s circumstances?
I cried out to my Father, begging Him to give me the strength and will to surrender my grief to Him.
Trusting God in the dark does not mean that my grief will end. On the contrary. Grief recovery is a lifelong journey. It means I choose to trust God to use the stories of my life however He sees fit. It means having faith that outweighs my grief. And it requires knowing who I am in Jesus.
As they say in GriefShare: You can always trust the One who died for you.
A prayer for us …
Abba,
We need you. Help us to trust You in the dark. Let our faith be stronger than our grief. Grow us to be more like you.
Amen.