A Blessing for Those Who Hold Both
May is one of those months I enter every year like I am stepping onto a trail I have never hiked before.
I know that probably sounds strange because, in one sense, I know the trail. I know the dates. I know the turns. I know Mother’s Day will come. I know PJ’s birthday will come. I know the day he died will come. I know my birthday will come the day after. I know the month will eventually end because it always does.
But grief does not hand you a map.
It doesn’t send an itinerary. It doesn’t tell you which part will hit first, which memory will knock the wind out of you, which conversation will undo you, which ordinary moment will suddenly become tender, or which day will pass more gently than you expected. It doesn’t tell you when sorrow will show up loud and raging, or when it will come quietly, like fog settling over everything.
So, every year, I step into May with a familiar uncertainty. I know I have to get through it. I know life is on the other side of it. I know life is in the middle of it and at the beginning of it too, even when it doesn’t feel that way. But I still enter the month already bracing myself, wondering which part of grief will show up first.
Will it be sadness? Anger? Numbness? Shame? Longing? The overwhelming sense of failure that can still rise up when I remember all the ways I wish I had been a better mom.
There are moments on the trail when the view is stunning. A memory arrives, not to wound me, but to remind me of the gift. A friend shares a PJ story I had forgotten, and for a moment I can see him again through someone else’s love. A photo catches my eye. Someone says his name. I remember his laugh, his humor, his stubbornness, his tenderness, and the goodness of the life he lived.
Those moments feel like coming around a bend and finding the whole valley spread out in front of you, full of light. They do not erase the grief, but they remind me that grief is not the only thing May holds. May holds birth. May holds love. May holds memory. May holds evidence that he was here, and that his life mattered deeply.
And then, sometimes, the trail turns.
Suddenly there is mud and muck and boulders and agony to scramble over. There are memories that do not feel soft. There are thoughts that feel sharp. There is the ache of what cancer took, the trauma of what we witnessed, the exhaustion of what we carried, and the sorrow of what we could not stop. There is the ick of shame when I remember moments I wish I could redo, words I wish I had said differently, ways I failed him, and then failed him again.
That part of the trail is brutal.
It is also the part where I am learning not to hold back with God.
I don’t always come to Him calmly. I don’t always come with reverent words or tidy prayers. Sometimes I come with rage. Sometimes I come with questions I don’t know how to ask without sounding like I am accusing Him. Sometimes I come with silence because I am too tired to form sentences. Sometimes all I can do is sit down in the dirt and wail.
And I believe Jesus sits there with me.
Not impatiently. Not with crossed arms. Not waiting for me to compose myself so we can keep moving. I believe He sits with me in the mud and grief and memory. I believe He weeps with me, just as He wept at the tomb of His friend. I believe He is not offended by lament because Scripture gives us language for it over and over. I believe He is near to the brokenhearted, even when the brokenhearted are angry, exhausted, numb, ashamed, or afraid.
There is nothing neat about this kind of grief. It’s not a trail you conquer. It’s not a mountain you climb once and then check off the list. It’s more like learning to walk with a painful limp that has become part of you. Not the whole of you, but part of you. A limp you did not choose, did not want, and cannot pretend away.
And yet, somehow, life keeps showing up on the trail.
That may be one of the strangest mercies of God. Even in deep grief, whether the loss is fresh or aged, God still gives glimpses of goodness. There are meals around tables, laughter with friends, grandsons growing taller, music that cracks something open, sunsets that feel like grace, prayers that rise when you thought you had none left, and moments when the goodness of God is not a theory, but a hand under your elbow helping you take one more step.
Psalm 121 says, “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come?” The answer is not that the hills are easy or that the trail is safe or that the path is clear. The answer is, “My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”
My help comes from the Lord.
Not from my ability to understand. Not from my ability to make grief palatable. Not from my ability to keep everyone comfortable. Not from my ability to hold both joy and sorrow without trembling. My help comes from the Lord, the One who keeps me, carries me, and does not sleep through my hardest nights.
As May comes to a close, I am not walking out of it with a grand lesson. I am not wrapping this series with a perfect bow. I am not declaring that I have learned how to hold this month well every year. Some years I do. Some years I don’t. Some years I limp and crawl more than I walk. Some years the views are breathtaking and the mud is brutal, and both are true.
Maybe that is the honest ending.
May is complicated. Grief is complicated. Love is complicated. Being human is complicated. Faith does not remove the tension, but it gives us Someone to cling to inside of it.
So, if you have found yourself on the mountain path holding both, this blessing is for you.
For those whose grief is fresh and still takes up the whole room.
For those whose grief is years old but still calendar-shaped.
For those celebrating while aching.
For those numb this year and wondering why the tears will not come.
For those who feel guilty for being okay.
For those who feel guilty for not being okay.
For those who are tired of being brave.
For those who have been told, directly or indirectly, that their grief is too much.
For those who need permission to let the month be complicated.
May the Lord bless you in the both/and.
May He bless you when joy surprises you and when sorrow knocks your feet out from under you.
May He bless you in the memories that make you laugh and the memories that make you ache.
May He bless you when you can pray with faith and when all you can do is whisper, “Help.”
May He bless you when you walk, when you limp, when you sit down in the dirt, and when you need others to carry what you cannot carry alone.
May the Lord keep you when the calendar turns tender.
May He keep you when the date arrives.
May He keep you when everyone else has moved on with their day and your heart is still standing in the memory.
May He keep you from believing that grief makes you weak, that lament makes you faithless, or that sorrow means you have lost your way.
May the Lord make His face shine upon you in the middle of the trail.
Not only at the overlook.
Not only when the view is beautiful.
Not only when you are grateful and composed and able to name the good.
May His face shine upon you in the mud, in the dark, in the questions, in the shame, in the rage, in the silence, and in the places where you are still learning how to breathe.
May He be gracious to you when you are hard on yourself.
May He be gentle where you have been harsh.
May He speak tenderly to the places in you that still believe you should have done more, known more, fixed more, or somehow changed the ending.
May the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.
Not the kind of peace that denies what happened.
Not the kind of peace that asks you to stop missing the one you love.
Not the kind of peace that forces a smile over a wound.
But the peace of knowing you are not alone.
The peace of Christ beside you.
The peace of being held by the One who knows the whole trail, even when you do not.
And as you walk forward, may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit, hope may rise again.
Quietly, maybe.
Slowly, maybe.
With a limp, maybe.
But still, hope.
For those of us holding sorrow and joy, hope and despair, gratitude and ache, life here and longing for life made whole, may we know this:
Jesus is not afraid of the tension.
He meets us in it.
He walks with us through it.
And one day, He will make all things new.
Posts in this series
Photo by Stefan Lehner on Unsplash
