Grief, I’m learning, is complicated. It’s a range of emotions that play with our intellect and shape our demeanour. I find myself going through the motions in a type of limbo – not wanting to be sad, but unable to be happy. I wish I could tell you that I have found some peaceful rhythm in all of this. I haven’t. Some days, returning to God is an act of intention rather than a feeling. And I return.
I know that God is at work in this space, and it takes so much of my energy to call myself back into His presence and ask “What are you doing here? “
I don’t think he’s showing me the what, but instead showing me the how.
How do you carry suffering while still opening your hands to receive His grace?
Outside, the world continues its own quiet work. The warmth gives way to chill, and the leaves begin to loosen their hold. I don’t particularly feel ready for another season of letting go. And yet, autumn has arrived, whether my heart is prepared for it or not.
Perhaps this is why the changing leaves catch my attention differently this year. If I close my eyes and imagine life within its limbs, I can almost see its arms trying to cling to their beauty. And yet, the tree simply participates in the life for which it was created, releasing what it can no longer hold. I wonder if grief is inviting me to recognize that this release, too, is a participation in a life I cannot control. Perhaps this is where trust begins: accepting that we are not in control of everything and learning to cooperate with the grace that meets us in the letting go.
Release is not the end of growth, but part of what makes growth possible. Without letting go, there is no room for what is still waiting to emerge.
September held heartache before it ever brought surrender to my doorstep. It carried the weight of my dad’s hospitalization, the fear and exhaustion of those days, and the helplessness of loving someone whose suffering I could not take away. It also held the heavenly birthday of my beloved uncle and the anniversary one of my dearest friend’s passing – people who had brought so much light into my life. Grief was already making its home in me when September arrived.
And yet, September became a month where holding on and letting go were no longer ideas to reflect upon, but the reality of my own life. Grief and grace arrived together.
With my heart already aching, I learned of the death of yet another man who had shaped my life – a mentor, cheerleader, and encourager for more than forty-five years. His very last message to me, sent after my dad’s passing just a few short months earlier, was simple: Be brave.
He had no idea that those were the very words I had used in my dad’s eulogy.
Be brave. Words he had offered as encouragement were becoming an invitation to hold grief while at the same time receivinging something I’d long prayed for. My daughter, who had held onto the hope of becoming a mother for many years and had never given up, was in labor.
Our personal miracle was unfolding at the very moment another life was leaving mine.
This is the tender defiance I am learning:
The joy didn’t erase the losses.
The losses didn’t diminish the joy.
Somehow, both were true, and I was being invited to hold them together.
I’m learning that we cannot explain away our suffering. We cannot pretend the darkness isn’t real. But, even there, something beautiful is being given.
We can become so focused on the page of suffering we are living that we forget we are part of a much larger story. The pain is real, but it’s not the whole story.
Beauty in broken places isn’t always extraordinary. Sometimes, it is the ordinary gift of another day. A message from someone who believed in you. A glimmer of hope as we hold our dreams. A memory that still makes you smile, even when your heart aches.
My dad taught me what bravery looks like in the midst of trials – it’s not the absence of grief, or even the strength to overcome it. It is choosing to get up another day and take another step while learning to carry what we’ve lost in our hearts.
And perhaps this is where I am being invited to practice a tender defiance: to refuse to let sorrow have the final word about what is beautiful. To hold the color when it comes. To notice the gifts that still find their way into my hands. To receive joy without feeling that I must apologize for it, and to let love continue even when it hurts.
This is not a defiance born of strength alone. It is a quiet willingness to trust that even here, God is still creating, still giving, still inviting me to receive.
And so I will keep looking for the color.
Not because I have forgotten the clouds, but because I am learning that the clouds do not have the final word.
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