“Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for Him.’ The Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seeks Him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.” (Lamentations 3:21-26 NIV)
At a time when I thought my world had all but ended, when the realization was hammering at my heart that my daughter's death was not some nightmare from which I would recover but was for all time, a friend came into the room, put her arms around my neck, and said, "Everything's going to be all right."
I thought she was crazy. And yet.... and yet.... was it possible that she was right?
I had occasion, some years later, to be the consoler of a young woman whose son had lapsed into a coma from which he would not recover, and my words to her were the same. "Everything's going to be all right." And I felt my friend from that earlier time standing beside me, nodding - See, that's what I told you.
Improbably though it seems when grief first assaults us we do come to learn, though the surface of our life will often be in turmoil, that on a deep and unshakable level there is indeed a confidence that all is well.
Until that happens, we cling to the testimony of others and take hope: if for them, why not for us, too?
-- Martha Whitmore Hickman in “Healing After Loss”
#6412
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