Till We Are Home

In grief, the waves come, and the waves go. The past few days the waves of grief rolled in as I’ve been missing my daughter and thinking a lot of her. Just yesterday I sat in our school room during some of my meetings for work and looked at the pictures of our three kiddos that hang around the room. I look at those pictures all the time, but yesterday that new, now-familiar feeling hit me that I just miss having my three children around. 

It hit me that our family felt full with all three of our children with us, but now I feel an emptiness.

Our family went from just the two of us to five of us within 6 years of our marriage. For 14 wonderful years, our three children filled our home. (I’ve written in the past about this and feel it to be true – we are still a family of five.) But not having one of my kiddos around – my short stack, my IzaBiz – feels…so…well…there’s an emptiness…a lack of fullness. 

At the end of the day, I just miss my little girl. 

And without her we feel an emptiness. An emptiness that we carry every single day. But, I’ll say this – over time, that feeling of emptiness changed. It was quite acute and painful in those early days. Despite this…despite the acute pain of the early days and the pain of today, I sincerely believe that the Lord ministers to this hurt with His own fullness. 

There’s an old hymn that we were introduced to before Isabel’s death that the Lord used wonderfully and tenderly in our lives after losing her. “Be Still My Soul” was written by Kathrina von Schlegel in the 1700s and sings of the truth of God’s nearness in our grief. The third verse, often unsung today, is especially beautiful:

Be still, my soul! when dearest friends depart

And all is darkened in the vale of tears,

Then shall you better know his love, his heart,

Who comes to soothe your sorrow and your fears.

Be still, my soul! your Jesus can repay

From his own fullness all he takes away.

The last two lines of that verse get me every time – 

my Jesus can repay 

what He takes away

from His own fullness

What a beautiful truth! This loss, this emptiness, this lack of fullness that I feel when I look up at all the sweet pictures of our three children around me…our family of five…can be – and is!! – filled by the fullness of Christ.

Man…it still hits me hard – the death of my littlest one. It still hurts and pains me to feel that lack of fullness in our home. But it’s also true that Jesus fills what was taken away by His own fullness. Both joy and sorrow…

And He will fill us with His fullness…in all our pains and sorrows and griefs. These will come because we live in a fallen world. And they will take away, leaving an emptiness behind. But Jesus can and will come to fill that emptiness with Himself…

Till we are home…