Others Who Have Walked This

You are not the first to walk through this valley. And though that knowledge does not shrink your pain — grief is not diminished by having company — there is a strange and real comfort in knowing that the road you are on has been walked before.

Think of the men and women in Scripture who carried grief: Job, who lost everything in rapid succession and sat in ashes. Hannah, who wept so bitterly in the temple that a priest thought she was drunk. David, who mourned his child, his friend, his failures. Naomi, who told people to call her 'Mara' — meaning bitter — because of all she had lost. Mary, standing at the foot of a cross.

These were not people of shallow faith. They were people of deep faith who were also deeply broken. And they made it through.

And then there are the countless ordinary people across centuries who have read Psalm 23 through tears, who have held onto 'the LORD is my shepherd' in their darkest nights, who have been exactly where you are and have walked — slowly, painfully, imperfectly — to the other side.

Paul writes that we are comforted so that we can comfort others. This valley you are in will one day make you a companion to someone else who is in their own valley. Your experience of God's faithfulness in the dark will be a lantern for someone else when they cannot find their own light.

You are not alone in this. A great cloud of the brokenhearted have walked before you, and God was faithful to them. He will be faithful to you.