Seven Days In

You have made it to the midpoint. Seven days. That deserves to be acknowledged, not with fanfare, but with a quiet and honest recognition: you are still here. You opened this devotional again. That is not nothing.

Midpoints in grief can be strange and disorienting. There is sometimes a second wave here — a realization that you are still in the valley, that healing is slower than you hoped, that the world around you has resumed its pace while you are still moving through the fog. If that is where you find yourself today, this is a gentle place to pause and take stock.

How are you, really? Not the version of you that answers when someone asks in passing, but the version of you that lies awake at night, the one reading these words in a quiet moment. What is that person carrying today?

Lamentations is one of the most honest books in Scripture — a long, unsparing grief poem that does not resolve quickly or neatly. And yet in the middle of it, in chapter three, there is this: 'For the Lord will not cast off for ever.' Not 'will not cast off at all' — the writer was too honest for that. But not forever. The grief has a horizon.

You do not have to see that horizon today. You do not have to feel it. But it is there. God has not forgotten the other side of this valley exists. He is not going to leave you here permanently.

You are still walking. Keep going — at whatever pace you can manage. That is enough for today.