Sorrow is better than laughter;
for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.
Ecclesiastes 7:3
When you are sitting there alone and you are weeping, and the longing for your child is a thick and expanding heaviness in your chest threatening to erupt from your throat in silent, choking grief.
When the missing him becomes a mountain of sadness that is looming over you and you whisper your child’s name in astonishment and it just hurts, hurts like nothing you have ever known before and you cannot get away from it…
Do not despair.
Sit and let it come. Be still and let it crash through your soul. Let it topple every idol in your heart as it passes through.
For this is the work of God. This pain is Him working in you, purifying you, conforming you to the image of His Son. He is drilling, hammering, grinding, cutting away all that comes between you and Him.
Of course it hurts
Do not run from it.
“Comfort does not come to the light-hearted and merry. We must go down into ‘depths’ if we would experience this most precious of God’s gifts–comfort, and thus be prepared to be co-workers together with Him. When night, needful night, gathers over the garden of our souls, when the leaves close up, and the flowers no longer hold any sunlight within their folded petals, there shall never be wanting, even in the thickest darkness, drops of heavenly dew, dew which falls only when the sun has gone.”
“I have been through the valley of weeping,
The valley of sorrow and pain;
But the ‘God of all comfort’ was with me,
At hand to uphold and sustain.
As the earth needs the clouds and sunshine,
Our souls need both sorrow and joy;
So He places us oft in the furnace,
The dross from the gold to destroy.
When he leads thro’ some valley of trouble
His omnipotent hand we trace;
For the trials and sorrows He sends us,
Are part of His lessons in grace.
Oft we shrink from the purging and pruning,
Forgetting the Husbandman knows
That the deeper the cutting and paring,
The richer the cluster that grows.
Well He knows that affliction is needed;
He has a wise purpose in view,
And in the dark valley He whispers,
‘Hereafter Thou’lt know what I do.’
As we travel thro’ life’s shadow’d valley,
Fresh springs of His love ever rise;
And we learn that our sorrows and losses,
Are blessings just sent in disguise.
So we’ll follow wherever He leadeth,
Let the path be dreary or bright;
For we’ve proved that our God can give comfort;
Our God can give songs in the night.”
You Can Trust Him 