Holding Hope When Everything Hurts

This Lent has been heavy.

Not the kind of heavy you can name neatly or wrap up in a tidy prayer.

The kind that sits in the room with us, in red eyes, in long hugs, in the quiet “I’m okay” that isn’t really okay.

A colleague reminded me the other day, softly, “Easter is coming.”

And I took a deep breath, but what does hope mean when everything still hurts?

Author Sophia Dembling writes about a man who reached out to her just weeks after his wife died, asking, “Please write something hopeful.”

I’ve been sitting with that.

Because if we’re honest, some of our hopes in grief are impossible.

We hope the door might open and everything will be as it was.

We hope for a way around the pain.

A prayer that makes it disappear.

But grief doesn’t work like that. There is no way around it. Only through.

And that is not the kind of hope most of us want.

But maybe hope isn’t about escaping grief. Maybe hope is what we practice inside of it.

Hope looks like showing up when your heart is breaking.

Lighting a candle. Saying a name. Telling a story.

Hope looks like tears, because tears mean love is still alive.

Those who have carried grief a little longer will tell you something hard to believe at first:

It changes.

Not gone. Not fixed.

But softer.

The sharp pain becomes a quieter ache, and sometimes those pangs feel like connection, like love still reaching for you.

So where is the hope?

Not somewhere far off. Not waiting for Easter morning. The hope is here.

In God, who does not rush us out of grief, but stays with us in it.

In life itself, stubborn and ordinary, still showing up in small, steady ways.

In each other.

Easter is coming.

Not to erase the pain, but to remind us:

Endings are not always the end.

Even here, something is still being held, still being made new.

So if you are grieving, you don’t need to be okay. You don’t need to feel hopeful.

Just stay. Stay with God. Stay with the small threads of life that are still here.