The Liturgy of Showing Up: Notes from the Hollow of Loss
My mom died this week.
Three days ago, in fact.
I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to do now. This is different from when our son died. Then I was crushed from head to toe. I felt like I failed in trying to ‘fix’ what was wrong, even though it was cancer and entirely out of anyone’s control.
This time, I feel a different type of lost.
It's somewhere in between trying to figure out who I am and what my place is in the family and not knowing how to do that at all.
The person who gave me life, and the person I gave life to, are both gone. I’m trying to wrap my head around that. I wish there were someone I could process this with, a sibling. There are so many stupid metaphors that come to mind as I’m wrestling with ‘what is this feeling?’
I’m the Oreo without the cookie part.
The P, B & J – but I’m just the B (laugh if you want…I get it too)
The brush with no paint or water
There are so many more – all equally as dumb. Again, I can’t wrap my head around this feeling. It seems I’ve lost my moorings of who I am in my own family.
Is this normal? Does everyone go through this? Is it unique to one losing a child and a parent? Or is it unique to only children?
Or, is it simply the perfect storm of family dynamics and loss that creates this misplaced, unplaced, lost feeling?
I keep telling myself that I know who I am in Christ. I do. And yet, right now, that truth feels like a stone I’m trying to grip with hands numb from the cold of loss. I can’t deny it’s still there, solid and unmoving, but my grip is weak. I’ve lost my moorings of who I am in my own family, and that’s throwing everything off balance.
When you grow up tethered to someone, first as a child dependent on your mother, and later as a caregiver when the roles reverse, you become shaped by that connection. And when those connections break? Even if you know where your eternal identity lies, you still find yourself whispering, “God, who am I now?”
I keep being drawn, like a lifeline of truth, to this verse:
“From the ends of the earth I call to you, I call as my heart grows faint; lead me to the Rock that is higher than I.” Psalm 61:2
I feel like I don’t have a strong voice right now (something many, including myself, will find ironic). My prayers feel more like gasping for breath rather than declarations. But this verse keeps reminding me that even when it seems I don’t have anything in me to stand, or crawl, or even weep, I can still call on God. He is the rock that is higher than my grief, my pain, my lament, my loss. And He, THE Rock, doesn’t move.
My spiritual compass hasn’t broken, but it’s spinning a little. I’m not questioning God’s goodness or presence. But I am asking what faith looks like in this particular hollow. After walking through so much death, first our son, now my mom, there’s a part of me that wonders how faith lives in grief when the grief keeps coming.
In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, there is a part of a verse (many actually) that says a truth, which again points me right back to the Psalm verse:
“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair…” 2 Corinthians 4:8
The phrase, ‘perplexed, but not driven to despair,’ is the place I stand right now. I don’t know what to do with the ache or the disorientation. And yet, and I know this for a fact because I’ve been here before, I am not destroyed. Something, SOMEONE, still holds me.
I am not exempt from the flood of life and loss, but I am also not abandoned in them either. There is a ‘with-ness’ in the sorrow. It doesn’t always feel like comfort in the moment, but it is a presence. God didn’t stop the loss, nor would I expect him to – we live in broken bodies, and I know that we will walk through suffering because of that. No, He didn’t stop the loss, but He didn’t step away from it, or me, either.
Is it possible to be anchored and adrift at the same time? Maybe this is what it means to lament faithfully. Maybe faith in grief doesn’t look like bold declarations or confident steps, but a fragile kind of clinging, half hope, half exhaustion, whispering “I still believe” through the tears.
I’m not even sure if I’m engaging in my spiritual life at all right now. Not really.
I guess an outsider might say I am—because I’m still digging through Scripture, still turning pages, still reaching. But most of the time, it feels more like I’m clawing through dry earth, searching for water I know is there. Maybe that’s still faith. Maybe that’s what faith becomes when everything else has gone quiet.
It’s not devotional or poetic. It’s not rich or full of insight. It’s me, in the dark, flipping through the Word at 3:00am because grief has stolen my sleep again. Maybe that’s my new liturgy: those long stretches of silence in the early morning hours, when it’s just me and the emptiness, and a whisper somewhere in my soul that still believes God is meeting me here.
I know the rhythms that feed me: worship music, journaling prayers, fasting with intention, reading with anticipation, solitude with joy. I know the paths I’ve taken before to find my way back to the heart of God. But right now, all of them feel…fruitless. Like I’m walking old trails with no landmarks. They’re still sacred, but they feel hollow. Or maybe I’m hollow?
And yet, I still show up. Even if the only prayer I can manage is, “I’m here.”
Even if the only worship I can muster is tears.
Even if the only act of faith I offer is not shutting down.
I suppose that’s something. Maybe that is everything.
When I say I believe that Scripture is true, and I hold to the lived reality that hope is an anchor for my soul (Hebrews 6:19), then maybe it’s doing its work beneath the surface, even when I don’t feel it. Maybe the anchor is holding me, not the other way around.
I don’t expect this rambling to make sense to anyone, much of it doesn’t to me either. But this time around, I’m writing my feelings more. I don’t want to forget what I’m going through because I want to feel every part of it. I also want to be able to walk with someone else who may be experiencing this as well.
So, for now, this is my space to process new grief, old grief, my belonging, my loss, my life.
