The sun had not yet risen that Monday morning when I got the phone call that rocked my heart and shook my entire world. My dad was gone, and I struggled to wrap my mind around the unfathomable, to find my footing upon quaking earth. With all my might, I wished I could turn back time and make it all different. But I was helpless for change, though I literally groaned for it.

It was an aggressive cancer. And we’d had only three weeks between his diagnosis and his death.

I could not imagine life without him, could not imagine not being able to call and hear his voice on the other end of the line, could not imagine that my children would not know their grandpa.

My heart bled out, and at moments it felt like the hemorrhaging ache might not ever heal. I was desperate to find the fringes of hope in the midst of grief’s thick fog. My soul longed for a landing place, somewhere my emotions could settle in and process through the inner storm.

Even so, the busy schedule of “normal life” pressed, day by day. The spinning world that I wished would stop for a few minutes, wouldn’t. And my own accusing inner voice told me to “hurry up and get myself together.”

From angles all around me, I felt rushed to recover. But I still bled.

One evening, a pastor offered to talk with me and my husband about this sudden journey of grief we were on. And that night, I began to touch the hope I was looking for — though it was in a place I might not have thought to look.

One of the most healing, freeing pieces of counsel I received in the midst of my mourning came when this pastor spoke one sentence: This is going to take time, and it’s okay to crumble on the living room floor, to weep and to cry out when the pain runs deep.

Suddenly, my exhausted soul took a breath. In a world that gives a get-it-together message, I had permission to break.

I began to find hope as I acknowledged my brokenness before the One who heals. My raw vulnerability became my intimate offering to Him.

A common human tendency is to want to get away from the ache — to bury it, rush past it, numb it. But the truth is, that throbbing space that we want to sedate is a space that is meant for God. A space that He longs to fill. And He invites us to break open and to come up close to Him in the trial.

When we look at the Psalms, we don’t find men who brushed off or toughed out the ache. We find those who entered into something sacred. Something so precious to God, He put it into Scripture.

They were men who broke. Who wept. Who lamented before God.

All night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears. {Psalm 6:6}

My tears have been my food day and night. {Psalm 42:3}

Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? {Psalm 43:5}

Our God is safe to unravel before. And He gives us permission to go there.

When storms and griefs blow through our worlds, we can go to the unraveling, melting, breaking place before God.

We don’t go there to sulk and drown in despair. We don’t go there to stay.

We go there to take hold of the One who will lead us out.

We go there to lean. To talk to Him. To commune with Him in a very deep place.

We go there to find to find our healing — to find Him — right there, in the middle of our darkest night and greatest ache. Because truly, He’s there.

He’s tender enough to catch our tears, strong enough to hold our broken pieces — and able to fashion something beautiful out of our brokenness.

So we break open before Him, trusting Him to be true to His name — the Healer will heal. The Comforter will give divine comfort. The Father of the fatherless will father.

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