This week has been the hardest in my memory.
I have not felt grief this deep in years.

A baby I once held in my arms
is now held in his Heavenly Father’s arms.
He was only two and a half years old.
Yet in the last few months,
he fought battles most adults could never endure,
Chemo. Radiation. Hospital rooms became his whole world.
And through it all, he fought like a warrior.

I don’t know if I ever meant anything to him,
but he meant something to me.
And that truth revealed itself in the tears,
because you can only wail like that,
if love has already made a home in you.

I didn’t cry that day when I saw him in the freezer box,
But I wailed like I haven’t in years.
The sound of love breaking open.
Grief tore through me and left no air to breathe.
It is one thing to lose a child you know from afar,
another when it’s the child you held.

As a grown man, it’s hard for me to admit that I wailed that day.
Harder still to accept that maybe my heart is tender,
that in spite of age, strength, and all the walls we build,
grief can still break you wide open.

And yet, even in this sorrow, I witnessed something holy.
A father who slept by his son’s side for months without rest,
A mother carrying life in her womb,
carrying her son through suffering,
resilient beyond words
delivering a daughter only hours after losing a son.
Life and loss, arriving in the same breath.
A mystery too heavy to put into words.

Their faith was not undone by sorrow,
though grief pressed heavy on their chest.
Disappointment lived in their eyes,
but their lips still carried praise.

In the silence of loss, they whispered His name.
In the weight of questions, they lifted their hands.

It is one thing to praise in joy,
another to praise in mourning.
To stand at the edge of heartbreak and still say,
“Blessed be His name.”

That faith is a light the darkness could not put out.
Transcendent.
More beautiful than anything I’ve seen.

I saw love expand its borders.
I watched friends become family.
Some knelt in prayer.
Some opened their wallets.
Some simply stayed,
holding space for the weight of this sorrow.

And I was reminded that blood isn’t the only thing that makes a family.
Love does.