Sit With Me
DEVOTIONALS
You don’t need an hour and a quiet house. You just need a few minutes and an open heart. Read one with your morning coffee. Read one when the day has been too much. Let the words sit with you.
God meets us in the ordinary moments. This is an invitation to notice.
Short readings for weary hearts, drawn from Scripture and real life.
The Water Ran Cold
When Your Heart Is Broken
There are some moments in life that quietly divide our story into before and after. We don’t recognize them while we’re living them. We simply wake up expecting another ordinary day, never imagining that by nightfall the person who closes their eyes will not be the same person who opened them that morning.
The day I came home from the hospital was one of those days.
I had spent three days there alone after delivering my stillborn baby. Three long days where time seemed to stand still, where every hour felt heavier than the one before it, and where silence became its own kind of companion. When it was finally time to leave, I walked out of the hospital carrying nothing in my arms except a grief too deep for words.
I don’t remember much about the drive home. I couldn’t tell you whether it was raining or whether the sun was shining. I don’t remember if the radio was on or if I drove in complete silence. What I do remember is looking out the window and wondering how the world could continue as though nothing had happened. Cars stopped at traffic lights. People carried shopping bags into their homes. Somewhere children were laughing, and life continued as it always had. Everything looked exactly the same, yet nothing in my world would ever be the same again.
When I pulled into the driveway, I sat in the car for a long time. I wasn’t ready to open the front door.
Home was supposed to be the place where new memories would begin, where tiny cries would fill the rooms and new routines would slowly become part of our lives. Instead, it felt like I was returning to a place I no longer recognized.
Eventually, I gathered enough strength to reach for my keys. I unlocked the front door and quietly stepped inside. The house greeted me with a silence I had never noticed before. The furniture hadn’t moved. The pictures still hung on the walls. The clock faithfully continued ticking, measuring seconds that suddenly felt meaningless. Nothing around me had changed, yet I had.
I wandered from room to room without really knowing why. I wasn’t searching for anything. I think I was simply trying to understand how life could change so completely in such a short space of time. Grief has a way of making familiar places feel unfamiliar. It changes the way a home sounds, the way a room feels, and even the way light falls through a window.
Without really thinking, I found myself standing in the bathroom.
I turned on the shower and waited for the water to warm, hoping that somehow its warmth might reach a place inside me that had suddenly grown so cold.
As the steam slowly filled the room, I stepped beneath the water and closed my eyes. At first, I simply stood there, letting the water run over my face. I wanted to pray, but I couldn’t find the words. My heart was carrying more questions than prayers, and I wasn’t sure how to hold either one before God.
The weight of everything that had happened finally became more than my legs could hold.
I sat down on the shower floor and cried until the water ran cold.
I don’t know how long I stayed there. Time seemed to disappear somewhere between the sound of the water falling and the sound of my own sobbing. I wasn’t only grieving the loss of my baby. I was grieving every first birthday that would never be celebrated, every bedtime story I would never read, every little hand I would never hold, every dream that had quietly slipped away before it ever had the chance to begin.
As I sat there, I thought I was completely alone.
Looking back now, I realize I wasn’t.
Although my heart was shattered and my prayers were little more than broken whispers, my heavenly Father had never left my side. Long before I had the words to describe what I was feeling, he was gently holding me in the shelter of his presence. While I sat there believing everything I loved had been taken from me, I was, without even realizing it, being covered by his feathers, and under his wings I was finding refuge.
I didn’t feel strong that day. I didn’t feel courageous, and I certainly didn’t feel as though my faith was unshakable. I simply cried. Yet even in those moments when I had nothing left to offer except my tears, God remained faithful. His love became the refuge my heart didn’t even know it was searching for.
Years have passed since that day, and every Easter my heart quietly returns to that shower floor.
It may seem like an unusual place to think about the resurrection, but I have come to realize that Easter did not begin with an empty tomb.
It began with unimaginable loss.
It began with a father watching his beloved son willingly walk toward the cross. It began with nails, thorns, tears, and a mother’s broken heart. It began with disciples who believed every hope they had placed in Jesus had died with him. It began with a stone rolled across the entrance of a borrowed tomb and the unbearable silence of a Saturday that must have felt as though heaven itself had stopped speaking.
I understand a little of what Saturday feels like.
I spent three days in the hospital after delivering my stillborn baby. For many years, that was simply another detail of my story. It was a memory I rarely lingered over because it hurt too deeply to revisit. Those three days felt endless. Time seemed to lose its meaning as one hour quietly blended into the next. I wasn’t counting the days. I was simply trying to survive them. It wasn’t until years later, while quietly reflecting on Easter, that I found myself returning to those three days with new eyes. Jesus, too, spent three days before resurrection morning.
For three days the world seemed to hold its breath. The disciples waited. Mary waited. Heaven appeared silent. Every promise seemed buried behind the weight of a sealed tomb, and no one could yet see that resurrection morning was already drawing near.
As I sat with that truth, I began to see my own story differently. Not because my suffering could ever be compared to his. It never could. The cross stands alone, and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is unlike anything the world has ever known. Yet my own three days became a quiet window through which I would one day understand his story more deeply.
For three days I waited.
For three days I wondered how I could ever walk back into a life that no longer felt familiar.
For three days I sat in a place where nothing seemed to change, where every hour felt suspended somewhere between unbearable loss and an uncertain tomorrow.
Looking back now, I realize I was never waiting alone.
The Father never stopped holding me.
The son understood every sorrow that words could never fully express.
The Holy Spirit remained beside me, gently sustaining a faith that was far too fragile for words.
The God who has always been father, son, and Holy Spirit was fully present during the darkest three days of my life. Even when I couldn’t feel him, he had not left me. Even when I couldn’t pray, he understood every tear. Even when I believed my story had ended, he was already preparing a dawn I could not yet imagine.
When I finally walked out of that hospital after three long days, I believed I was carrying nothing but heartbreak.
Now I know I was carrying something else.
The first quiet seeds of hope. I couldn’t see them. I couldn’t feel them. But God had already planted them.
Years later they would bloom into a deeper understanding of the cross, the empty tomb, and the God who had faithfully carried me through my own long Saturday.
Resurrection doesn’t always begin when the stone is rolled away. Sometimes it begins while we are still waiting behind it.
Saturday is the place where grief lives. It is the place between heartbreak and hope, between tears and healing, between what has been lost and what God has not yet revealed. It is the place where we ask questions that have no immediate answers and wonder if the light will ever return.
That shower became my Saturday.
I believed the story had ended. I believed death had spoken the final word. I believed I would carry that unbearable weight for the rest of my life without ever understanding why.
But God was already preparing Sunday.
Not a Sunday where I would forget my child, because love never asks us to forget. Not a Sunday where every question would suddenly have an answer. Instead, He began leading me toward a deeper understanding of the cross and the empty tomb.
The resurrection has never erased my grief. It has transformed my hope.
Jesus did not rise from the dead so that we would pretend suffering never happened. He rose so that suffering would never have the final word. The scars remained in his hands, yet the grave could no longer hold him. In the same way, the scars we carry through this life are real, but they are no longer the end of our story.
When I read Psalm 91 now, I no longer picture only a promise written on a page. I remember a shower floor, tears that would not stop, and a father whose wings were already wrapped around his daughter before she even knew she needed shelter.
“He will cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you will find refuge.” ~ Psalm 91:4
Those words are no longer simply Scripture I have memorized. They have become part of my story.
Perhaps this Easter you are carrying your own Saturday. Perhaps your heart is quietly breaking while the world around you celebrates. Perhaps you are wondering if anyone truly understands what it feels like to lose someone you love.
I want you to know that Jesus does.
He entered our suffering. He walked through death itself. He wept. He loved. He grieved and then he did what no one else could do. He walked out of the tomb.
Because he lives, death is no longer the end of our story, because he lives, every goodbye spoken in Christ carries the promise of another hello, because he lives, the coldest places in our hearts can slowly begin to feel the warmth of hope again.
I still remember sitting on the shower floor until the water ran cold.
But when I remember that day now, I no longer see a woman abandoned in her grief.
I see a daughter, covered by his feathers, safely beneath the wings of her heavenly Father, while he gently carried her through the longest Saturday of her life and toward the dawn of resurrection morning.
Psalm 91:4
Choosing Where I Walk Next
When You’re Healing From Trauma
When a past trauma gets stirred up, what can happen is we unknowingly walk the same worn paths again and again. Each time we replay it, that path can deepen, like a groove in the earth that keeps pulling us back into the same pain. Not because we want to live there, but because our body and heart remember.
Healing is not about sweeping it under the carpet or pretending it never happened. It is about pausing, looking at it honestly, and saying, whoa… that really hurt. That mattered, then choosing not to live there.
For me, that is where I consciously hand it to God. I acknowledge it fully, without minimizing it. Yes, it happened. Yes, it was painful, and no, it was never okay. Then I place it in the hands of the great God in heaven and remind myself that justice does not belong to me. As Scripture says, “Dear friends, never take revenge. Leave that to the righteous anger of God. For the Scriptures say, ‘I will take revenge; I will pay them back,’ says the Lord.” Romans 12:19 NLT.
Forgiveness does not mean approval. It does not mean excusing harm. It means releasing myself from carrying the weight of being judge, jury, and keeper of the wound. Forgiveness is an act of faith that says, I do not like what happened, but I refuse to let it shape the rest of my life. I am choosing to trust God with what I cannot fix or repay.
Every time I return to the pain without releasing it, that pathway grows wider and deeper. But when I intentionally walk a different path, one that says I have forgiven, God is still at work, something good is being formed even here, a new pathway begins to strengthen.
This is not denial. This is direction. I am not erasing the past. I am choosing where I walk next.
Song for reflection: https://youtu.be/dy9nwe9_xzw
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