When It's Hard · Grief & Loss
Grieving Someone Still Living
For when you feel: estrangement, dementia, addiction took them, they're gone but alive
Who healeth the broken of heart, and bindeth up their bruises.
The MinuteHomily
Some grief has no funeral. You sit across from a parent who no longer knows your name, or stare at a phone that will not ring, or watch addiction take someone whose chair still sits full. The world counts them as here, so no one brings casseroles, and you carry one of the loneliest kinds of mourning quietly. God sees the wound precisely. "He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds," and the picture behind those words is a physician wrapping bandages by hand, one at a time. He is not waiting for your situation to resolve before He starts tending you. And the one you grieve is still alive, which means still reachable by prayer, and nobody is beyond the reach of the God who binds.
By the MinuteHomily editors
A prayer for this moment
Father, I'm mourning someone I can still see. Bind up this strange wound, keep my hope from dying, and reach them where I can't. Amen.
“Patience obtains all things.”
St. Teresa of Ávila
Hymns for this moment
“Hosea (Come Back to Me)” · Gregory Norbet
the long-love song of God
“O God, Our Help in Ages Past” · Isaac Watts
One small step
Pray for them by name today, one sentence, and hand the timeline to God.
Share this moment
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