I was given an amaryillis at Christmas time and still all that is there are four  green leaves and no flower. For the past few weeks I have been faithfully phoning to get a date for my next, now long overdue, infusion. When I think outside of all this minimal frustration, I am aware of the dear people I know who are living with a horrible health diagnosis, or terrible, heartbreaking loss, recently or every day for many years. So all in all, living with nothing is a common struggle for most of us, at one point or another. I am writing this conscious of the words of Henri Nouwen who said, ‘The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there.”* I don’t see myself as someone who has been through the darkness you have, so all I write is a gentle pondering.

I could never lay down some foolproof instruction for living without. I don’t think that even exists anyway, thankfully. All I can do is tell you to hold on to one another and eventually find a little bit of hope to keep you going.  It says in 1 Corinthians 13, ‘now three things remain: faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love.’ So the amaryllis might never bloom, your health problems might never go away, you can never replace the person you have lost, but love will always remain. Right now that might feel like an empty consolation, but, in time, I pray that you will see that love will always endure and will always show up when you need it most.

Yesterday afternoon I was cycling in the park and had to slow down because a little girl by the name of Hope was happily trudging along behind her mother and big sister. She is still very young but in that moment she was the beautiful, timely reminder to me to always keep hope in our sights and let it lead us forwards.

My heart aches for anyone who is living with loss, but I truly believe that there is one, true, never-ending thing that will catch you when you fall, comfort you when you mourn and be with you when you can’t see or feel anything else. That is the love our Father God has for you. And it never fails.❤️

*Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer (London: Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd, 1994), p. 72.