Psalm 56:8
You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?

I was a young, busy pastor and church planter when my mom died. I felt the pressure to get through grief quickly and get back on my feet. Ministry demanded all my limbs, and I was frustrated that grief had sapped my energy and drive. My main question in those days was simple: “When will my arm grow back? I need my arm back.”

So I set out to conquer grief as if it were a task. I read the books, followed the steps. We even planted a tree in her honor at the Missouri Botanical Garden. “That will help me get through it,” I told myself. But the heavy, draining grief remained. In desperation, I booked a flight to Colorado to climb a mountain I had once climbed with my mom. Surely that would reset me.

Halfway up the trail, I came across a mother grouse with her baby. I stopped to watch them pecking for food. When I took a step forward, the mother startled and flew off, leaving her little one behind. And it hit me like a blow: She is gone. Mom is gone. And I am left without her. Right there on the trail, I sat down and wept.

Last week, a letter arrived from the Botanical Garden. The tree we planted for Mom had died. Enclosed was the tag we’d written in those tender days after her death. Everything in me wanted to shut it out. “It’s just a tree. All trees die. Move along.” But then I remembered the grouse. I sat down in my soul, and I wept again.

Between my mom’s death and the death of her tree, there have been other losses—other amputations of people, dreams, friendships, and vocational hopes. Maybe you have some too. If so, here’s what I’ve learned:

• Grief is messy and unpredictable. There’s no map for getting through it.
• Your arm will not grow back. The right question is not, “When will I get it back?” but, “How do I live now with one missing?”
• The pain ebbs and flows. You can numb it with distraction, but sooner or later you have to sit in it and feel the truth of your loss.
• Grace meets us in the tears. On that mountain trail and in every loss since, my tears have been the doorway to grace. As my friend Joshua Burdette once told me, “God bottled those tears and calls them sacred.”
• We worship a weeping God (John 11). And it’s through tears—our tears and His—that we discover we are not alone on the trail. He is with us, bottle in hand, every step of the way.