Gracie Girl Blog

I wrote this recently as a quiet-time reflection I felt the need to type out. The tone sounds sorrowful but the message brings me joy and peace. I hope it does the same for you and is the encouragement you need whether you’re in a season of grief, the holidays are difficult, or you just need this today. 

So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy. 

John 16:22

How I yearn for a time when no one will take away my joy. A time with no grief. It feels like, in one way or another, I’ve been grieving my whole life. But I get to look into my Jesus’ eyes at the end of my earthly life and rejoice. Grief is but a moment. In this world, grief just means you loved hard. And we’re called to that, always. Called to love hard. Yet also, called to rejoice in the middle of grief that comes from loving hard. One day, we’ll rejoice free of grief. We’ll rejoice in the midst of only joy. Let that fact encourage you to love hard now, so that more may join in the chorus of joy when we all get to heaven. 

I think today my heart was just yearning for home. To physically go home to my family and my animals. But also true home, heaven. I was reminded I don’t belong here, earth is my temporary home. Our hearts ache to be near our Father, to return to the heavens where we were carefully made. 

May that encourage you today, you aren’t home yet and heartache is a symptom of that. 

Very truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. 

John 16:20 

We aren’t numb to pain the way the world can be. How do you lean into life crushing pain when you don’t believe in a savior? The short answer: you don’t. You numb it however you have to. But us who lean in will find joy. Joy in this life and in the next. 

In that day you will no longer ask me anything. 

John 16:23a

A day when we no longer have a laundry list of questions for Jesus. When things make sense. When we see how his love was always the answer, ever present and ever working. How my heart longs for that day but until then, I’ll keep asking the questions because sometimes He answers with answers and always He answers with love. 

“A time is coming and in fact has come when you will be scattered, each to your own home. You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me.” 

John 16:32

Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me.