Tender Mercies

There have been times in my life when I have experienced devastating, bone-crushing losses that feel like an anvil has been dropped on my chest. The kind where I wake up every morning and try to swallow my breakfast over the lump in my throat, and where certain words bring me to tears in the middle of the grocery store.

I have recently experienced two of these losses, and they are so closely intertwined it is almost hard to separate the pain of one from the pain of the other. In some ways it feels like one bottomless pool of devastation in which I am desperately treading water.

It seems like one loss can sometimes domino into another and another, and cause you to remember every related sadness that ever happened to you. But the good part is that it can also cause you to remember the tender mercies of the Lord and to look back on all the times you were carried through, and at all the people who became your tender mercies.

I think this is why the second loss has crashed into me with such force - it is the loss of one of those tender mercies who helped me get through the previous devastating blow just a month ago, and many many others before that. And even though we are only separated by 2000 miles, a mere phone call away in this day and age, it still hurts like there is an eternity between us.

But even though my heart is aching, I have a hope of more tender mercies which will certainly come my way. I know there has never been a time when the Lord has not blessed me in some small way and reminded me that He is constantly aware of me, and I have faith that this time will be no different.