When Morning Comes...
The Quiet Grief that Lives Between Forgetting and Remembering
I told you about the nights, but nobody really warns you about the mornings. And the more I think about it, the more I suspect the morning might actually be the harder of the two.
At night, at least, you know what is coming. You learn that the dark has teeth, that the quiet begins to grow loud somewhere around two in the morning, and that the other side of the bed will be cold in a way that has nothing to do with temperature. Night is difficult, but in a strange way it is also predictable. After a while you begin to recognize its rhythms, and you can brace yourself for it.
Morning is different. Morning sneaks up on you. It arrives in that fragile space between sleep and waking, that thin moment when your mind has not quite caught up with your life yet. For just a moment, maybe half a moment, you forget. And then you remember.
That remembering, every single morning, carries its own kind of loss. It is a small grief inside the larger one, like being told the news again, quietly and without ceremony, just long enough to knock the wind out of you before the day has even properly begun. Nobody warns you about that moment, the brief forgetting followed by the sudden remembering. It might last only ten seconds, but it can feel like the loneliest ten seconds of the whole day.
Eventually you get up anyway, because what else is there to do. And once you do, you begin to notice that morning has its own geography of grief.
The coffee pot is usually the first place it appears. If you spent years sharing life with someone, the coffee pot seems to know the story before you do. It is still set for two. You may find yourself reaching automatically for two mugs before your hand stops in midair. Or you make a full pot because that is what you have always done, and now half of it goes cold on the counter.
The bathroom carries its own quiet ambush. His razor still rests on the shelf. Her robe still hangs on the hook. You have not moved them yet, partly because moving them feels like a decision you are not ready to make, and partly because leaving them there allows you to pretend, just for another day, that nothing has changed. The problem, of course, is that leaving them there means you see them every single morning.
There is no good option, only the one you can manage today.
The chair at the kitchen table that nobody sits in anymore. The second toothbrush. The voicemail you have not deleted because it still carries her voice, and you are not ready for that silence yet.
Morning is full of objects that used to mean nothing and now mean everything. Over time they begin to feel like something else entirely. Monuments, maybe. Small ones. Quiet ones. Devastating ones.
Here is something else about morning that takes a while to notice. The world does not pause for it.
At first that can feel almost cruel. The birds outside the window continue singing as if nothing has changed. The neighbor pulls out of the driveway at the same time he always does. The mail still arrives in the afternoon. Someone down the street is mowing the lawn, and for a moment you want to step outside and ask how it is possible that ordinary life is still happening.
Life just keeps moving. The audacity of it can feel almost offensive.
And yet, after standing at enough gravesides and sitting with enough families during the early days of their loss, I have begun to notice something about mornings. Morning is often where the story quietly begins to turn. Not because the grief has disappeared. It has not. Not because the pain suddenly lifts with the rising sun. It does not, at least not for a long time.
But morning carries a kind of stubbornness that night does not have. A quiet persistence that shows up whether you invited it or not.
There is a story in the Gospel of John that has always stayed with me. Mary goes to the tomb at dawn. Not midday when the sun is high, and not later in the afternoon when the world might feel a little less fragile. She goes at dawn, in that earliest and most uncertain light, when it would have been easier and perhaps more sensible to stay home. But she goes anyway, carrying her grief like something she cannot set down.
And it is there, in that dim morning light, that she discovers the story is not finished. That moment did not erase any of it — the tomb was real, the death was real, the grief was real — but morning held something she could not have imagined while the night was still heavy around her.
I am not going to paper over anyone’s grief with a resurrection metaphor. Your loss is real. The empty chair is real. The cold coffee is real. But I do believe that morning carries something within it. It carries a stubbornness and with that, a quiet insistence that the story is still being written.
Maybe that is what grace looks like in the early days of loss. Not comfort exactly and not answers. Certainly not the feeling that everything is suddenly okay, because everything is not okay and pretending otherwise helps no one.
Sometimes grace simply looks like morning. Morning arriving again, uninvited and persistent, refusing to not show up. The coffee pot still working. The birds outside the window completely unaware of your pain. The light coming through the same window it always has, landing on the floor in the same place as yesterday, as if it has not yet heard the news.
At first that can feel like cruelty.
But maybe it is not.
Maybe it is the world quietly insisting that there is still a day here. And that day, however fragile it feels, still belongs to you.
You do not have to be okay in the morning. Not yet. Maybe not for a long time. You are allowed to sit with the second mug still resting on the counter. You are allowed to let the coffee grow cold. You are allowed to stay in the chair by the window longer than is practical, watching the neighbor mow his lawn and feeling the strange distance between his world and yours.
You are allowed to let morning be hard.
But here is something I have learned from watching people carry this weight. Morning keeps coming back. Every single day it arrives without asking permission and without checking whether you feel ready for it.
It simply appears again, faithful in a way that almost feels stubborn.
And somewhere inside that stubborn return there is a kind of grace. Not the grace that fixes things, but the grace that stays. The grace that quietly says, I know you did not sleep well. I know you forgot for a moment and then remembered. I know the coffee pot broke your heart again this morning.
Here is a little more light anyway.
The Unlikely Altar this time might simply be the window, the same window the light comes through every morning, landing in the same place on the floor.
It does not know your grief. It cannot fix your grief.
But it shows up anyway.
And maybe, just for today, that small and stubborn light is enough to help you begin again.
There is a word in the Hebrew Bible that appears more than 150 times, and we have never found an adequate way to translate it into English. The word is chesedh . We try. We use mercy, lovingkindness, steadfast love, and compassion. And every translation captures something true. But none of them capture everything. Because chesedh isn't just a feeling, an attitude, or even a virtue, it's the word the writers of Scripture used over and over again to describe the defining characteristic of God — the way God moves toward people, especially people who have no reason to expect it. And there is a related word, rahamim , which means something even more visceral. It comes from the Hebrew word for womb . It's the kind of love a mother has for the child she carried — not distant, or theoretical, but rather physical and active. It is a love that cannot stay still when the one it loves is suffering. That's what Jesus was talking about when He said, " Blessed are the merciful. " It’s not pity, and it’s more than just feeling sorry for someone from a safe distance. And it surely isn't just some kind thought sent in the general direction of someone's pain. Chesedh . Rahamim . It is a love that gets up and moves. Now imagine you are sitting on that hillside, the day Jesus said those words. You are not there because life is going well. You are there because you are out of other options, and something about this carpenter from Nazareth made you think — maybe. Just maybe He is the One. You are a fisherman with calloused hands who has been told your whole life that God is for the educated and the clean. You are a woman who has been publicly shamed and hasn't forgotten the faces of the people who did it. You are a tax collector who knows exactly what your neighbors think of you. You are a mother whose child is sick and who has been told, quietly and not so quietly, that this is what you deserve. You have heard religious teachers your whole life. You know how this usually goes. They tell you what God requires. But more than that, they like to remind you that you fall short. And they remind you again and again and again. So when Jesus says, " Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy, " what runs through your heart? Probably not faith; at least not yet. Probably something closer to — so what? Nobody has ever shown me that. Why would I believe it now? And yet you stay. Something keeps you on that hillside. Maybe it's hunger. The rahamim kind — deep, desperate, from somewhere in your core. The longing for someone to finally mean it. In November 2008, a high school football team from Gainesville, Texas, took the field for what should have been just another road game. Gainesville State had fourteen players, wore seven-year-old pads and hand-me-down helmets. And they were winless with a 0-8 record. When Gainesville State arrived at games, they were escorted by security guards who removed their handcuffs before kickoff. You see, Gainesville State is a juvenile correctional facility. Their players are there by court order — drugs, assaults, robberies. Many of their families have disowned them. They play every game on the road, so there are no home crowds and no one is cheering their names. Their opponent that night was Faith Christian School — seventy players, eleven coaches, the latest equipment, and hundreds of involved parents. Before the game, Faith's head coach, Kris Hogan, sent an email to his fans. He asked them to do something unusual. Half of them, he said, would sit on the visiting side. They would learn the names of the Gainesville players. And they would cheer for them. When the Gainesville Tornados took the field, they ran through a banner that read Go Tornados. Two hundred strangers cheered their names. Faith's own cheerleaders led cheers for the opposing team. One Gainesville player said, “ We can tell people are a little afraid of us when we come to games. But these people, they were yellin' for us. By our names. ” Faith won 33 to 14. It didn't matter. Because at the end of the game, when the teams gathered to pray, a Gainesville player named Isaiah asked to lead. And this is what he prayed: “ Lord, I don't know how this happened, so I don't know how to say thank You, but I never would've known there were so many people in the world that cared about us. ” That is chesedh. You see, it’s not just feeling sorry for kids in a hard situation. It’s not writing a check from a comfortable distance. But it is about a large group of people who chose to get into the skin of fourteen young men who had never been cheered for and cheered for them anyway. And it changed Isaiah. You can hear it in his prayer. Something broke open in him that night that had never been open before. That is what mercy does when it is real. Isaiah didn't just feel better that night. For maybe the first time in his life, he felt what grace actually feels like, with skin on it. And you don't walk away from that as the same person. They will receive mercy. That crowd on the hillside didn't know what to do with that promise yet. But maybe — just maybe — some of them had felt something like what that young man Isaiah felt. The shock of being cheered for by people who had no reason to cheer. The disorientation of being treated like you matter by people who didn't have to. And maybe that's what finally made them believe it was possible. Chesedh doesn't always look like 200 fans on the bleachers. Sometimes it looks like a cup of cold water handed to a stranger who is thirsty. Doesn't seem like much and is often barely worth mentioning. But to the one drinking it — standing there parched, overlooked, and not expecting anything from anyone — that cup is the whole character of God made visible in one ordinary moment. That's the Unlikely Altar for this one. It isn’t some grand gesture or a stadium full of people. It is the moment when someone who has never been shown mercy receives it — and something in them shifts permanently. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Not because mercy is a transaction. Not because you give it and get it back like change. But because when you live chesedh — when you get into someone's skin and choose to move toward them instead of away — you find yourself swimming in the same love that has been moving toward you your whole life. Even when you didn't know it. Even when you were the one on the visiting side, wondering if anyone would ever cheer your name. May we know, may we remember, may we never forget — there is a love that will not stay at a distance. It has a Hebrew name we cannot fully translate. It comes from the womb. It moves toward the ones everyone else has written off. And somewhere today, in the most ordinary and unexpected moment, it is looking for a way to show up through you. Blessed are the merciful. Go cheer somebody's name.
You weren't thinking about death. You were scrolling. Maybe it was late, and the TV was on in the background, but you were only half watching. Or maybe you were looking at pictures of the grandkids, or a video somebody shared, or just moving your thumb out of habit the way most of us do when the day gets quiet. And then the ad appeared. You could have kept scrolling. And to be honest, most people do. But there was something about the ad that made you stop. Maybe it was the word family or the word burden. Maybe it was a face that showed up uninvited in the back of your mind — someone you love, someone you'd do almost anything for — and for just a moment, you let yourself think about what you might be leaving them to carry. So you filled out the form. Now here's what I've learned after months of calling the names on that list: most people can't tell you exactly why they stopped. Some stopped out of fear. The fear of dying before things are in order, or the moment they realize what a funeral actually costs. Fear has a way of moving us before we fully understand what we're doing. Others stopped out of love. They see something like that and think of their spouse, or their kids, or a grandchild who would be left to figure things out on a day when thinking clearly isn't exactly easy. And some stopped because the form was there and it was simple, and maybe it passed a quiet moment without asking too much in return. I don't know which one you were. Maybe all, or perhaps none of the above. But I do know this: you typed your name, filled in the numbers, named someone you care about, and hit submit. And whatever was behind that — fear, love, or just a quiet Tuesday afternoon — something in you moved. And I want to be honest with you about something. I'm not calling because I need the commission to survive. I don't. I'm calling because I officiate funerals, and I stand with grieving families several times a week. I've seen what happens when nothing is in place. I've watched the frustration, the stress, the quiet panic behind the decisions that have to be made quickly and paid for just as fast. And once you've seen that up close, you don't really get to unsee it. Now, I might be wrong, but I don't think that form was just about information. I think somewhere along the way, you've seen a GoFundMe for a funeral. Maybe you shared it. Maybe you gave five or ten dollars because you knew the family and it felt like the least you could do. And somewhere in that moment, without even putting it into words, you thought: I don't want that to be my people. I don't want my kids passing the digital hat while they're still trying to figure out how to get through the week without me. I don't want my spouse choosing between burying me with dignity and keeping the lights on. I don't want the people I love most asking strangers for help on the worst day of their lives. Just so you know, that isn't fear talking. That's love — the kind of love that thinks ahead. And a love like that is quietly one of the most faithful things a person can do. So here's where I come in. I'm the guy who calls. You may have seen my number and let it go to voicemail. You may have read my text and meant to respond. You may have genuinely forgotten you ever filled out the form in the first place, because life got loud again the moment you put your phone down, and the stillness disappeared. I understand all of that. I really do. But I keep calling. Not to pressure you or hit some quota. I keep calling because I've stood at too many gravesides and sat with too many families trying to figure things out in real time. And there is a difference when things have been taken care of. Love will always make grief heavy — nothing changes that — but when the practical pieces are already in place, there's a little more room to breathe. And I wonder if part of you already knows that. Here's the question I keep coming back to, and I ask it with nothing but care and concern: when your loved ones are sitting in the funeral home, what will you have left them to carry? Not your furniture. I mean the practical weight of your absence. The bills that still arrive. The funeral that still has to happen. The decisions that still have to be made by people who are already carrying more than they know how to hold. You had a moment — maybe just thirty seconds on a Tuesday night — when you let yourself think about that. When love or fear or something that felt like both moved your hand and you filled out a form. That moment was worth something. It still is. The form was just the beginning. The conversation is where it becomes real. And whenever you're ready for that conversation — unhurried, no pressure, just honest — I'll be here.
This past week I was filling my Jeep with gas, on my way to officiate a funeral, when I saw him. I don’t think he saw me watching, but I did. He was standing off to the side of the parking lot, half-turned away from the store, rummaging through a trash can until he pulled out a crumpled McDonald’s bag. He opened it right there and started eating what looked like leftover fries. Cold. Greasy. Whatever someone else didn’t finish. Cars kept moving in and out. The pump kept clicking. Life didn’t slow down for him. I probably should have walked inside, bought him a decent meal and a Coke, handed it to him like it was nothing. But I didn’t. He went on his way, eating fries from a trash can. I got back in my Jeep, pulled out of the station, and headed toward a room where people would be gathered to remember someone they loved. And somewhere between the gas station and that funeral, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. Not just what he was doing… but what it stirred in me. That quiet, uncomfortable mix of heartbreak and guilt and the deep-down sense that something about the world is just not the way it’s supposed to be. And as I drove, a familiar phrase kept finding its way back into my head, like it had been waiting for me to notice it again. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Most of us have heard those words before. We’ve heard them enough that they can start to feel like something soft, something spiritual, something that belongs in a sermon or stitched onto a pillow somewhere. But I wonder if we’ve ever really let them land. Because righteousness, the way Jesus is talking about it, isn’t about being good or moral or checking the right boxes. It’s bigger than that. It’s about things being made right. It’s about the world looking the way God intends it to look… whole, just, restored. It’s about what Scripture calls shalom. Because if you remember who was sitting on that hillside listening to Him, this would not have felt abstract at all. These weren’t people who had just finished a nice lunch. They were fishermen, farmers, and laborers. People who knew what it felt like to go to bed hungry. People who understood thirst not as a metaphor, but as something your body feels when it hasn’t had enough for too long. So when Jesus said hunger and thirst, they didn’t need an explanation. They felt it. And then He takes that feeling — that desperate, undignified, I-will-dig-through-a-trash-can-if-I-have-to kind of hunger — and says that is what your longing for righteousness should feel like. Not polite. Not distant. Not theoretical. But a desperate craving. Sometimes that hunger shows up on a global scale, and it hits you like a fist. It’s the footage you can’t quite turn away from. Children in places whose names we struggle to pronounce, drinking water that would make us sick. It’s the moment when numbers stop feeling like numbers because you’ve seen a face, or a story, or a man in a parking lot eating cold fries out of someone else’s leftovers. It’s the part of you that knows, deep down, that the world has enough — enough food, enough water, enough resources — and yet somehow it doesn’t reach the people who need it most. That gap between what is and what should be… that ache… that’s hunger and thirst for righteousness. That’s a longing for shalom. Sometimes the hunger is quieter than that. I have sat in rooms where a marriage was coming apart, and what always surprises me is how little noise it makes. You expect shouting, doors slamming, something you can point to. But more often it’s just a heaviness. A silence that settles in between two people who used to know how to reach each other and somewhere along the way forgot. You can feel the absence of wholeness like it’s taking up space in the room. And if you’ve ever been there, you know the feeling. That deep, steady ache that things could be different. That somehow the distance could be crossed. That healing might still be possible. That’s hunger and thirst for righteousness. That longing for two people to find their way back… that’s a desire for shalom. And sometimes the hunger is the most personal thing in the world. Maybe it’s not something out there or between two people. Maybe it’s inside you. The habits you keep circling back to. The patterns you’ve tried to break more times than you can count. The quiet voice that wonders if this is just who you are now. And yet… underneath all of that… there is still something in you that hasn’t given up. Something that still wants to be whole. Something that still longs for things to be made right. Even when it’s tired. Even when it feels worn down. That longing… that refusal to settle… that is hunger and thirst for righteousness. And Jesus looks at that person — not cleaned up, not finished, not figured out — and says makarios. Not “happy.” Not “fortunate.” Something closer to… God is with you. God is on your side. Right there in the hunger. Right there in the longing. Right there in the place where you know things aren’t the way they’re supposed to be, and you haven’t stopped caring. Which means maybe that moment at the gas station wasn’t just something to feel bad about and move past. The hunger itself is an unlikely altar. Maybe the ache you feel when you see something broken — in the world, in others, in yourself — is not something to avoid or explain away, but something to pay attention to. Because that ache might be the very place where God is already at work in you. The place where your soul is learning to want what God wants. And maybe being filled doesn’t always mean everything gets fixed all at once. Maybe sometimes it looks like this: You don’t stop noticing. You don’t stop caring. You don’t stop longing for things to be made right. And somewhere in that hunger… you find that you are not alone. You never were.