When I told a friend that Granddaddy had died, she said she was making us dinner and that she’d drop it on the porch later. Normally I resist such kindnesses with something like, “Oh you don’t have to do that! We’ll be fine! You are so sweet!” But I just couldn’t think. I couldn’t summon the energy to turn it down, so I offered up a teary “thank you” and kept on parenting, poorly, kept on cleaning, clumsily, kept on stopping every hour or so to bury my face in my hands and cry. When I grabbed the package off the doorstep later that afternoon, I saw chili and cornbread muffins and coloring books for the kids, and I sobbed. The kids scribbled while we ate a dinner that I didn’t have to make, and it fed deeper than physical hunger because each bite was a reminder of someone who saw me, who loved me, who was going to make sure I was taken care of that day. I knew my friend thought this was something small, but to me, it wasn’t.

It’s not small to make dinner for your struggling friend.

It’s not small to get a sitter so you can go to her granddad’s visitation or funeral.

It’s not small for you to remember that Granddaddy had the same birthday as Adelaide or his American flag cane or that you saw him a million times at our church growing up and that he was always kind. 

It’s not small at all. Not to me.

We are supposed to celebrate life, and of course we do, but when you lose someone worth celebrating (and who isn’t?), devastation, sadness, and so many questions are naturally integrated into the same fabric as the celebration. In grief, we gather this fabric like a blanket and wrap ourselves up in the fullness of human experience: the vibrancy of a loved one’s life with the sorrow of death, that strange knowledge that death is certain yet forever a shock, and then that thing inside us that says, “It’s not supposed to be this way.” Because it’s not.

When my precious friend Brittany got the devastating call about her sister’s death, I was right there, strangely, even though we haven’t lived in the same city in years. I watched her run out of my parents’ house that day with panic in her voice. I watched her bounce between devastation and shock, right there on the curb next to my parents’ driveway. It’s the same place where she used to park her Pontiac GrandAm, the one with the zebra steering wheel cover and the Hawaiian flowers strung around the rearview mirror, the one we’d drive around in high school while blasting Britney Spears and analyzing and re-analyzing whatever drama had befallen Houston High School.

The sun was shining, but I remember thinking that the weather didn’t make sense. I remembering crying out to God to rewind everything, make it so this wasn’t true. Can’t he do that? I remembering that phrase “beauty from ashes” popping into my head, and I thought, “ashes. These are ashes. Can you really bring beauty out of this?”

I remembered that same phrase when I saw Granddaddy in the casket. It’s a different story of course because he was 96. He lived a long, long time, and he was ready. Meredith was only 28. I don’t understand why God writes different stories for all of us. But seeing Granddaddy not looking like Granddaddy and remembering Meredith were unavoidable reminders of the certainly of death and that thing inside me that says, “It's not supposed to be this way.” Ashes. There is no beauty here, not yet.

When song gives way to sighing, when hope within me dies, I draw closer to him. From care he has set me free. His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me. "His Eye Is on the Sparrow" is a song I’ve sung many times, and three times at a funeral: my grandmother’s, beautiful Meredith's funeral, and on Saturday, my granddaddy’s funeral. I know it's okay to say no, that no one would hold it against me, but I keep walking up to the podium. It’s one of the few things I have to offer, and I want to offer it bravely, wholeheartedly, in honor of my loved ones who are grieving and the loved ones whom we grieve.

I made it through the song the first two times I sang it at a funeral, barely, but the third time, I couldn’t finish the last verse. Daddy came up and put his arm around me, and I put my face in my hands and cried again, for the millionth time. Because sparrows and cornbread muffins and the faces of loved ones reminded me: Even in the midst of ashes, before things are made beautiful, Someone sees this pain. We are not alone in it. The precious treasure of togetherness: a God who sees, and people who bravely and tenderly rally around the grieving.

One of the most curious stories about Jesus is when He wept alongside Mary and Martha over their dear brother Lazarus’s death. Jesus knew He had power over death, knew that He was about to proclaim, “Lazarus, come forth!” and that Lazarus would indeed step out of the grave, fully alive. A normal response would be a comforting and firm, “Mary and Martha, don’t cry! I will fix this.” Yet before he triumphed over death, He mourned its devastation. He wept with His friends. Oh how I love this Jesus, who loves deeply, who cares profoundly, who knows how to sit with us in sorrow, who understands that death is deserving of our sorrow! Ashes. Something has been destroyed beyond recognition. How can it ever be beautiful again? Sometimes we do not know, but we are known. We are held. He cries with us.

And even more graciously, in the midst of that sacred togetherness with Him, he provides even more togetherness. Can you imagine my dear friend Brittany, who sat in the same room and heard the same song during the most horrific week of her life, braving it once again, to be with me when I mourned Granddaddy? It was just months ago, still fresh, still unimaginably painful, and yet she told me, “Sad things are going to happen in our lives. What’s most important is being there for each other regardless. So, I will be there.” When I saw her there the next morning at the funeral, in the same room where we’d just mourned her sister, a room she did not have to come back to but did anyway, I crumbled in gratitude. My precious friend loving me despite her own pain. A reminder of my precious Jesus, who loves sacrificially.

And so I couldn't make it through the last verse. Because Granddaddy is gone and it doesn’t seem right. And Meredith is gone and it doesn't seem right. Because Brittany is here at the funeral when she could have stayed home and Jesus cries with us and sees us and ultimately defeats death and restores what it has burned to the ground. There are ashes today, but one day, beauty. We can already see the glimmers.

Here’s what I learned from cornbread muffins and coloring books and sparrows and friends who show up even when it hurts: There are no small ways to love someone. All the ways are big. All of them.

All of our not-so-small ways honor the biggest way. The same Jesus who wept for his friend said, “Lazarus, come forth,” bringing beauty from ashes and startling the world with this message: Death is too much for you, but it is not too much for me. Later he was the one enclosed in a tomb. The conqueror of death was dead and the world went dark. But then, the earth shook, and the real Lazarus came forth: Jesus. A Savior who knows how to cry with the hurting, who knows how to defeat the thing that scares us the most. There is no one like you, Jesus. May we continue to love in ways that might seem small but are not small at all because they point to the biggest love of all: Yours.