Life Without Mother

Dear Mom,

What would I say to you if you were here? If in April of 2026 God had willed that you remain with us just a little while longer?

Faithful is He who has established my feet upon His word and the salvation it brings!

Mom, if you were here, I’d tell you of the amazing grace and kindness of the God to Whom you and Dad introduced me since I was still in your womb. I’d tell you of His faithfulness in the big things, like the community with which He has blessed me. I’d tell you of His faithfulness in the little things, like the gradual love I’ve found for the open spaces of northeast Texas — the vibrant brushstrokes of cloud-swept sunsets. I’d tell you of His faithfulness in my heart to remind me over and over of His love for me and the life I now have in Christ.

Sorrow has often marked this month and, even so, God is faithful.

Not because of what He does for me in the sweet celebrations of kind friends who demonstrate His love. Because of what He’s already done. And not twenty-one years ago on a special night when He used you to help me understand what He did. No, He is faithful because of what He did over two thousand years ago. On a cross. In a grave. In a garden. On a road to Emmaus.

Revealing Himself to His creation in all His glory and even still encountering His people intimately that they would know Him. That I would know Him.

Mom, I would tell you that I realize how much bigger my story is than our family — your past, Dad’s past, my birth, my childhood, the way you both raised me in the Way I should go, your death, our family’s sorrow, my own journey of healing, our reconciliation. It’s God’s faithfulness in all of it.

So, now, only a week from my twenty-eighth birthday and the once-insurmountable tenth anniversary of your death, I tell the world — or anyone who will listen — that my God is good. He is sovereign. He is faithful. And I will–

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! His love endures forever!

Psalm 118

Daughter of the KING,
Hannah