Is every bitter thing *still* sweet?

Because I occasionally get migraine headaches from the way light comes through a window, I’m accustomed to noticing light — the sun’s position in the sky and the specific way its entry through a window illumines the room.

In the first home we owned, our kitchen had a breakfast nook with windows on all sides. In my memory from this one particular day in our home, the sun shone askew through the window, creating one clear shaft across the table — whether this was purely in my memory or in actuality, I don’t know.

Regardless, my mind held onto this shaft of light. We were deep in the throes of years of infertility, absorbing and accepting that there was no longer an easy way out. And I read this one verse in my Bible on that day, sitting at the kitchen table that Nate and his dad refinished just for this breakfast nook, as if I’ve never read it before:

“A satisfied soul loathes the honeycomb, but to a hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet” (Proverbs 27:7).

That light (whether imagined or real) became a marker for me. I’d grown to resent my bitterness — the baby showers, the first birthday parties of friends’ kids, the many negative pregnancy tests — but this verse, on this day, made me think differently about my bitterness. Maybe only two or three other times in my life had I felt such a tangible shift. And looking back, I can see how my entire life’s course adjusted because of that day and those words from God, for me.

Years later, I wrote a book with that title: Every Bitter Thing is Sweet, full of stories of God’s utter tenderness during (what was then) some of the darkest years of my life.

That was over fifteen years ago, and while the stories are still so real — similar to the palpable summer haze of July when you can almost touch the air it’s so thick — they are history. And the best stories in your history that shaped your course don’t necessarily continue to shape your course in the telling. The remembering of them serves an important purpose: they create an endurance of sorts, as if mind-fuel for wandering in the wilderness … but it’s limited.

Almost twenty years have now passed between that day in my breakfast nook and now, and my resources for enduring hard things have expanded. I imagine, so have yours. With age comes wisdom, healthier habits, and fewer ecstatic highs or paralyzing lows. My portfolio has diversified — I have more stories of His way being better than mine, in lots of different ways.

All the while, the hard has gotten harder, and the dark clouds, at times, much darker. What I thought was unbearable in my twenties doesn’t touch the loss I’ve experienced in my forties. Between now and then, I stood over my dad’s grave, I wrote the obituary for one of my dearest friends, and so much more than I can write here. I didn’t have the imagination, back then, for the kind of loss I’ve experienced during this last decade — after I wrote that book, after the shaft of light shone across my kitchen table and across my insides.

I hesitated to write this because some of you, younger readers who resonated with Every Bitter Thing is Sweet, might fear that my life becomes yours. “What if suffering is not the one and done?” (It’s the question I asked for a long time.) And the words that follow this might be too much for your moment. If this is you, grace to you to tuck this away and save it for a moment you might need it.

But too many people in my life are just where I am: finding the cloud coverage again and seeing that the old stories of God meeting you in great pain need another chapter. I write this for you.

I sat in church on Sunday thinking of the words of a new friend — one who didn’t know me in my early loss and hasn’t read my book. I described my recent years of loss, and she cried with me and then suggested sitting in this verse:

“Blessed are those who mourn . . . ” (Matthew 5:4).

Oh, I know it, I tell her. I’ve written about it. Meditated on it. I’ve let it into the fabric of my thinking so much that I accidentally memorized exactly how blessed are those who mourn: “for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4b).

But in some ways, it’s been like those stories to me of how God met me during my early loss — like a baby blanket, fresh and new once, but now worn and frayed (well-loved — my fingers nervously played with the thread around the seams for years), and not quite sufficient to take to my college dorm room.

It’s a new day for me, who has accessed so many tools during these years of great loss. I’ve studied the Psalms and surrounded myself with wise counselors. I’ve read books on suffering (so many books on suffering) and walked many trailway miles in my grief, letting my brain and body rest and connect from all the chaos in my world. I’ve leaned into my marriage — Nate has become my best friend, all over again, as we’ve grieved together — and found wonderful consolation with trusted friends.

If you’ve been around here these last two years, you’ve read me write about surrender and the profound peace that comes from deep acceptance of my losses. You’ve heard Nate and me talk about all we’ve gained in the suffering.

But the raw reality is that in all my gaining … the shock of all we’ve lost has left me almost too stunned to receive comfort, at least more than here or there, from Him. It’s not that He hasn’t been available, it’s that I’ve been almost too thunderstruck to lift my little girl arms and ask to be held … to be held, often.

The degree that I’ve lost is the degree that I’ve needed to be held.

And while I’m so grateful for the wisdom from His word, the insight into how profoundly suffering can shape a person for good, the ways that my loss has shaped how I see the people around me and the way I parent and the way I navigate complexities of relationships … I’ve also needed what I needed all those years ago, and probably a bit more:

to be held.

So I suppose I’m writing to you, who has been leveled by loss — the kind that shocks you, leaving you stunned by your life and where it landed. The enduring ones who have imbibed, like me, these words from Romans 5:

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

… but who also may have eventually wrapped your mind and your schedule and your plans around the impact of these losses, but still very much need to say what my little girl said to me hundreds of times when she was 18 months old, arms reaching into the air and eyes only on me:

“Up, please.”

I reached for His comfort in my youthful night, but in these later years, the Holy Spirit helped me build an infrastructure — a life — around enduring suffering … but that doesn’t exclude my need to be held.

May I never grow out of this.

Wisdom and insight into human proclivities and endurance and character are all wonderful byproducts of suffering (I truly think some of the smartest, wisest, safest human beings are those who have suffered) … but with hope (see that at the end of that Romans verse up there) — that last rung on the ladder — comes a childlikeness that says, often,

“Up, please.”

And perhaps it’s the sweetest thing.

So here I am, choosing to reach my arms into the air and ask “up, please, God” because His comfort has always been there waiting for me, but I think I’m finally ready for it, all over again. Ready for the best thing in my life: all over again.

Yes, yes … every bitter thing … is still sweet.

Until next month,

Sara