When Grief Comes

When the clocks stop. When your church has to go on.

Sometimes grief comes by a phone call at 12:33 a.m.

Sometimes it comes when you hear your husband’s voice change, in a second, from sleepy and startled to alert and afraid.

Sometimes it comes as you lay in the dark, watching your husband’s location dot move steadily down a dark road on his way in the dark to their home.

Sometimes it comes through a text of three words. Short and to the point as you lie in the darkness. “He is gone.”

Sometimes it comes the next morning, as you pour coffee and the dream of the dark solidifies in the morning light. He is gone. His crinkly smile is gone. His hearty, “Hello, Beth!,” that has become such a part of my church life is gone. His advice about how to fix a lawn mower or unbolt a pew or build a wheelchair ramp are gone. His words, “I love this church,” are gone.

I’ve been a pastor’s wife in four churches. I have loved people in all those places. But this death here in our tiny, struggling church — the death of his smile, his love for his tenacious wife, his wisdom, his heart for the gospel of Jesus, his commitment to building a church in a place that sorely needs a stable neighborhood church, his voice breaking with emotion when he told me how all his grandchildren came home for Christmas last year, his years of experience sharing Jesus, the pride in his face at the ordination of his wife, his last words to me, whispered as I sat next to him just a few nights ago, “I love this church,” — his death here has stopped all my clocks.

He is gone.

This man and his wife, this church that they helped build and have been part of for so long, this new church that they are helping build for the future, are part of my soul in a way a church has never been before. I love this church, too, I wish I had whispered back.

I hear and see and watch everyday, all around me, churches bigger and richer, building 3,000 seat sanctuaries, launching podcasts, and safely walking both sides of the political quagmire. For the past 8 years, I also have seen a church that can barely make budget buy turkeys for those in our neighborhood who would otherwise go without. A church with a handful of men and women who have pledged to work together against the odds to build a church for the future of our neighborhood. A church with the heartbeat of a man who never stopped using what he had to be the hands and feet of Jesus for his family, his students, his wife, his community, his church.

Sometime, before 12:33 a.m., his heartbeat stopped.

For the moment, it feels like the heartbeat of our church has stopped, too.

At a time when we were just beginning to launch something new that we pray will stabilize a church in this place for the future, we lost an anchor. A piece of our heart. Our church is at a crossroads. I cannot see which way it will go. It is darker now without his “Hello, Beth!” to brighten the way. The world is darker, too.

Grief has come. Grief will stay.

But we do not grieve as those who have no hope.

The new name he helped choose for our church is Living Hope.

Living Hope Baptist Church.

Today, more than ever, I feel our world, our neighborhood, needs the living hope of Jesus. “I love this church,” he said to me. I do, too. In living hope we will go on.

Godspeed, friend. Our living hope we will meet again.

*If you want to know more about our church, currently First Baptist Church Elm Mott, you can find information on our current website and the church we hope to become, Living Hope Baptist Church, here, as well as any updates to our plans. I haven’t said the name of the man we lost this week, but if you follow my husband’s socials or our church (@livinghopebaptistchurch on IG or still First Baptist Church Elm Mott on Facebook), you can learn more about him as the days progress. We appreciate your prayers for his wife, his family, our church.