A weather report

"The LORD is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit." — Psalm 34:18

I do not talk about grief every day. There are people who think I do, because they read what I write and a person who writes about a dead husband writes about grief, and I understand that, but it is not true. Most of what I write about is prayer or the garden or the children or the Bible or the way the light comes through the kitchen window, and the fact that Earl is underneath all of those things does not make all of those things about grief. A foundation is not the house. It is underneath the house. You do not talk about the foundation every time you talk about the house.

But some days the foundation shifts.

It is not a particular thing. It is not the anniversary or the birthday or the song on the radio or the shirt in the closet. It is a Wednesday in October when the wind is from the northwest and the sky is the color of a washed sheet and the house is quiet and I am sitting at the table with my coffee and the grief is just there, the way the table is there, the way the floor is there, and I did not invite it and I cannot send it away and I am not trying to.

The psalmist says the Lord is near to the brokenhearted. I do not feel brokenhearted this morning. I feel seven years past brokenhearted, which is a different thing — a thing that has healed in the shape of the break, the way a bone heals and is stronger at the break and also different, and you can feel the difference on cold mornings when the wind is from the northwest.

I am not asking for comfort today. I am just sitting with the fact that the man I married when I was twenty-five is not across the table and has not been for seven years and will not be, and the coffee is good and the wind is cold and the Lord is near. That is not a complaint. That is a weather report.

Lord, you are near. I know you are near. I am sitting here.