I am grateful for the beauty God has brought from my ashes.

But if I’m being completely honest…

I never wanted the ashes.

Sometimes you can be praising God with a full heart one moment and find yourself on your knees, overwhelmed by grief the next.

Your heart races. Your hands shake. The tears come, and the words you thought you had made peace with rise up again:

“You should be here.”

This is grief.

This is the loss of a child.

And yes, you can have deep faith and still hemorrhage from grief.

Even 10 years later.

I wrote about one of those moments in my newest blog, “I Never Wanted the Ashes.”