By Sharon (SD) Mac
That night, after the longest two days of my life, I came home.
My body was drained. My eyes burned from crying. My soul felt empty, like I had been holding my breath since that hospital call and hadn’t exhaled yet.
The house was quiet when I opened the door.(even with the sound of the dog’s barking, and people talking)
Too quiet.
The air still carried his scent a smell of his cigar tobacco, coffee, and something only Steve smelled like. The kind of scent that could bring comfort and pain at the same time.
I walked to the living room.
His chair. The chair that held him, while he couldn’t breath back in the days, when he was having his a-fib.
The place where he’d read his Bible in the morning, watch his shows in the evening, and plan our next big adventure. It still looked exactly the same, as if he had just gotten up to get coffee and would be back any minute.
I stood there staring at it for a long time.
Then I sat down.
The dogs came one by one, pressing against me, their heads resting on my lap, as if they understood. Maybe they did. They didn’t bark. They didn’t move. They just stayed, guarding the empty space where he should’ve been. The same feeling I had after coming back from Pastor Al’s funeral,Steve’s dad, but this time after coming back from Steve’s funeral arrangement…
The scene was as if, I was sitting there still, while everyone else around me was moving, talking and yet I don’t hear nor understand what they are saying….
I whispered into the quiet,
“I miss you, Babe. I miss you so much.”
No answer came back.
The stillness in that room was different. It wasn’t just grief, it was presence.
God’s presence.
The same peace that was in that hospital room, the same quiet that filled the road on my drive home, was here too wrapping around me like an invisible embrace.
I realized then that grief doesn’t mean God has left.
It means He’s sitting with you in it.
That chair became more than furniture.
It became my safe haven where I prayed, wept, and slowly began to breathe again. Some nights I’d fall asleep there, wrapped in his blanket, feeling like somehow, through grace, I was still being held.
Every time I sat there, I’d talk to Steve about the day, the dogs, the house, about how hard it all was. And when I ran out of words, I’d talk to God.
Sometimes, I didn’t even need words.
The tears said enough.
Over time, that chair became a place where I feel his hugs. The place where pain and peace met.
Because in that chair, I learned something I never could’ve learned in comfort:
that even in silence, love still speaks.
that even in absence, grace still fills the room.
and that even here, even now
it is well with my soul.
Soli Deo Gloria!
To God Alone be the Glory
“Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.” -2Timothy 2:3
“Resolved, never to give over, nor in the least to slacken, my fight with my corruptions, however unsuccessful I may be.” -Jonathan Edwards, Resolution, 56
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