by Sara Cormany
8 minutes.
To hear it now, eight minutes feels like a breath, but on one hot evening in July, it felt eternal while nightfall found my mama and I sitting vigil beside my daddy’s hospital bed. A residence ushered in by a devastating brain aneurysm.
The doctor came in. The squoosh of the ventilator stopped. And the room fell silent as the test for brain function began.
To keep from going mad, I memorized each frame and tick of the clock. My mama with her face snuggled up close to my Daddy’s hand. The doctor holding space for us both with gentleness and reverence. My hand on my pregnant belly with each little kick reminding me to breathe until we discovered the truth our hearts already knew: my Daddy was Home.
There would be no rally, no resurrection, no last-minute healing. Instead, our coming days would be marked by arrangements made and funeral details and phone calls telling the rest of those we loved he was gone.
I remember the silence most of all. The odd feeling of death and life meeting. My hand holding his, warm as it had been just yesterday.
Even in the silence, my mind screamed loudly that this was not how it was supposed to be. The impending birth of my sweet babe, a babe so long awaited and hoped for should be nothing if not happy. And yet happy seemed so very far away.
But as life does, it went on, and 6 weeks later, the baby arrived.
With her welcoming, she brought grace and hope into our weary hearts. Her birth ushered in a sweet relief, the kind that does not mask the hurt but salves the wound. And the longer I muddle through life the more I’ve learned that this is what Jesus brings us in the most gutting chapters of our stories.
He is our steady reminder to breathe. Through loss. Through illness. Through unrealized dreams and disappointment. He is the one who will stay no matter the cost. So that when happiness fades, His light is not lost.
Be it in bedside vigils. Or hospital hallways. Or places that only we and Jesus dare go. Even when and even then, His light is not lost.
Instead, in a slow and quiet flame, it grants us relief, seeping into our dry bones and sometimes weary hearts. It is here that uncertainty need not shake us because we have the strength of His arms to steady us.
Our Jesus has come and nothing will quench His light. It is a promise He offers us so clearly. “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (John 8:12).
With Jesus, we do not walk alone. We are not slaves to darkness. We need not lose our way.
Whether the hard of our days stretches into 8 minutes to 8 years to a lifetime, He will love us, lead us, light our way through them and all the way Home.
Sara Cormany is a wife and a mom of four. She is a stroke survivor, chronic illness fighter, and former teacher to teenagers. But her most cherished role is that of one who is perfectly held by Jesus. She loves watching Him take the broken, the messy, and the seemingly unimportant of her everyday and turn it into something beautiful. Her book Even When: Experiencing God’s Presence During Difficult Days is available now.
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