When Faith Became Real

People have asked me before how I can still believe in God after everything that has happened in my life. After the losses. After the funerals. After watching people I love struggle and suffer. After losing my son, my brother, and my mom. After grief changed me in ways I never imagined it could.

And honestly, I get it. Because there were moments I asked that very same question.

There were nights I sat in complete silence, and other nights I screamed and cried in anguish, trying to understand how so much pain could exist at once. Nights where grief felt so heavy I thought it might swallow me whole. I remember crying out, “Why MY son?! Why MY brother?! Why MY mom?!” Not because I would ever want someone else to carry that kind of pain, but because when loss becomes personal, it changes everything. It is different when the names attached to the loss are the people who made up some of the biggest pieces of your heart.

There were moments I felt angry. Moments when I felt hurt—moments when confusion and heartbreak completely took over.

When I thought about God during those years, the feelings that immediately surfaced were anger, hurt, confusion, and at times even betrayal. And looking back now, I think not having a close relationship with Him before those losses only intensified those feelings. I believed in God, but I was not deeply rooted in my faith yet. I was not consistently in church, reading my Bible daily, or praying every day. Because of that distance, grief almost gave me an excuse to pull even farther away from Him. It became easier to blame Him than to seek Him, easier to sit in the anger than to understand the kind of love He was still trying to offer me through all the pain.

And for a long time, that is exactly what I did.

I drifted even further. Quietly. Slowly. Not because I completely stopped believing, but because grief consumed so much of me that surviving became all I knew how to do. Anger became easier than vulnerability. Blame became easier than surrender. I kept my distance from God while carrying all of that hurt inside of me.

What I did not realize at the time was that even in my anger, I was talking to Him. Every time I cried out asking “why,” every moment I broke down in heartbreak, every angry tear and anguished thought — in essence, I was praying. I just didn't recognize it as that. And while I thought I was pulling away from God, He was still, always listening. The roots that had already been planted inside of me throughout my life slowly began to grow. Even deeper through the pain. His Spirit, which had already quietly settled in my heart long before the losses, began moving in ways I could not yet see or understand.

Now looking back, I can see that God never once walked away from me, even during the times I felt the farthest from Him.

I think one of the biggest turning points in my healing was finally understanding that God is not death.

For so long, part of my pain came from unknowingly connecting Him to the losses themselves. But over time, I began to understand that death, suffering, heartbreak, and the devastation that is left behind were never His desire for us. Scripture tells us that Satan comes to steal, kill, and destroy. That sting of death, the ache that grief leaves in our hearts, the brokenness of this world — that does not come from the heart of God.

What does come from God is love.

What comes from Him is grace, mercy, comfort, hope, and the promise of eternal life.

And understanding that changed everything for me.

Because while the enemy may bring temporary pain into this life, that pain is temporary compared to the eternity God promises us. Grief feels endless when you are living inside of it. Some days it still catches me off guard and knocks the breath out of me. But grief does not get the final word. Satan does not get the final word.

God does.

That realization slowly softened parts of my heart I thought would never soften.

It did not happen overnight. Healing rarely does. There are still tears. Still questions. Still moments where the weight of missing them feels unbearable. But little by little, my relationship with God stopped becoming one centered around anger and slowly became one centered around trust, hope, and surrender.

Not because I suddenly understood everything, but because I realized I did not need every answer to know He was still with me.

I started seeing Him differently. Not as the One who abandoned me, but as the One who sat with me in every single dark moment. The One who carried me through times where, honestly, I was making choices and coping in ways I probably should not have survived. Not because I necessarily wanted to die, but because grief had left me so broken and lost that I was not always taking care of myself the way I should have been. And somehow, even then, God was still protecting me, still carrying me, still softly calling me back to Him through all the anger, bitterness, heartbreak, and confusion.

And somehow, through all of that pain, my relationship with God became stronger than it had ever been before the losses happened. Before grief, I believed in Him, but my faith was not deeply rooted yet. Through the heartbreak, anger, questions, and healing, my relationship with Him slowly became more real and personal than ever before. What once felt distant became the very thing I leaned on when everything else in my life felt unstable.

Somewhere along the way, faith stopped being something I simply knew of and became something deeply real to me, because I had lived through moments that should have completely broken me, yet somehow I was still standing.

Because without hope, I honestly do not know how anyone survives deep loss. Not the surface-level positivity or empty phrases people say because they do not know what else to offer, but real hope. The kind that reminds you this world is temporary, but God’s promises are eternal. The kind that reminds you death is not the end of the story.

I think about Abraham sometimes and how Scripture says he “believed against hope.” Even when he could not yet see the promise fulfilled, he still held onto what God said was true. In so many ways, grief has taught me to do the same. To cling to the promise that this separation is temporary. To hold tightly to the belief that I will see the people I love again someday, not just in memories, photographs, or stories shared around a table, but truly see them again.

And this time, there will be no more sickness, no more suffering, no more funerals, no more goodbye phone calls, and no more fear of losing them again.

Revelation 21:4 says, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain…”

That verse means something entirely different to me now than it once did. Now it feels deeply personal because grief has taught me how desperately we need hope bigger than this world. The promise of eternity is no longer just a comforting thought to me. It is the anchor that has carried me through some of the darkest moments of my life.

And I think that is exactly why my faith is stronger now than it ever was before. Not because life suddenly became easier or because I finally have all the answers, but because I have seen God remain faithful to me even in my worst moments. Even when I drifted further, questioned Him, blamed Him, or allowed my anger and grief to create more distance between us, He never stopped pursuing my heart. Looking back now, I can see that while I was struggling to hold onto Him, He was already holding onto me. He was not going to allow Satan to have the final say over my life, my faith, or my story. He was going to carry me through the grief, the heartbreak, the anger, and all the destruction the enemy tried to leave behind.

And maybe that is part of why I share these pieces of my heart now. Instead of allowing all of that pain to create more despair, I want God to use it to bring hope to someone else who may be struggling to find their way through the darkness, too. Maybe that is what Grace in the Stillness really is — discovering that even in the deepest heartbreak, God is still present, still healing, still restoring, and still bringing light into places that once felt consumed by darkness, not only in my story, but in the stories of others walking through grief and loss too.