This is the chapter of the book I almost didn't write, and the one I've come to believe matters most. I'm not going to soften it here either, because softening it would defeat the point.
We lost my son Isaac to trisomy 18, a chromosomal condition that is almost always fatal. I did not take that well, spiritually speaking, which feels like an understatement even as I type it. For a long time I watched friends around me get pregnant and hold their sweet new bundles while I listened to a very old, very familiar lie telling me I wasn't good enough to have another child. My home, the very place I was supposed to be leading, became the source of my deepest pain. And my deepest depression, if I'm being fully honest about it.
I remember one morning specifically. I lay motionless under the covers, hoping my daughter wouldn't know I was awake. I hated that she always caught the brunt of my grief. I prayed the same silent prayer I'd been praying for over a year: God, please let her know I love her, even when I'm incapable of showing it.
A little curly head found its way to my chest. Mama, I'm hungry. Her words were the only thing that could move me. I got up. I got her yogurt. I debated letting her watch TV because I didn't have the energy to be the alternative. Then I sank back into bed, replaying yesterday's grief counseling, wondering if any of it was helping, angry at ever knowing my son so briefly and never at all.
A song was playing in my head that morning. The kind of song you don't choose, it just shows up uninvited and refuses to leave. It was asking the same question I'd been living inside of for months, basically, whether the dawn was ever going to come. I didn't want to be angry, but I was. I took a breath and tried to find God in the silence. I knew He was there, somehow. Sunlight had found its way past the blinds and made its unmistakable mark on the floor. I stared at it, desperate for the warmth, terrified to get burned.
Somewhere in that music, the question turned into an answer. I started to hum it back.
I know that the night must end. I know that the Son has risen.
Light filled the room. Staying in bed was no longer an option. When we go through tragic, soul-searching things, we get to choose whether we search for God's presence or His absence. I have done both. But that morning, with my daughter who needed a leader and the light refusing to be ignored, I chose to let it in, because I decided to believe the sun was rising even while I was still in the dark. Even though, technically, I couldn't prove it yet.
I didn't feel worthy that morning. I hadn't produced anything. I hadn't served, or held anything together in a way that looked like competence. By the only measure I'd ever trusted, I had nothing to show. But I had loved my daughter through the night. I had loved my husband enough to let him carry what I couldn't. I had loved God enough to keep listening even while I was furious with Him. That was the most productive thing I'd done in months, and it didn't look like productivity at all.
Here's what I've come to believe is true for every woman leading her own home through her own version of that morning: you cannot lead well from a cracked foundation, and the crack is almost never about capability. It's almost always about identity. God doesn't ask you to lead your home perfectly. He asks you to lead it faithfully. And faithfully means something far more merciful than perfectly. It means you get the yogurt even when you can barely move. It means you stay in the room even when the room is the hardest place to be.
You are not doing that alone, whatever your version of that morning looks like right now.
This morning is chapter five. There's more like it in the book. Or just leave your email below and I'll tell you the second it launches.