After the Loss, God’s Mercy Was New Every Morning

Steve met Julie in a college ministry group when he was 21. He knew she was the one before the second date. They built a life rooted in Scripture, laughter, and faithfulness. For 27 years, they faced everything, debt, infertility, job changes, and cancer scares, hand in hand. But nothing could prepare him for the day her diagnosis came back, not as a scare, but as a sentence.

He prayed for healing. It didn’t come the way he hoped.

The doctors gave them six months. They got five. Steve watched the love of his life shrink from strong and vibrant to pale and silent. She still smiled at his jokes, still reached for his hand in prayer, even as her strength faded. He never stopped believing God could heal her. But healing didn’t come the way he hoped.

The day she passed, Steve felt a silence that rattled his soul. The house didn’t feel empty — it felt like it had been erased. Her presence was everywhere and nowhere. He couldn’t bring himself to put away her shoes. For weeks, he slept on the couch. Not because the bed hurt too much, but because he didn’t want to disturb her side.

People told him it would get better. Church members brought casseroles and verses. But grief doesn’t follow a calendar. It sneaks up at stoplights, in the laundry room, in the scent of a shampoo bottle. Steve didn’t lose his faith, he just didn’t know what to do with it anymore.

The verse didn’t fix him. But it gave him just enough for that day.

Then one morning, around 4:30 AM, he sat on the back porch, coffee in hand, unable to cry anymore. His Bible was still open on the table where it had stayed for days. His eyes fell on a verse in Lamentations: “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed... they are new every morning.” It hit him like a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

That morning didn’t fix him. But it gave him something: enough grace for one day. And the next morning? Enough again. Steve stopped trying to conquer grief. Instead, he started surviving it, one sunrise at a time.

He began journaling, not deep theology, just moments. He wrote things like, “I took a walk without breaking down,” or “I made dinner and ate it.” Simple victories became sacred. Every day wasn’t good, but every day held something good. And God met him in each of them.

Six months later, he started a support group for widowers at his church. Not to counsel, just to sit with men who knew what silence sounded like. They didn’t quote verses at each other. They shared grocery store breakdowns. They prayed in grunts. They wept together.

Steve still wears his wedding ring. He probably always will. But his face looks different now. Not lighter, but anchored. He tells other grieving men the same thing God whispered to him on the porch: You don’t have to survive the year. Just the day. His mercy will meet you there. Because it’s new every morning.

What’s helped you through your hardest seasons?

• God's Word — even when it was hard to read
• A friend who didn’t try to fix me
• Just making it one day at a time
• I’m still in the middle of it right now