One Afternoon

living rooms and living hope

“Dad, can you carry him to the couch? No….I don’t want him in the wheelchair, I want him to sit with me.” I heard this from the other room and smiled when I saw this scene.

Times are changing, but some things stay the same.

She’s thinking about college and the future. At the same time, she thinks about him. Her brother, just 18 months younger. She’s grown up with him, but there’s a fork in the road ahead. Each sibling faces this. The moments leading to their launch and the feeling of leaving their brother behind.

Behind. It’s an interesting word. In a sense, yes. No drivers training awaits him this year, no saving up for a car. No friends groups or 9th grade field trips as rites of passage. He also can’t go with her when someday, she may leave.

This is true.

But it’s also true that he’s pressing on. Maybe he’s even ahead of us in that.

“But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil 3:13-14).

I don’t know what his spiritual maturity is. But there is a persevering and pressing on every moment of his life. There is a sustained joy and contentment.

When I saw Evie and Calvin on the couch, I recalled the same scene over the years at different points of their lives. For many years, she’d crawl into his bed, moving the medical equipment aside and falling asleep to the sound of his machines. Different shirts, different challenges, same love, same bond.

Sleeping, playing, resting. Living. Loving.

Feelings of incredible grief and beauty fill me to the brim. I can never express them fully.

There are so many things that could have been in a fallen world, and that are not as it should be, that to live in the reality of that is to resign ourselves to anguish.

Losses suffocate. Crush. They can feel never-ending.

I’ve realized this daily over the last decade. But I’ve also found: freedom comes for the Christian in realizing we cannot bear the weight of losses in our lives. Nor do we need to.

There’s a different way for the Christian. “Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you.” (Ps 55:22)

Not: sort it, fully comprehend it, or see your entire life through it. No, just throw it. I find this freeing. We live with incredible loss and the Lord knows.

He knows the loss Calvin experiences every season. He knows what it means to each member in the family. Not abstractly, not from a distance—but intimately. The Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief, He knows the weight of sorrow far more thoroughly than we. There is profound relief in that.

And knowing the load, Christ offers us a holy exchange: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:29–30).

This is for Calvin.

This is for me.

This is for you, under whatever soul-crushing burden you bear.

There is only One who can bear the full weight of our sin, our sorrow, our anguish—and He has. In His perfect obedience and atoning death, Christ bore the yoke we could not carry. He satisfied divine justice, that we might find rest in His mercy.

And so the Christian learns again—season by season, day by day, hour by hour—this holy exchange: give Him the burden, before it breaks us. Lay it down before the One who was broken in our place. He can sustain us by his grace.

Yes, we live with shattered hopes. And also — Christ gives us a hope incorruptible.

Yes, we walk in the long shadows of loss. And also — we stand on the precipice of eternal joy with Christ, and that joy has started now.

And so we can be forward facing. Not knowing many things. Feeling loss in many seasons. But giving it to Jesus. Knowing that he is working life in the very place we feel the death of dreams.