Glimmers of Hope When Grief Steals Your Light

Loss can make everything in our world go dark. The valley is covered by shadows that block out life as we know it. But shadows mean Light. Today, my friend and fellow grief awareness advocate Chelsea Ohlemiller shares about the glimmers of hope when grief steals your light.

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Have you ever been trapped somewhere with no light? Have you ever found yourself surprised by a sudden shift in your surroundings, when all the light vanishes, and you’re consumed by darkness? You had no time to prepare, as if you entered a closet with the lights on, and in the click of a switch, light no longer exists.

You cannot see. You feel powerless and frightened. You feel alone in ways you couldn’t have predicted. For me, that was 2017 when my mother died of cancer. She was only 57.

Suddenly I found myself covered in darkness; no light visible to break up the heartbreak that had found me– no glimmer of hope. My world was shattered, and it made no sense to try and recover all of my broken pieces, to try and collect them, because without light, it feels impossible to find things.

You cannot see. You know these jagged and freshly splintered pieces exist for you can feel the ache of their impact and the destruction of their wounds. You can feel the hollowed portions of your soul and the evaporated hope for what remains. You feel different because you are different– grief is your transformation.

So, what do you do when darkness finds you? When sorrow as deep as the oceans makes you feel like you’re sinking, unable to survive the gravity and magnitude of the trauma you’ve been handed? What do you do when you can’t go home anymore? What do you do when the person you looked to in times of hardship and struggle is no longer here, earthside, with you?

You do the only thing you can. You sit with it. You soak it in– the grief, the heartbreak, the new life unfolding in front of you. You sit with it because the choice isn’t yours. You don’t hold the power of granting miracles or changing time or outcomes, so you sit, partly broken and feeling alone.

When my mother’s perpetual promise of influence, love, and encouragement seemed faded by death, I got angry with God. I stood on a fragile faith. I challenged everything that I once knew until there was nothing left to question.

I screamed. I cried. I begged God for things to be different and when He didn’t answer my requests, I turned my back on Him. I told people my faith was gone, just like my mother. And for a while, that is where I stayed.

Paused. Motionless. Hurt, afraid and alone.

Or so I thought.

As I sat in the darkness, something unexpected happened. In the stillness, I noticed faint glimmers of light—small, almost undetectable at first, but they were there. These tiny sparks were reminders of her faith, my faith and evidence of the memories of my mother’s voice, her wisdom, and her warmth. Slowly, they started to illuminate my path, guiding me through the darkness, reminding me that while grief had changed me, it also connects me to the enduring light of my mother and all those I’ve lost.

One day, I realized two crucial things. First, by pausing my life, I was hindering my mother’s legacy from having a lasting impact and preventing her memory from shining through. Second, my faith hadn’t vanished; it had simply been challenged. Amid the depths of grief, those glimmers of light reappeared. My mother found me again. I could see God again.

Scripture assures us, “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,’ even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.” (Psalm 139:11-12, ESV)

In the stillness of grief, where I once felt abandoned and consumed by darkness, I eventually discovered that the light had never truly vanished—it had only dimmed, waiting for me to find it again. My mother’s legacy, though seemingly obscured by her passing, was not lost. It was woven into the very fabric of my being, waiting for me to breathe life into it once more. By pausing, I had temporarily paused the flow of that legacy, but when I chose to move forward, even in small, hesitant steps, I began to see the pieces of her influence and love reassemble into
something new, something resilient– me, her daughter.

Faith, too, is a quiet companion in the shadows, often tested in ways that feel insurmountable. It was through the darkness, I learned that faith does not disappear; it evolves. It weathers the storms of doubt and anger, only to emerge stronger and more profound. In those moments of despair, when I thought I was alone, I was, in fact, being guided back to the light, back to the essence of who my mother was and who I could become– both her legacy and my own.

Grief, though agonizing, became a journey to deeper understanding, a venture where I found that love and faith, like light, are never truly extinguished. They persist, even in the darkest of times, waiting to be rediscovered and embraced once more– forever.