Nearly four years ago, I remember so distinctly a conversation that I had with my friend Michelle.  She had just lost her two-year-old son in a tragic accident.  Knowing that I, too, had known the grief of losing a child, she asked me a question with tears streaming that I will never forget.  “Will I ever feel normal again?”

I remember pausing at this point, not wanting to give a pat answer.  The same question had gone through my head 11 years earlier. Things wouldn’t be the same.  They couldn’t.  There was a hole.  A gaping, bleeding hole in a mother’s heart.

I looked her in the eye (do you remember this, Michelle?) and said, “There will be a new normal.  Right now it feels broken and awkward and abnormal and wrong.  And it is.  But your heart, as it begins to heal, will learn to embrace and enjoy a new normal, though it won’t stop missing what once was.”

The truth is, when we love our “normal” we don’t want it to change, especially when it involves loss.  We can’t imagine becoming accustomed to anything else. Whether it’s the loss of a job, an opportunity, a relationship, a loved one, a dream, the thought of ever feeling normal again escapes us.  Seems utterly impossible.

For Michelle, the loss of her precious little boy will never leave her heart.  The fact that she has a wonderful life with seven other wonderful children still does not fill the gap that he left behind.  But my lovely friend is living and thriving and enjoying her “new normal”.  She knows that she will see him again one day.  She has learned to live with the dull ache that a heart experiences when it’s been broken and cherishes the ache for the love that it represents.  Her new normal is good.  Not what she would have chosen, but good.

If you are experiencing deep loss or deep disappointment today because your world has turned upside down, please know this.  You are deeply loved by the One who has promised He will go with you in your new normal.  He is the Mender of broken hearts, the Healer of broken lives.  He is the Constant in our ever-changing world.  And He isn’t going anywhere….

Matthew 28:20 – And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

Hebrews 13:5 – Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.

Isaiah 43:19 – See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.