25 Years This Week. Still Aching?

Psalm 56:8

Lord, it has been years, and everyone else has moved on. They tell me it should be lighter by now, and some mornings it is not. I have carried this date on my calendar so long that I have stopped telling anyone when it comes around. You never once told me the counting was foolish. You kept count Yourself. You put my tears in Your bottle and wrote them in Your book, and not one of them fell where You were not watching. So I bring You this week, and the name I still say out loud when no one is in the room. Hold what I cannot put down. Amen.

The Scripture

“Put my tears in Your bottle; are they not in Your book?”
— Psalm 56:8

About this verse

Psalm 56 is headed as David's prayer from the time the Philistines seized him in Gath, a man surrounded by enemies with no safe place to stand. In verse 8 he does not ask God to make his tears stop. He asks God to keep them: "Put my tears in Your bottle—are they not in Your book?" The picture is of a record, the way a careful steward writes down what has been entrusted to him. Grief that has gone on for years often loses its audience. Friends who sat with you in the first weeks have gone back to their lives, and the people around you expect the date on the calendar to hurt less every year. This psalm assumes the opposite kind of attention. Every restless night has been taken into account; nothing has been dropped from the book because it went on too long. If you still say a name out loud when the anniversary comes around, you are not being foolish or stuck. You are grieving in front of a God who has kept count with you the whole time.

When to pray this prayer

On the anniversary of a death, when no one else seems to remember the date
When people tell you that you should be over it by now
When grief returns years later, out of nowhere, and knocks you flat
On a birthday or holiday spent missing someone who has died
After a miscarriage or loss that others never really acknowledged
When you still say their name out loud when no one is in the room

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