This Season Is Hard, But It Is Not Forever
A Saturday morning reflection on staying steady when life feels especially heavy.
April 25, 2026
Story
In March of 2020, my mother and I got on a plane to Brazil at a moment’s notice.
My father had been recovering from a recent back surgery, but an infection landed him back in the hospital. We believed he would recover. But things did not go as expected, and suddenly we were heading there carrying far more uncertainty than we wanted to admit.
I will always be grateful that my mother came with me. My parents had been divorced for years, yet they remained friends. In that difficult moment, her presence was a gift. There was something quietly beautiful about that. History had changed their relationship, but it had not erased care. What had shifted over time did not cancel out love or loyalty.
That trip was filled with heartbreak, uncertainty, and the kind of emotional weight that is hard to describe unless you have lived it. Hard seasons have a way of revealing both the strength of some relationships and the absence of others.
Nine days later, the United States shut down for COVID. And somewhere in the middle of all of that disorientation and grief, my father passed away.
There are seasons in life that divide everything into before and after. That was one of them for me.
At the time, it felt impossible to imagine that life would ever feel light again. Grief has a way of doing that. It settles into your chest. It colors everything. It convinces you that the heaviness will always be there.
Reflection
Looking back, I realize that season held more than one kind of sorrow.
There was the grief of losing my father, of course. But there was also the grief of seeing relationships more clearly, of recognizing where support was strong and where it was absent. Hard seasons do that. They strip away illusion. They show us what is solid. They also show us what hurts.
And yet, as painful as those seasons are, they do not stay the same forever.
I would never call that time easy. I would never say it all made sense. And I still miss my father. Deeply.
But I know now that the sharpest pain does not remain sharp forever.
Grief changes shape. Shock softens. The unbearable becomes something you learn to carry. Not because the loss mattered less, but because love remains, and somehow, with time and grace, we grow stronger around what once felt impossible to hold.
That is what I have come to believe about hard seasons. They may mark us, but they do not get to define us forever. They may bend us, but they do not have the final word.
Sometimes, staying steady does not look especially brave from the outside. Sometimes it looks like getting out of bed, saying your prayers, doing the next right thing, and trusting that the weight you feel today will not always sit on your heart in quite the same way.
This season may be hard. Deeply hard. But it is not forever.
Question
What hard season in your life needs the reminder that, even though it changed you, it was never meant to define you forever?
Until next Saturday, choose presence.
