10/01/2026
Days after giving birth, I began to sink into what I can only describe as a vacuum, a void of nothingness. Not sadness exactly, not pain in the ordinary sense, but an unsettling absence of meaning. And yes pain. Nothing made sense. And when I say nothing, I mean nothing.
I questioned the very reality of existence. What is life? Are we certain we are even alive? Or are we simply moving through time without substance, without purpose?
Buddy would walk into the room, and I would look up at him and ask, almost accusingly, Why did we bring this innocent child into such a wicked world? The question startled even me, but it felt honest. Raw. Unfiltered.
You would think that giving birth in my fifth year of marriage, after years of prayer, longing, and waiting, would have filled me with uncontainable joy. You would think the pain of the birthing proces would be swallowed up by gratitude. But that wasn’t my reality.
Instead, I would stare at my baby and ask my sister, 'So five years, I prayed five years for this? Why?'
Not because I didn’t love my child, but because even my love for him, alone, did not anchor me to meaning.
Even my birthday, which came a week later, passed in a haze. Life still felt fuzzy, distant, Buddy gathered family and threw a mini party for me but it all felt unreal. Jesus, who had once been central to my thoughts and writings, felt like just another name. Familiar, but far. Spoken, but hollow.
Looking back now, I can see that many things converged in that moment: physical pain, emotional exhaustion, hormonal shifts, unease, spiritual disorientation. But naming the causes does not fully explain the experience. It was deeper than circumstances. It was as though the ground beneath my understanding of life had quietly collapsed.
One voice, however, kept echoing in the background as I doubted reality itself. A persistent question, or an assurance, kept returning: You are here. You are on earth. You are alive in this thing called life. What will you do with that?
In the midst of the fog, I began to remember. Not emotionally at first, but intellectually. I recalled my own writings. My studies. Bible teachings. The hours I had spent wrestling with the person of Christ, not as myth, not as sentiment, but as historical reality. I remembered how there is more historical documentation and corroborated evidence that Jesus Christ was a real person who walked this Earth, than for figures like Julius Caesar.
That memory did not instantly restore joy, or meaning, but it gave me a foothold. Something solid. Something real.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, I began to climb out of the sinkhole. Not by forcing faith, but by returning to truth. The truth that Christ is not an idea we cling to when life feels good, but a reality that holds even when everything else dissolves.
In that entire season, I journaled only once. Just once. I titled it: God’s love is a place.
And now, looking back, I understand why. Because when every meaning fell apart, when emotions failed and language collapsed, God’s love was not a feeling I had to generate, it was a place I could return to. A place that held me when I could not hold myself.
know it is the beginning of the year, a season when spirits are high, when resolutions are revived and hope feels almost automatic. A time when everyone is speaking the language of progress, clarity, and doing life better.
But in case you are in a place where life has stopped making sense, where the questions are louder than the answers, where existence itself feels thin and unreal. I want you to know that you are not broken for feeling that way. You are not faithless. You are not alone.
And if you ever find yourself there, caught in that quiet vacuum where meaning seems to slip through your fingers, hold on, even if all you can hold on to is truth remembered rather than joy felt.
Sometimes faith begins not as warmth in the heart, but as a small, stubborn recognition that Christ is real, present, and near, even when He feels distant.
God’s love does not disappear in those seasons. It does not wait for your emotions to stabilize or your questions to resolve. His love remains, remains a place you can return to when everything else falls apart. And slowly, often without drama, it becomes the ground beneath your feet again.
💞
