I’ve been having a lot of conversations with my sisters who are navigating unexpected and—let’s be real—unrequested grief when it comes to matters of the heart. And as I permit God to expand my understanding of what it means to be His daughter, one thing I am choosing to believe and agree with His Word on is this:
I am deeply loved.
God is a good, good Father who provides, who has always and will always take care of His daughters. He has good things in store for us. And not just good in the way we’ve been taught to expect, but Ephesians 3:20 good—the kind of goodness that is beyond anything I can imagine.
That scripture in the Amplified Bible has been sitting with me. It forces me to think about God’s goodness with the use of a comma—not a period, not a question mark, not a limitation. Just a comma, because when I get to the end of my thought, it’s still not the end of what God can and will do.
This is not a this or that God.
He is a this AND that God.
It might seem like a jump, but one of the things God has been inviting me to understand is the this and of who I am—who He has created me to be. For too long, I’ve treated my identity like a one-line fill-in-the-blank with a period at the end. And at different points in my life, I’ve erased that answer and replaced it with another, never realizing that I could have just added to it.
I never considered that I am this AND that.
That I am not bound by dated views of what’s possible. That I don’t have to be locked into limiting beliefs that shape the walls of the box I used to live in. I didn’t even think to ask, What if it’s both?
And now that I see it, I can’t unsee it.
Sometimes the this isn’t just separated by an and—sometimes it’s a whole list, full of commas, full of expansion. And the more I let God show me who He really is, the more I choose to believe in His limitless goodness instead of the lies that trauma tries to tell us.
And that’s where hope is.
That’s what makes me excited for the possibilities.
So when I encourage my sisters who are in the depths of grief, I remind them that while grieving is real and necessary, it’s not the final destination. When the dead have been buried, what do we do? We eat.
Think about Hannah. She prayed for something for a long time, to the point of embarrassment, until the prophet finally told her: What you desire is yours. And what did she do?
She got up and ate.
It wasn’t about rushing through the process or pretending the grief wasn’t real. It was about knowing when it was time to rise again.
I am not here to rush anyone’s process. Grief takes time. I respect the grief process in ways I never did before. But what I know is that nothing can separate us from the love of God (Romans 8:38-39).
And when you read the definition of love—the one with the commas, not the periods—in Corinthians, you see something powerful:
God’s love is expansive. It’s layered. It’s more.
So as His daughter, I can stand in excited expectation for how He will vindicate, provide for, protect, and honor His daughters.
Because no matter what life has tried to weave into our stories, along comes Jesus—who sees us, who meets us where we are, who restores what was broken. Even for the woman at the well, whose past was full of rejection and heartbreak, Jesus made room.
God does more than make room for us.
He made the world and said, It’s not good until she’s here.
So let’s get excited about the this and.
Let’s be the this and.
And let’s remember that God is a this AND that kind of God—not just in this season, but in all of them.
I love y’all for real!
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