There was a time I sang without thinking—while driving, cooking, folding laundry. Hymns, old favorites, the latest song stuck in my head. Music flowed from me like breath, effortless and familiar. It was a part of who I was, woven into the rhythm of everyday life.
But somewhere along the way—after the shock, after the funeral, after the world tilted and everything broke—I stopped singing.
Not intentionally. I didn’t even notice it at first. But now, I feel the silence. I feel the way music plays around me and I don’t join in. I feel how the lyrics hit differently now—how they land heavier, how they sometimes hurt. And how sometimes, I just can’t bear to speak them out loud.
Worship feels complicated when your heart is shattered.
I still believe. I still hold on, however loosely, to the truth that God is good, even here. Even now. But the songs I used to sing—about joy, victory, surrender—don’t rise as easily from this aching place.
Because what do you do with the chorus that says “You give and take away” when all you feel is the taking?
What do you do with the bridge that builds to “death is defeated” when your child is buried in the ground?
I don’t sing because the words catch in my throat. Because I can’t match the melody to the ache in my chest. Because the rawness makes it hard to do anything more than just stand still with tears in my eyes and hope that just being there counts for something.
I don’t sing, but I listen.
I listen to the voices around me. To the words I can’t bring myself to say. And sometimes, just sometimes, that’s enough. A whisper of belief. A trace of trust. A flicker of faith that maybe, one day, my voice will rise again.
Maybe one day the songs won’t sting.
Maybe one day I’ll sing again—not because the pain is gone, but because the hope is louder.
But for now, I sit in the quiet.
And I let the silence speak for me.