Holding On When The Dark Won’t Let Go
One summer night tore our life into pieces. Our three-year-old, River, slipped past the gate and into the pool, and nothing we did could bring him back. That raw, impossible grief rearranged everything I thought I knew about God and safety.
The Night Everything Changed
I remember walking into his bedroom a month later and feeling like someone had emptied the world of color. I ran my fingers over the teeth marks on his crib and the dam broke; I screamed, “I don’t want any more sympathy cards!” and “I don’t want to hear that God needed another angel! I just want my son!” I was furious, hollow, and very, very human.
My husband, Granger, and I had been married young, made a home, and tried to raise our children with faith. We had been drifting toward God in different ways; I was discovering prayer and devotionals, and he carried a faith formed by family. None of those things prepared us for sitting with the worst night of our lives, trading CPR and prayers in a hospital hallway while hope slipped away.
After River died, life became a ledger of what-ifs and blame, but by grace we refused to blame each other. Family brought casseroles and took turns holding our kids so we could breathe. Still, at night the images played on loop and the big questions hovered: Why would God allow this? Where is He now?
Finding The Word
We left the house that held the worst memory and tried to find small normalities on the road as Granger toured. Being together for a while helped the kids, but the ache followed me back home like a shadow. I tried to hide in routine but kept finding myself back on the bathroom floor asking God, “Why?”
One evening Granger stood among my scattered devotionals and said, “Babe, I think we need to put these away and open God’s Word.” We opened the Bible to Matthew and read, sometimes not understanding a single verse, sometimes clinging to a phrase like a life raft. Prayer stopped being a list of demands and became the place I put my honest anger and my aching faith.
Little by little, scripture began to do what scripture always does: it met me where I was and refused to leave me there. I asked God, “Please, Lord, show me who you are, I know you are good, but this doesn’t feel good. Show me there is purpose in this. Give me strength to be a good wife and mom.” I kept showing up, words mumbled, pages turned, heart broken open.
A friend called and told me about a local grief group. I was reluctant, ashamed even—there is a cruel whisper around drowning that parents must have failed somehow—but I went. I stood in a living room with strangers and said, “I’m Amber,” and “And my three-year-old son, River, drowned in June.”
The room did not judge. Women whispered stories of loss—suicide, heart attacks, sudden ends—and their sorrow reached across the circle like hands. Hearing others grieve made the unbearable a little less solitary; instead of isolation I found companions willing to walk forward one tremulous step at a time.
Grief did not vanish. It still surprises me in quiet moments. But leaning on my husband, digging into the Bible, and letting a community carry some of the weight turned my rawness into something reshaped by grace. Faith, I learned, is not a tidy answer to pain but a commitment to keep showing up to the God who holds us even when we do not understand.