You’ve prayed. You’ve fasted, maybe. You’ve done the honest inventory, asked is there something in me blocking this?, and come up empty. And still: nothing. The heavens over your situation feel like a phone that rings and rings in an empty house.

I’ve stood in more funeral home receiving lines than I can count. Thirty-two years of ministry will do that. And I can tell you the exact moment I see grieving people flinch. It’s rarely the casket. It’s usually a sentence.

They’re not going to apologize.

I know that’s a hard sentence to read. Maybe you’ve been waiting years, rehearsing the conversation where they finally see what they did, finally say the words, finally make it right. And every year the phone doesn’t ring.

I can tell you where I was standing when my world cracked. I remember the dishwasher ticking. I remember the clock keeping time as if nothing had happened.

You already know grief lives somewhere south of your thoughts. It shows up as the meal you can’t finish, the 3 a.m. wake-up, the bone-tiredness that sleep doesn’t fix, the short fuse with people you love. You’re not imagining it. And here’s the part most people never get told — the reason your body is reacting this way is not a glitch. It’s a design feature.

Some of the deepest wounds I’ve watched people carry didn’t come from strangers, or from the world they were warned about. They came from inside the building. From the people who called them “brother” and “sister.” From a leader they trusted, a friend they confided in, a community they gave years of their life to.

There was a night, years ago, when I said something to God I was certain I’d have to apologize for. I won’t dress it up. I was angry — the kind of angry that comes out as a accusation, not a prayer. I’d served Him, trusted Him, and still ended up in the wreckage, and I let Him know exactly how that sat with me.

A woman shook my hand at the door after service one Sunday. Big smile. “Doing great, Pastor — God is good.” Three weeks later, I sat across from her in my office while she told me she hadn’t felt anything in months. Not grief, not joy, not even much of God. She’d just gotten very, very good at the handshake.

You typed it into your phone at some hour you’d be embarrassed to admit. The house was dark. Everyone else was asleep, or pretending to be. And your thumb hovered over the search bar before you finally wrote the words you can’t say out loud to anyone at church: Will I ever be happy again?