It’s been one month since we laid our baby boy’s earthly body to rest in a cemetery just a few minutes up the road from us. On one hand, life seems to have rushed forward after we left the grave that day, and on the other, I still feel frozen in time, standing at the foot of Ollie’s freshly dug grave.

My mother has told me several times throughout tough seasons of grief, whether mine or that of someone close to me, that one of the hardest parts of grief is that the world moves on when your world seems to have come to a screeching halt. I’m not sure I understood that until Ollie but now it’s crystal clear.

In the days and weeks since Ollie passed, life never once slowed down outside of us. Countless times I have become frustrated and upset that the world….that God…..didn’t seem to “give us a break”. The past year or so before we lost Ollie was a hard one. Layoffs, car repairs, a totaled car, more car repairs and so many more moments of “Really, God? Can’t we catch a break?”…and then we lost Ollie. Somewhere in all of that, I figured we’d catch a break now. We’d lost the thing we wanted most, our son, so now, nothing else would happen for a while. Funny enough, we came home from the hospital after having said our goodbyes to Ollie and walked into a fridge that had somehow been left cracked open and all our food inside of it had gone bad. I remember making a joke about how God had a cruel sense of humor as we threw a fridge full of food away and ordered a pizza. I regret those words now but in the moment, that’s how I felt….that I had done something to anger God and now He was sitting in a cloud somewhere zapping us with hit after hit in order to punish us.

It wasn’t until I verbalized these thoughts out loud to my therapist that I realized how wrong I was. I told her that I kept wondering “How stubborn was I being that God had to take my son away to get a point across?” She paused briefly and said something along the lines of “Katie… That doesn’t sound very much like the God we serve, does it? ” and she was right. It’s not supposed to be this way. God didn’t design this world and speak it into existence with pain, suffering and death in mind. Sin brought those things into our world and it pains him every single time one of His children is hurt by it. It hurt His heart when Ollie died. He has grieved with us and walked along side us in this journey.

This morning in church, I had a realization that has further driven that point home for me. We were singing a song I’ve heard several times, “Resurrecting” by Elevation Worship. There’s a line towards the end of the song that says “Our God has robbed the grave”. Now, growing up in church, I’ve heard that phrase several times too in reference to our Jesus that rose on the third day and defied death. In that moment though, I was thinking of Ollie and realized….Jesus robbed Ollie’s grave too. He took away death’s final say in Ollie’s life and in mine.

Death says “You will never see Ollie again.” but GOD says “You will see your boy again, perfect, healed and whole.”

HALLELUJAH! Death does not have the last word here.

While it is so easy for me to cry and scream in frustration over all that has happened (and, trust me, I still do. Just last night I asked Andrew through sobs if God was mad at me because we just can’t seem to catch a break), I’m beginning to see that I can choose how to grieve. I can grieve as though death has won or I can grieve with HOPE that God has the final say, not death.

Some days, I grieve as though death has won and those days are hard, hopeless, gut wrenching days. But on the days I choose to remember the truth of my grief, that I have hope in Christ that I will see my Ollie again, I grieve with hope. And yes, grieving with hope is still painful. It still knocks me to my knees at time and there are still so many tears for the loss of what we thought Ollie’s story would be, there is also joy. Joy that his story doesn’t end here and that one day, Ollie will be in my arms again.

The tomb where soldiers watched in vain
Was borrowed for three days
His body there would not remain
Our God has robbed the grave
Our God has robbed the grave (yes He has, yes He has)

Your name, Your name
Is victory
All praise, will rise
To Christ our king

By Your spirit I will rise
From the ashes of defeat
The resurrected King, is resurrecting me

In Your name I come alive
To declare Your victory
The resurrected King, is resurrecting me
By Your spirit I will rise

“Resurrecting” by Elevation Worship