Heartache clouds the mind. There is no darkness so thick, no numbness more impenetrable than that created by the sorrow of a broken heart. The whole world stops. The mind stops. Dreams disintegrate. There is no longer any drive, any ambition, any direction. You simply sit. You exist.   

Knowing the Darkness 

I have felt this more than once in my time caring for Colette. There was numbness following the initial diagnosis. There was a darkness that descended after months into her treatment when her tiny frame seemed to be slipping from us in the PICU or when, after a summer of remission, the cancer returned. But there was nothing like the brokenness that followed her final days on earth. The clouds gathered then like they never had before, and I was lost. For nearly two years, my identity was being the caregiver of my daughter. I was the one who drew up her medications. I was the one who monitored her every breath and every movement. I was the one who made appointments. I was the one who was teaching her to eat and to walk. I was the one who held her. Then she was gone. There were no meds to draw up. No tube feeds to prepare. No appointments to make, no regiments to follow. I was lost. I was numb. The clouds around me were thick. I existed, but I did not know what to do because who I had been I could no longer be.   

A Life-Giving Friend 

Into the darkness God sent one very unassuming but life-giving friend. Into the darkness God sent duty. While all the world was dark to me, duty came and told me to rise and enter back into life. For me, God sent duty in the form of a three-year-old son who needed breakfast, who needed help putting on his shoes, who needed me to smile back into his face when he told me his nonsensical stories and dreams. God had duty come to me in the form of my husband and my home. There were sheets to wash, floors to clean, meals to make, clothes to iron.   

The Unnatural Path to Life 

Duty bid me rise and serve, and in so doing drew me out of the darkness, out of the confusion, out of the void and into life. And yet the truth is like most of God’s methods of healing, hope through duty did not come easily or naturally. With everything within me, I resisted and longed to resist the demands of duty. There was no emotion there. No desire. What I desired was to have what I had. I wanted the duties I loved. I wanted the daughter I loved. My heart didn’t want this.  

Why Send Duty? 

You who are grieving understand this. You know that while you know you ought to rise, you ought to engage with the world, there is nothing within you that pushes you to do so. It is as if your heart is deaf to the music of life, unable to be stirred. It is for this very fact that God uses duty to draw us out. Duty requires no emotion. There are no prerequisites. It is not something that you must desire in order to do. Duty is merely something that must be done and that must be done by you. Without heart, without energy, without joy you can rise and by the grace of God you can do your duty.   

Hearing the Voice the Duty 

For some your duty, like mine, will come in the form of other children. You will be asked to rise and, as unglamorous as it sounds, your path back to life will be through changing diapers, fixing breakfast, reading Good Night Moon or shooting hoops.   

For others, your duty will be within your home. There is the dishwasher to unload, the laundry to fold, the dog to walk, and the groceries to pick up. Duty may come through your job, your church, your spouse, or your neighborhood. The God Who sees you bound by grief will not sit by idle. He will call to You—He will reach for you. He will give you work to draw you out, to draw you back in. Yes, you’ll be going through the motions. Yes, you’ll be putting one foot in front of the other hour by hour, day by day. You will not feel like it. You will not love it or even like it. You may not even think you can, and yet duty will call to you. You will be asked to dance without hearing any trace of music, clinging to the knowledge that in doing your duty for your family, for your employer, for your church you are both pleasing and glorifying God. And though it does not seem possible now, there will come a day when you will hear the faint glimmer of music, the subtlest trace of a tune. It will come. I hear it now though I did not know I ever would again, and you will too. Until that day, it is duty that is to be your aim. Don’t wait till you hear the music. Dance by faith that one day it will come. In this moment, what is your duty? What does God ask you to do? Is it a lunch to prepare, a call to make, a floor to vacuum, a child to take to the park? Rise and answer the call. As radical and unorthodox as it may sound, serve. Take duty by the hand and let it guide you. Embrace it as God’s gift that gives direction to the directionless. The music will come, but for now my dear friends, let us do our duty.