Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
This Lent, I’m giving up giving up. I’m tired of living a half-life, surrendering to apathy, and hiding behind a fashionable cynicism. I’m tired of running, numbing, and believing that endings are simply the end.
My family fell apart when I was three. This rupture in my little body instilled in me a habit of preemptive surrender. "Whatever," "I don't care"— I wore these phrases like armor as a kid, protecting me from the sting of potential failure. This instinct, unfortunately, followed me into adulthood.
College brought Christianity, and a professor’s constant refrain: "It's the already and the not yet!" This paradox captured the mystery and belonging I found in my new faith identity.
Twenty years later, the world feels different. It’s not just the mundane realities of stay-at-home dad life, the endless cleaning, me repeating “not yet” to my toddler over and over. It’s a pervasive sense of incompletion. The mystery of my faith community feels like it's settling into certainty, and the belonging I once cherished has become tribal, even exclusive.
One truth has remained constant: everything falls apart. Friendships, marriages, families, jobs, churches, dreams, even my faith—all have crumbled. Admitting my role in some of those collapses, acknowledging the hurt I've caused, is a humbling experience.
Another truth, formed in my attempt to live the religion of Jesus: I’ve only encountered G-d in my lived experience. Initially, the promise of being “made new” was liberating. But the pain that led me to G-d remained. Encouraged to walk by faith in the new life I had received, I was never shown how to grieve all I had been holding onto since I was three. Consequently, I spent a decade waiting for G-d to erase my pain. My reality remained unchanged. Abundance never arrived.
I’m realizing how my childhood instinct to check out has only been amplified by the automation of life. Even still, I believe that when we allow ourselves to feel, to truly experience our experiences, we are closest to embracing our divine purpose—being human. It’s in our living, our mourning, our endings, even our deaths, that G-d promises to meet us.
Recently, I discovered another truth: death is the beginning of resurrection. This realization emerged from my unmet longing for an abundant, resurrected life. The decade I spent waiting for comfort was a series of small deaths. I grew very familiar walking through the valley of the shadow of death. My faith in G-d fell apart in this season. Even G-d had abandoned me.
I had reached my breaking point at 3:34 a.m., on a late winter night in Upstate New York. Numb, indifferent, I scrolled through my life’s memories, like attending my own funeral. For the first time, I saw the role I played in my life unraveling. Overwhelmed with grief, I wept until dawn. I mourned my lived experience, my preemptive surrenders, my self-abandonment, my blame-shifting, and, also, the ways others had given up on me too. In mourning my endings, I found my new beginning: resurrection.
Death, you see, is all of the resurrection we can now know, the rest is faith.
These truths haven’t made life easier. The “not yet” still taunts me, especially in 2025. (Can I get a witness?) But the truth—death is the beginning of resurrection—unlocked a well of persistent hope. I still wrestle with the urge to seek comfort and insulation, to succumb to indifference when things fall apart. How many of us settle for fleeting comforts, avoiding the necessary work of grief? It took me over a decade.
The relentless pace of society and the heaviness of each passing headline and life event, make a really good case to check out or just give up altogether. I imagine many of us are carrying broken hearts, living half-lives, afraid to acknowledge, or even share our true feelings and experiences. Perhaps the promise of abundant life feels out of reach to you as well.
Jesus’s words ring true: comfort comes only through mourning. Perhaps if I had understood Jesus as the G-d of my endings, not just my new beginnings, I wouldn’t have feared death’s sting.
About the author
Glen Dornsife
Glen Dornsife graduated from RWU in ‘05 with a marketing degree. He also graduated from NES in ‘13 with his Master of Divinity. He aspires to one day be on time for his classes, as a professor at his old stomping grounds.