The old song It Is Well with My Soul has been running through my mind. The writer of the song, Horatio Gates Spafford, had to have been experiencing a depth of hurt that, thank God, few of us ever will feel. He had just lost all of his children, three precious daughters, in a ship wreck.
How could he find the spiritual depth to say it was well with his soul?
At the time when he wept he understood where his daughters were. At a point where he could have cursed God he instead praised the Lord. At the place where his precious children died, the hope for his posterity and holding a grandchild on his knee gone, he wrote the song.
Can you imagine it? Yet he said it was well with his soul.
In my lifetime, I have lost three babies to miscarriages. Gutwrenching and soul trying. Yet—to have held any of those children in my arms, to have nurtured them for years, to have had them in my life for years and then lose them with no chance to even say goodbye? Hundreds of miles apart? Knowing they must have cried out for someone to rescue them, and knowing you could not hear them?
How could a human heart bear it? Yet he said it was well with his soul.
It’s not enough to say, “I understand your pain.” But when God says it you know it is true. He watched His Son die.
Even a hug doesn’t remove the pain, does it? It helps, but it doesn’t heal.
I don’t know about you, but only quiet time spent with God seemed to help me. Away from even friends and dear family. Grief needs the depth of care that only Jesus seems able to supply. Time spent with Him healed my heart when nothing else could.
Then only could I agree, it is well with my soul.
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