IT IS FINISHED. BUT BELOVEDS, WE ARE NOT. ❤️‍🩹🌎

For Mom.
For Wombie.
For every person in this world carrying the name of somebody they love who is no longer here.

Beloveds,

Before I say anything else, I need to say two names that don’t belong to a sermon.

Mom.

Wombie.

Before there was Why Can’t I Be Loud?!

Before there were Beloveds.

Before #YourLifeMattersToMe.

Before the chairs. 🪑🪑

Before the fishing poles. 🎣🎣

Before I started asking you to come love this whole great big world with me—

there was family.

There was Mom.

There were her daughters.

There was ordinary life.

And then there was grief.

❤️‍🩹

My mother died on Christmas morning 2016.

We had plans.

We were supposed to take a vacation in March.

She was supposed to see my new car.

I thought we had time.

I was so sure we had time.

But March never came for us.

And I have learned something about grief:

Sometimes we don’t only lose a person.

We lose future tense.

“We’re going to…”

“Next time…”

“When you come over…”

“Wait until you see…”

“Next Christmas…”

“March.”

Then one day, without our permission, we will becomes we were going to.

😭❤️‍🩹

Maybe you have a March too.

Maybe yours wasn’t a vacation.

Maybe it was a phone call you thought you still had time to make.

A conversation.

A birthday.

A wedding.

An apology.

A meal.

A trip.

An ordinary Tuesday.

Maybe there was something you were absolutely certain the two of you would still get to do.

And then later didn’t come.

I won’t tell you what that loss is supposed to mean.

I won’t tell you everything happens for a reason.

I won’t tell you not to cry.

I won’t tell you that you should be “over it” by now.

I won’t tell you that because you believe God, grief shouldn’t hurt.

Nah, fam.

Sometimes faith cries.

Sometimes faith has questions.

Sometimes faith worships with tears running down its face.

Sometimes faith simply says:

God, I still miss them.

🙏🏿❤️‍🩹

Jesus wept.

Knowing what He knew, Jesus still wept.

So I will never ask you to anesthetize your grief to prove your faith.

Faith does not require anesthesia.

You can trust God and miss somebody terribly.

You can praise and ache.

You can laugh at a memory and cry thirty seconds later.

You can have a wonderful day without betraying the person who died.

You can keep living without leaving them behind.

Healing is not erasure.

❤️‍🩹

And Beloved, sometimes grief is complicated.

Maybe the person you lost loved you beautifully.

Maybe they didn’t.

Maybe you loved each other and hurt each other.

Maybe there were things left unresolved.

Maybe you’re grieving with gratitude.

Maybe you’re grieving with anger.

Maybe grief came mixed with relief, guilt, confusion, tenderness or questions you still cannot answer.

There is a chair for you too.

🪑

I am not going to rank anybody’s grief.

I am not going to tell you how yours is supposed to look.

I will simply sit beside you.

Because sometimes love doesn’t need an explanation.

Sometimes love says:

Tell me about them.

Sometimes love says:

Say their name.

Sometimes love doesn’t say anything at all.

Sometimes love just stays.

🪑❤️‍🩹🪑

And that brings me back to Mom.

My mother was more than the day she died.

She was more than Christmas morning.

More than my grief.

More than my memories.

More than what I learned after losing her.

Before she was Mom, she was a whole human being.

She had a life.

A personality.

Dreams.

Preferences.

Stories.

Joy.

Disappointments.

Things I knew.

Things I probably never knew.

She belonged to herself before she belonged to anybody else.

But Wombie and I still get to call her:

Mom.

🧸❤️

And I don’t want death to become louder than her life.

Because death does something strange when we remember people.

One date can become so enormous that it begins swallowing everything that came before it.

The hospital gets louder than the kitchen.

The funeral gets louder than the laughter.

The final breath gets louder than every breath before it.

Nah, fam.

DEATH GETS ONE DATE.

LOVE GETS THE WHOLE LIFE.

❤️‍🔥

Look at a headstone sometime.

Two dates.

A little dash between them.

That tiny dash can hold an entire world.

Birthdays.

Breakfasts.

Arguments.

Songs.

Inside jokes.

Work.

Children.

Bad decisions.

Second chances.

Car rides.

Christmases.

Recipes.

Mistakes.

Apologies.

Laughter.

Ordinary Tuesdays.

Love.

A whole human life compressed into one tiny line.

The world may see a dash.

The people who loved them know that dash was a world.

🌎❤️‍🩹

That’s why losing one person can feel like losing an entire world.

And somewhere tonight, somebody understands exactly what I mean.

Somebody just got the call.

Somebody is planning a funeral.

Somebody is cleaning out a closet.

Somebody cannot bring themselves to clean out the closet.

Somebody reached for the phone before remembering.

Somebody heard their song.

Somebody cooked their recipe.

Somebody smelled a familiar perfume.

Somebody dreamed about them and woke up happy for three beautiful seconds before remembering.

Somebody lost their person yesterday.

Somebody lost theirs fifty years ago.

And suddenly today—

it hurts again.

Beloved,

bring their name.

🌎❤️‍🩹

You don’t have to leave them outside to sit with us.

Bring Mom.

Bring Daddy.

Bring your sister.

Bring your brother.

Bring your child.

Bring your spouse.

Bring your friend.

Bring the person whose relationship to you doesn’t fit neatly into a box.

Bring the person whose name still catches somewhere between your heart and your throat.

There is room.

🪑🪑

And while we’re sitting here, I need to say something to Wombie too.

We lost the same mother.

But that doesn’t mean we have the same grief.

Same Mom.

Different daughters.

Different memories.

Different relationships.

Different places where her absence lives.

Neither grief has to compete with the other.

There is room for both.

❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹

Maybe that’s something all of us can remember.

Two people can stand at the same funeral and go home carrying entirely different losses.

Love doesn’t require us to compare them.

Love makes room.

And memory makes room too.

One person remembers something another forgot.

Somebody remembers the laugh.

Somebody remembers the recipe.

Somebody remembers the phrase they always used.

Somebody remembers a story differently.

Piece by piece, we remind one another:

They were here.

🧩

Not:

Their death was here.

THEY were here.

That distinction matters to me.

Because my mother’s death is part of her story.

It is not her whole story.

And my grief is part of mine.

It is not my whole story either.

I am still here.

Wombie is still here.

You are still here.

🌎

And that brings me to Jesus.

There are three words Christians know well:

IT IS FINISHED.

Jesus said them.

Not me.

Not you.

Jesus.

And I need to be careful here because I don’t want to borrow His sentence for something He never assigned to it.

Jesus’ job is done.

Our job is not done.

That does NOT mean Jesus completed part of salvation and left the rest for us.

Nah, fam.

We are not finishing Calvary.

We are not completing Christ.

We are not anybody’s Messiah.

What belonged to Jesus to finish, Jesus finished.

🙏🏿❤️‍🔥

His work is completion.

Our work is response.

We don’t love the world to finish what Jesus couldn’t.

We love because we have been loved.

We don’t have to become saviors.

We can become neighbors.

And neighbors can do ordinary things.

Call.

Listen.

Visit.

Feed somebody.

Remember.

Protect.

Apologize.

Forgive where forgiveness is possible and healthy.

Hold a hand.

Say a name.

Pull up another chair.

Stay.

Love.

❤️

That’s our work.

And Beloveds—

there are still people here.

That’s why I’m not finished.

That’s why you’re not finished.

That’s why we aren’t finished.

Not because death is stalking us and we should live terrified of every goodbye.

No.

I don’t want fear to teach us how to love.

Life is happening now.

That’s enough reason.

The last ordinary day usually looks ordinary while we’re living it.

Nobody announces:

This is the last phone call.

This is the last Christmas.

This is the last ridiculous joke.

This is the last hug.

So don’t spend your life terrified that everything might be the last thing.

Instead:

Let ordinary love count while it is still ordinary.

❤️‍🔥

Tell people they matter while they can hear you.

Sit with them.

Laugh with them.

Listen.

Be present.

Don’t wait for a funeral to discover somebody was precious.

Don’t wait for March.

And if your March has already disappeared—

come sit with me.

I know something about missing a March.

❤️‍🩹🪑

Mom’s love did not make her immortal.

But her death did not make her love meaningless.

Some of what she gave reached her daughters.

And love moves.

Person to person.

Life to life.

❤️➡️❤️➡️❤️➡️❤️➡️🌎

Somebody may receive kindness tomorrow that began partly with a person whose name they will never know.

That’s an extraordinary kind of legacy.

Love that no longer needs your name attached to it.

But let me be clear:

Legacy is not reimbursement for loss.

Nothing beautiful that comes afterward makes losing somebody “worth it.”

Nothing replaces Mom.

Nothing gives us March.

Nothing balances some cosmic ledger and makes everything even.

I can be grateful for what love produced and still say:

I miss my mother.

Both are true.

❤️‍🩹

And maybe that’s why I keep coming back to the whole world.

🌎

Every stranger you pass contains a history you cannot see.

Somebody is carrying an empty chair.

Somebody is carrying a name.

Somebody is carrying a March.

Somebody is carrying joy and grief in the same body.

We don’t know everybody’s story.

Maybe we don’t need to.

Maybe we can begin somewhere simpler:

Beloved.

Before I know your race.

Beloved.

Before I know your country.

Beloved.

Before I know your politics.

Beloved.

Before I know whether you worship like me—or worship at all.

Beloved.

Before I know your story.

You are a human being standing here with me in this world.

And your life matters.

🌎❤️

I cannot love eight billion people individually.

Neither can you.

That’s why I don’t ask you to save the world.

I ask something human-sized.

One step.

Love somebody within your reach.

Then another person does the same.

Then another.

Then another.

One chair.

One phone call.

One meal.

One name remembered.

One person seen.

One act of love.

One step. One step. One step.

That’s how a human-sized heart approaches a world-sized command.

❤️➡️🌎

Mom,

I wish we had gotten March.

I wish you had seen what I wanted you to see.

I wish there had been more ordinary days.

But there weren’t.

So I will not pretend I understand everything.

I will not pretend missing you doesn’t hurt.

And I will not allow the day you died to become bigger than all the days you lived.

You were here.

You loved.

You mattered.

You still matter to your daughters.

🧸❤️‍🩹

Wombie,

there is room for your grief too.

Always.

❤️‍🩹

And Beloveds—

there is room for yours.

Bring the names.

Bring the memories.

Bring the questions.

Bring the laughter.

Bring the tears.

Bring the complicated parts.

Bring the whole messy human thing.

🪑🪑🌎

We don’t have to resolve before we belong.

And when we’re ready, we’ll stand—or sit, or roll—from that table and turn again toward the living.

Because there are still people here.

There is still kindness to give.

There is still loneliness to interrupt.

There is still injustice to confront.

There are still hands to hold.

There are still voices to hear.

There are still people who need another chair.

There is still a whole world full of human beings who need love.

So yes:

JESUS’ JOB IS DONE.

OUR JOB IS NOT DONE.

His:

IT IS FINISHED.

Ours:

KEEP LOVING.

Again tomorrow.

And the day after that.

For however many tomorrows we are given.

Mom was here.

Your person was here.

You are here.

And while we’re both still here—

LET’S LOVE THE WORLD TOGETHER.

🌎❤️‍🩹❤️‍🔥

Your life matters to me.

One step.

One step.

One step.

You are loved.

You are NOT alone.

Keep on being…YOU!

Asking for A Friend,
Cassandra

#YourLifeMattersToMe