There are seasons of life that feel almost cinematic when you look back on them. Entire years wrapped up in a scent, a room, a song, a silence. One chapter defined by grief. Another by laughter that came too easily to appreciate at the time. Another season marked by friendships that once felt unshakable, until time quietly proved otherwise. Life moves like that sometimes: love and loss arriving together, joy sitting beside sorrow, people coming and going like tides you can’t hold back. And through every changing season, God remains. If you don’t see Him, be patient. Trust the words of someone who knows— even in the darkest night, the sun is still shining.
I think what unsettles me most about growing older is not the reality that life changes, but how quickly it changes. One day you’re praying for something with desperate faith, and the next you’re grieving the thing you thought would last forever. Relationships evolve. People leave. New people arrive. Dreams die quietly. Unexpected hope blooms in places you stopped checking. The heart becomes a landscape of graves and gardens existing side by side.
The older I get, the less I believe faith is about certainty, and the more I believe it is about remembrance. Remembering who God was when the night felt endless. Remembering His kindness when life becomes loud again. Remembering that His character does not fluctuate with my circumstances. Remembering . . . (join me and fill in these words with your own personal narrative).
I heard that song recently—one that I love dearly. The chorus says,
So I will praise You on the mountain
And I will praise You when the mountain’s in my way
You’re the summit where my feet are
So I will praise You in the valleys all the same
No less God within the shadows
No less faithful when the night leads me astray
You’re the heaven where my heart is
In the highlands and the heartache all the same.
(Highlands [Song of Ascent], Benjamin W. Hastings and Joel Houston, 2019)
Something about this song undid me. Undone, because there are songs you listen to casually, and then there are songs that arrive like old friends, carrying memories you forgot you had— songs that pull every season of your life into one sacred moment. Suddenly you remember the version of yourself who first heard it—exhausted, hopeful, grieving, healing, searching. You remember the prayers whispered in secret, the tears wiped away before walking back into work, the nights you begged God to explain Himself. And maybe He never fully did. But He stayed.
That’s the miracle I keep returning to—not that every prayer was answered the way I wanted (or at all); not that every valley made sense afterward—but that God remained utterly Himself through every version of me. When I was faithful. When I was numb. When I was angry. When I was wandering. When I was full of wonder again.
I wish more churches leaned into the reality that theology becomes deeply personal once suffering enters your life. Before pain, it’s possible to discuss God like an idea. After pain, you either discover Him as refuge or abandon the conversation altogether. There’s something about heartbreak that strips faith down to its truest form. No performance. No polished language. Just the aching question, “Will You still be enough here?” And somehow, in ways quieter than expected, He is.
Not always through dramatic miracles. Sometimes through endurance by your feet simply making it from the bed to the floor in the morning. Sometimes through a friend who texts at the right moment. Sometime through the friend that never texts again. Sometimes through the strange holiness of surviving another day. Sometimes through a worship song playing at exactly the right time, reminding you that heaven still reaches into earth.
Life really is wild. Beautifully wild. Terribly wild. One season you’re mourning who you used to be. Another season you’re grateful that version of you didn’t stay forever. And maybe wisdom is learning not to despise either season. The mountain teaches gratitude. The valley teaches dependence. Both reveal God differently.
I think that’s why memory matters so much in Scripture. Israel built altars not because God needed them, but because people forget. We forget how faithful He was. We forget how He carried us before. We forget that the God who met us in one wilderness has not abandoned us in the next one. But then a song plays. A memory resurfaces. A tear forms unexpectedly. And suddenly, the soul remembers. He was there then. He is here now. He will be there still.
In the highlands and the heartache all the same.
