Six months before Sophia Lee traveled to Poland to report on Ukrainian refugees, her mother-in-law died suddenly. Six weeks before Lee’s trip, she learned she was 23 weeks pregnant. Lee and her bereaved husband, who Lee would hear crying in his sleep as he dreamed of his mother, did not feel ready to become parents.
“Oh Lord,” Lee would pray, “how I need you.”
Lee arrived in Poland not quite sure what to expect but hopeful for powerful stories of the gospel at work. She found them in a church that hosted hundreds of refugees and in the faith of a father whose daughter suffered endless seizures. She found them back at home, too, where her husband, Daniell, “wrestled, not just with grief, but with God” and found a faith that’s “not as exuberant and self-assured as before. It’s simpler now, quieter, humbler, but in many ways, a lot more authentic.”
What Lee found during that heavy season of life was that in the most intimate personal tragedies and most horrific global atrocities, God makes faith possible for us. It may not look like it always has. We may suffer losses so great that our old means of worship no longer seem accessible to us. But as we mourn and cling to the hope of a day when we will never cry another tear, God holds us up as we persevere, awaiting our ultimate deliverance.
