A Prayer for the Loss of a Loved One

Father, someone I love is gone, and the space they filled is suddenly, terribly empty. I keep reaching for them out of habit, and the silence where their answer should be undoes me every time.

I did not know a person could leave such a shape behind. Their voice, their laugh, the small ways they were woven into my days, all of it stops me in my tracks and steals my breath.

I bring this raw and open wound to You. I do not have words to organize it, only this aching honesty: I loved them, and I am lost without them, and I need You to hold what I cannot.

Comfort me in the places no one else can reach. Let me feel that they are safe with You, kept in a love deeper than mine, beyond all reach of pain and parting.

You promised to wipe away every tear, and that one day death and mourning will be no more. Let that promise be a small light I can walk toward through this dark.

I surrender them into Your keeping and ask You to keep me too. Hold us both, until the morning when nothing loved is ever lost again. Amen.