Finding Light in the Darkness
Reflections on Loss, Grief, and the Sovereignty of God
I can’t remember the last time I woke up early and wanted to write. And not just wanted to, but longed to write. Needed to write.
I wake up early most days. The kids have places to be, homeschool lessons need to be prepped, or work awaits to be done. But waking up early and feeling that call, that pull, to put words on the page hasn’t been a prominent part of my 2025.
I’ve vaguely alluded to this year being a difficult one. (And if I’m being honest, it’s been the past couple of years.) I’ve mentioned grief and loss here and there in my newsletters and on social media. But I haven’t felt ready to openly share about the things that have happened, partly because I wasn’t sure what to say or how to say it.
As a writer, I rely on words often. Words are what I have. They are my safe haven. They are familiar. They are how I process life, whether through writing, speaking, or even in my silent thoughts and prayers. A writer without words is like a painter without a brush. The desire to express oneself is there, but without an outlet to do so. Everything gets bottled up inside, waiting to be set free.
I’ve been trying to write this post for days (and really since January). The hardest thing has been coming up with a title. Then this morning, in the quiet hour that passes between night and dawn, I woke up and I knew. I knew what the title needed to be. (By the grace and nudging of the Holy Spirit.)
It’s the very same thing I say during almost every conference, author panel, writing workshop, or interview. And it goes something like this:
“I write books with themes that reflect good overcoming evil.
Books about finding light in the darkness.
Books about seeking hope amidst the heartache.” – Sara Ella
All of my books feature the element of mirrors or glass of some sort. I suppose I feel drawn to the meanings behind those elements and what they represent.
Feeling broken and shattered.
Seeing the true reflection beyond the looking glass.
As I share my own reflections on grief and loss, I pray my words (the words I am only able to find by God’s grace) will be a blessing or comfort, or in some way help you feel a little less alone. A little firmer in your faith. And, in the end, drawn to the hope and assurance of true Light.
Unexpected Loss
In January of this year, I learned I was unexpectedly pregnant—with twins. I had hardly processed the news before the doctor was telling me the last thing I expected to hear.
“There are no heartbeats,” he told me. “This is likely a silent miscarriage.”
Silent? Miscarriage? I was in total shock. These would have been my fourth and fifth babies, so I’d attended the ultrasound appointment alone, not thinking I’d need my husband there. After all, this was not my first rodeo.
I walked out of the doctor’s office with ultrasound pictures and shaking hands. I cried all the way home. I cried because I felt guilty for not being over the moon about the surprise pregnancy in the first place, and I cried for the loss I never expected to experience. I cried because my body thought I was pregnant, while I knew deep down the next ultrasound appointment would confirm they were gone.
And the next one.
And the one after that.
Five weeks of repeat ultrasounds confirmed—without a doubt—my babies were already with Jesus. My body still didn’t recognize the loss, though, so after carrying my twins for over two months, my doctor decided it was time to intervene.
Isn’t that how grief goes sometimes? We don’t feel the loss completely, not at first. We feel numb, disbelieving, bargaining, questioning, and maybe even hoping time will reverse. Things will change. The loss didn’t truly happen. There must be some horrible mistake.
All of this took place while I was deep in edits for my next book, Glass Across the Sea. A book that, in many ways, became the outlet through which I processed my grief.
“Grief was not a passing visitor, but an unwelcome guest come to stay.” – Glass Across the Sea
Those two months of drowning in grief, loss, and edits left me exhausted and numb. My amazing publisher offered to push the release date back, but I (stubbornly) refused to let my circumstances alter my course. I would finish my book on time if it wrecked me. Not for myself, but because I believed God was calling me to persevere and rely on Him, even when I had little to nothing left to give. When I was weak, He was my strength (2 Corinthians 12:9–10).
And then came March. My book was nearly done with a round of edits, and I was finally seeing a little sunshine by way of my 40th birthday girls’ trip to Disneyland. On the last morning of our trip, however, my husband called me very early and shared the news that his dad had suddenly passed away the night before.
A new wave of grief and loss hit our household that day. I couldn’t understand why. Why would God allow such heartbreak to hit our family—to hit my husband—so soon after what we’d already experienced in the first two months of the year?
Unfailing God
Trusting in the sovereignty of God is a lesson I’ve learned the hard way. Over the last couple of years, I have specifically asked the Lord to draw me closer to Him. “Rekindle the fire in my heart,” I’ve prayed.
I am not sure how I imagined that rekindling would go, but I’ve found that, so often, God has allowed trials in my life to be the answer to that very prayer.
My husband’s job loss.
Financial hardship and the possibility of losing the dream house we built.
Car trouble and having one shared vehicle.
Losing our twin babies.
My father-in-law’s passing.
Through it all—through every up and down and down and down again—God has remained the only reliable and unwavering constant.
When the financial security fled, God was there.
When we endured the pain of grief beyond what we thought we could bear, God never left our side.
When we faced “various trials,” as James puts it, God never failed.
“Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.” – James 1:2–3
“Firm Foundation” is one of my favorite modern hymns. I love it because it reminds me of where to put my trust when the storms persist.
The lyrics go like this:
“Christ is my firm foundation
The rock on which I stand
When everything around me is shaken
I've never been more glad
That I put my faith in Jesus
'Cause He's never let me down
He's faithful through generations
So why would He fail now?
He won’t, he won’t”
– Lyrics by Austin Davis, Chandler Moore & Cody Carnes
We serve an unfailing God. A God who sees every tear we shed (Psalm 56:8). A God who is sovereign over all (Psalm 103:19). A God who desires we come to Him when we are weary and burdened and in need of comfort and rest (Matthew 11:28).
Unwavering Faith
The events of this year, and particularly this past week, have shaken me to my core. If 2025 could be summed up in a word, I think that word could quite possibly be “sorrow.”
But another word that comes to mind is “faith.” Because faith is that which we must cling to when all seems lost. When the darkness surrounds us and the shadows hover, our only hope remains in the God who sees (Genesis 16:13). In the God who formed me in my mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13). In the King of kings and Lord of lords (Revelation 19:16).
I have cried more than I thought possible for people I have never met in person in the past few days. And yet, through all the sorrow and the deep sense of loss and grief so many of us have experienced, God remains good. He remains faithful. And so we, too, are called to stand firm in our faith.
“Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.” – Hebrews 10:23
My theme verse this year (and the epigraph for Glass Across the Sea) is John 1:5. I’ve clung to this verse all year, but especially in the past few days as my heart has broken a hundred times over.
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” – John 1:5
Darkness may seem a prominent theme lately, but Light always prevails.
Always.
For those of us who have a shared faith in Jesus, I pray that we will remain steadfast and shine a light in the darkness together more than ever moving forward. That we will cling to the truth that all the pain and suffering and heartache we endure on this earth can and will ultimately bring glory to God. After all . . .
“Darkness cannot hide light forever—it will merely delay it for a little while.”
– Glass Across the Sea
While I am not old enough to have experienced the same kind of pain, I will say that the first half of the year was rough— and it was your book that helped me get through the final days of it.
I entered January of 2025 fairly hopeful, because in my mind, while the latter half of the previous year was rough, it could only get better. I’d been dismissing my odd aversion to celebrating Christmas to my creative and mental burnout following a rough first semester and a long time with little creative projects under my belt. I’d recently gone back into therapy for old trauma and I wasn’t suicidal, so I’d dismissed any thought of depression from my mind. Either way, spring was coming, I had a new book I was excited about, and things could get better—- right?
Except they didn’t 😅 I blazed through the new novel and that became my raft for a bit as I processed things through a traumatized MC so tired of fighting and carrying on, and when the second semester got harder I dug into the story more and found a refuge in a whacky world of snarky cinnamon roll superheroes. All the while still ignoring the fact that my mental health was getting worse, and in the dark of night intrusive voices whispered in my ears.
April came. Spring, finally, and I was working on an unexpected sequel to the book… and finally it all crashed. I was behind in schoolwork, I was forcing my story to be something it wasn’t (and totally burning myself out in the process), and worst of all, my bedroom, my personal safe space, had toxic mold, something I hadn’t faced since my childhood when it forced my family to gut out half our old house and several precious toys and books to be lost to chaos.
And that is when I had to admit that there was a problem. Because the intrusive voices got too loud, my writing was in shambles, and I’d read my Bible and go to bed sobbing every night asking God why I wanted to die so badly. Every small failure felt so insurmountable that I regressed to behaviors I hadn’t done for almost five years. I knew it was only a season and yet the weight of everything was so crushing that it felt so hard to work to find joy. A good day became a day where I didn’t want to die and that felt so depressing in itself that I would just spiral.
In all of this, as I changed my supplements and slowly eased myself away from those thoughts, there was also the pressing issue that I had a birthday coming up, paired with an age that for no reason absolutely scared me to death. One of those moments where you know it won’t feel any different, but it symbolizes the amount of pain you’ve gone through since then and I remember sobbing the night before wondering why I was scared of an age.
Well, that morning of the birthday , I had to be holed away while my family decorated. I was already up early, so I had snuck downstairs and stole my sister’s copy of Coral, since it had been about two years since I read it and I wanted a refresher.
I cried over that book. I was wonderfully lost in the world and it felt like such a balm to my still raw and healing soul. The first time I read it, it helped me understand some of what one of my sisters had gone through in the past— and now it was a comfort to me, a distraction from my anxiety over my birthday and whether the next half of the year would be as awful as the first.
I finished the book in two hours XD
And after that day, even though I still had some rough moments… I felt okay.
And now I’m happy to say that the past three months have been MUCH better, I’m back on track with my writing and I haven’t heard my dark intrusive voices for months. I know there might be seasons of darkness ahead , and I can’t deny that going into winter has made me worried about regressing. But God has gotten me this far and He is good.
Thank you for writing stories that are real about the things that are hardest to say and explain. Coral gave me a spark of happily ever after when life kept telling me I’d just have tragedy. And I’m praying for ya 😉
💜
Sara, thank you for sharing your heart in this beautiful, vulnerable post. Praying that we would all let God's light shine through us in the darkness. Keeping you in my prayers. ❤️