There is a piece of advice that gets given at funerals and it is good advice, and I have watched it hurt people, and both of those things are true at once.
The advice is: do not make any big decisions in the first year.
It is wise. Grief does something to judgment that a person cannot see from inside, and a lot of harm has been avoided by somebody being told to wait twelve months before selling a house.
But here is the problem. A great many people are not permitted to follow it.
The bank does not wait a year. The lease does not wait a year. A job offer does not stay open, a landlord gives notice, a family member needs an answer about a house, a business partner needs to know by the end of the month. And the person carrying the loss has to decide something real while they are in the worst condition of their life, and then they get told, gently, by people who love them, that they should not be deciding anything.
Which leaves them holding a decision and a verdict about their own fitness to make it.
You have been handed both of those at once and neither of them is a judgment on you, and Psalm 27 has a man pleading not to be forsaken in the same psalm that tells him to be of good courage, and that part belongs to the Holy Spirit, who is present with somebody in exactly that double position.
I have sat with a lot of people in that exact place and I want to talk about it plainly, because most of what gets said about God's will assumes a person who is in one piece.
What that psalm is doing at the end
The verse people hand a grieving person is usually the last line of the twenty-seventh psalm, and it is worth reading the whole psalm before quoting the end of it.
That psalm has a confident opening. The LORD is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear. And then, about halfway through, the tone changes entirely and the man is pleading not to be forsaken and saying his father and mother have left him.
And then this at the end.
Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD. (Psalm 27:14, King James Version)
Notice that the psalm does not end in resolution. It ends in an instruction the man is giving himself, and he says it twice, which is what a person does when they are not sure they will manage it.
And notice what is promised. He shall strengthen thine heart. Not He shall show you the answer. Not He shall make it obvious. Strength for the heart, offered to a person who is still waiting at the end of the psalm.
You have been promised strengthening rather than clarity, and that is what the verse says rather than a lowering of what it says, and Psalm 27 ends with a man telling himself to wait for a second time. That work is the Spirit's, and He does the strengthening in a person who cannot manufacture any.
Waiting is not the same as not deciding
Here is the distinction that matters for a person with a deadline, and I have watched it set people free.
Waiting on the LORD, in the psalms, is not primarily an instruction about the calendar. The word carries the sense of looking toward, of expecting, of keeping your eyes on somebody. It is a posture rather than a schedule.
Which means a person can wait on the LORD and sign a document on the same afternoon. Those are not in conflict. The waiting is where the eyes are, not whether the hand moves.
You are able to wait on Him and act in the same week, and the waiting was never a synonym for stillness (Psalm 31:24), and the Holy Spirit is the one who holds a person's attention on God while their hands are doing something that could not be postponed.
The famous verse in Isaiah puts the exchange plainly.
But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary. (Isaiah 40:31)
Run. Walk. Those are motion words at the end of a verse about waiting, and nobody seems to notice that.
The two things in the same room
The practical thing I have found, and I did not invent it, is to stop keeping them apart.
Most people carrying a loss and a decision handle them in separate rooms. The decision gets thought about at the table with paperwork, in a businesslike voice. The grief gets carried at other hours, usually alone, usually at night.
And a person doing that is deciding as though they were somebody else. They are performing a version of themselves who is not carrying anything, and then wondering why the decision feels unreal.
So say both out loud, in the same breath, to God.
You are allowed to bring the whole of yourself into a decision, and God has never asked anybody to leave the loss outside the door first (Psalm 56:8). The same Spirit is the one who is present with both of those things at once, which no adviser and no bank ever will be.
That verse in Psalm 56 says He keeps a record of a person's tossing and puts their tears in a bottle. That is not a decorative image. It is a claim that the grief is being counted while the rest of a person's life carries on.
You have every night of it already counted, and the counting was going on through the weeks nobody asked how you were (Psalm 56:8), and it is the Spirit who has been keeping that record without needing to be told about it.
So say the decision, and then say the loss, out loud, together.
You have a heart that He undertakes to strengthen, and that is the promise attached to waiting rather than a promise that the way becomes clear (Isaiah 40:31), and the Holy Spirit is the one who supplies that strength to somebody who has run out of their own.
Now the counterfeit, and in grief it is cruel, so learn its shape. It says: you are in no condition to decide, and whatever you choose now will be the wrong thing, and you will look back on this. That is vague, it names you rather than an act, and it hands you nothing except dread. Conviction from the Holy Spirit names one specific thing and it never leaves a person without somewhere to go.
You are not disqualified by the state you are in, and the man who wrote that psalm was pleading not to be forsaken four verses before he wrote the last line of it (Psalm 27:14). The Spirit is the one who was with him in both halves of the same psalm.
This does not promise the decision turns out well, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. The woman with the boat still does not know. And nothing here promises the first year gets easier, because it usually does not until well into the second. What is settled is that your tears are counted, that strength for the heart is the thing actually promised, and that a person deciding while carrying something is not a person deciding alone.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, and if the third one is all there is tonight, say that one. Christ is in you, and the right to speak over your own praying came with Him rather than being manufactured. God promised to strengthen a heart rather than to remove a decision, so speak to the verdict that has been standing over your fitness to choose. Say what is written, and then let it stand in His timing rather than yours.
- Verdict that I am in no fit state, you are not honesty and you are not deciding this for me. The Word of God says wait on the LORD and He shall strengthen thine heart, and the man who wrote it was pleading not to be forsaken four verses earlier.
- Rule that says I must leave the loss outside, you are finished in the name of Jesus. Scripture says He puts my tears in His bottle and counts my tossing, so the grief is being held while the rest of my life carries on.
- Father, Isaiah 40:31 says they that wait upon You renew their strength and then it uses running words. I say the decision and the loss out loud together tonight, and I thank You that Your Spirit holds a person together at their own table.
Psalm 27:14
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