Dry Riverbeds

In my darkest hour, I needed anchors but found only mirages. Those I trusted became empty riverbeds—dry when I needed them to flow. One glimpse of my suffering, and they vanished, leaving me alone with my grief. – Job 6

Seven years ago, they came. Signed the guest book, sat in simple chairs, said comforting words over potato salad and ham. The riverbed was full. Water flowed where it should, and voices gathered like tributaries meeting in one sacred place.

Yet Job understood seasonal streams; how they swell in spring, then disappear in heat, leaving water’s memory and smooth stones. They promise water in good times, yet offer only dry land in times of need.

People became mirages and silence an empty well.

I used to know the way home. Could drive it blindfolded, park in the driveway, walk through the door without knocking. Now home exists somewhere I can’t find. Not on any map, not in any area code, not in the Christmas cards that stopped coming.

I understand now what the psalmist meant about dwelling in a dry and weary land, though I never understood the geography. Some deserts are made of sand and stone. Others are made of people who once called you before they learned that grief has a way of making you a stranger in your own story.

Some distances can’t be measured. Not the kind between cities or the space between then and now, but the width of silence that grows where laughter used to live, the way certain names become too heavy for some to say.

I know now what it means to be homesick for places that exist only in memory, to long for tables that were set before we learned how grief changes the taste of everything, even the bread we used to break together.

Loss has redrawn the map I thought I knew by heart. What appeared to be permanent rivers turned out to be illusions, and I’m discovering a new reality where love endures even when those who experience it move on.