Why a year

In the first days after a death, a family is surrounded. Food arrives. The phone does not stop. People say whatever you need, anything at all. They mean every word of it.

Then the funeral ends and everyone goes back to work, because they have to. By week six the calls have thinned. By month three, the person who is grieving has learned to say “doing okay” because the honest answer costs too much to give. By month eight, most people around them genuinely believe it is behind them.

It is not. Month three is frequently harder than week one, because the shock has worn off and the reality has landed. The first anniversary is often preceded by weeks of dread nobody else notices. And the loneliest part of grief is rarely the funeral — it is the long middle, where nothing is happening and nothing is better.

So this lasts a year. It shows up on the ordinary Tuesday in month seven when there is no occasion and nobody calls.

Judah

This is named for my son.

Judah Elliot Desent was born on March 18, 2025, and died on May 26, 2025, at Beaumont Royal Oak. He was seventy days old. There are photographs of him, and more about the people who held him, at judahelliot.com.

Judah means praise.

When Israel went to war, Judah went first — praise before the outcome was known, before anything had improved. That is not the same as pretending to feel fine. It is the decision to keep speaking to God from inside the thing, which is most of what the Psalms actually are.

Everything on this site comes out of the year that followed.

What it is not

It is not a devotional that argues someone out of their sorrow. It never says everything happens for a reason, and never suggests that enough faith should have shortened this. There is space in here for anger at God, because there is space for that in Scripture.

It is also not therapy or crisis care, and it never pretends to be. If you are in danger, call or text 988.