Love Shows Up

A reflection on offering presence during someone else’s storm, even while learning to heal yourself

🕯️Looking back at these photos now, I see something I could not fully recognise at the time.

Two women sitting at a table covered in paint, colour, scraps of paper, and the small joyful chaos that creative moments often bring. Smiles that look light on the surface, yet each of us quietly carrying our own inner stories.

Somewhere in 2020 our paths crossed. I cannot even remember exactly how we first met. What I do remember is that she was struggling deeply with depression.

At that time my own healing journey had only just begun. I did not yet have answers or experience. What I did have was compassion, a willingness to listen, and the simple ministry of showing up.

Sometimes the most powerful form of care is not fixing someone’s life. Sometimes it is simply presence.

I helped where I could. I gave lifts when she needed transport. I opened our home for creative time together. We sat around tables with paint, paper, and conversation. I tried to create spaces where breathing felt a little easier.

One New Year’s Day, Clive and I took her to the Hamilton Botanical Gardens. The quiet beauty of those gardens felt like a small invitation to hope, the kind that comes through colour, light, and fresh air.

Later that month, we invited her to church for a special event called Life at the Movies. Halfway through the service, she quietly left to go to the restroom, but she never came back. The moment we realised she had not returned, concern replaced calm. After alerting the team inside and asking them to let us know if she returned, Clive and I left the church and began searching the neighbourhood around it. Thankfully, she did and when we heard she had returned, we went back and picked her up, taking her safely home.

At the time, it felt like one small moment in a larger story, yet that moment turned out to be the last. Soon afterwards, she stopped replying to my messages. My calls went unanswered. Silence settled in where connection had been.

A few weeks later, someone came to our house and returned the kitchen utensils I had lent her and I was told that she had moved away.

Just like that, the chapter closed.

There was no explanation, no goodbye, and no way to understand what had happened inside her life or heart.

For a long time, that sudden ending sat quietly inside me, not as anger, but as an unfinished question. Was it something I said, or did?🤔 Did I say something wrong?🤔 Did I miss a signal?🤔 Could I have done more?🤔 Could I have been different?🤔

Then, six years later, her message arrived.

She wrote that during that time she had not been well, yet she eventually reached a place where she recognised the need for help. With God’s help and the support of other believers, she began doing the hard work of healing.

Now she finds herself in a stronger place.

Reading her words did not reopen the wound.

Instead, it gently closed the loop.

📖 “The LORD is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a contrite spirit.” — Psalm 34:18 (NKJV)

Sometimes when someone disappears from our lives, it is not rejection.

Sometimes it is survival.

People walking through deep mental and emotional struggles often withdraw in ways that even they cannot explain. The distance is not always about the people who cared for them. Often, it is about the battle happening inside them.

Looking at these photos now, I see something else as well.

Two people doing the best they could with the strength they had at the time.

I was still early in my own healing journey. I did not yet know the language of trauma or the deeper layers of restoration God would later teach me. Yet even then, the Lord was already teaching me something simple and profound.

Love shows up.

Love drives.

Love sits at messy tables.

Love offers creative spaces where words are not always necessary.

Love searches the streets when someone runs out of the building in angst.

Love opens its home.

Love does not always get the ending it expects.

📖 “Let all that you do be done with love.” — 1 Corinthians 16:14 (NKJV)

*Sometimes the most powerful ministry is simply presence.*

Her message years later reminded me of something important.

Seeds planted in kindness are never wasted.

We may never see the full story while it is unfolding. Yet God holds every chapter, even the ones that seemed to end abruptly.

🪨Truth: sometimes the ministry God entrusts to us is simply presence.

🕊️Surrender: the outcomes of people’s journeys belong to Him.

🌱Hope: even years later, healing can return with humility and grace.

💡 Reflection

• Have you ever supported someone through a difficult season and never known how their story continued? 🤔
• Can you see ways God may have used your presence in someone’s life, even if the relationship did not last? 🤔
• What does faithful love look like when the ending of the story is out of your hands? 🤔

🎺 Affirmation

Acts of kindness offered in love are never lost in God’s kingdom.

Even when a chapter closes suddenly, the compassion you gave remains part of the story God is writing in someone’s life.

Your presence mattered.

🙌 Prayer

Father, thank You for the people whose lives briefly intersect with ours, even when we do not understand the full story. Thank You for every opportunity You give us to offer kindness, transport, conversation, creativity, and presence to those who are struggling. Teach me to trust You with the chapters that close without explanation. Bless Aimee in the healing journey You have carried her through, and continue to lead both of us in the paths You have prepared. May every act of love offered in Your name bear fruit in ways only You can see.

In Jesus’ Name, Amen.