I have a motto. It's not on a coffee mug. I will never put it on a coffee mug, or maybe I might. But it's been my quiet way of staying sane for a long time, and the longer I walk with Jesus the more it has become a kind of theology for me.

Ready?

Life sucks, then we die.

I know. Hang with me.

When most people hear that, they assume nihilism. Cynicism. Dark humor at best. But that's not what I mean. Not even close. To me, that little phrase is one of the most spiritually freeing things I've ever come to believe. It is acceptance. It is the end of pretending. And it is the doorway to actually enjoying the moments when life is, in fact, amazing.

Because here's the thing nobody warned me about: the people who suffer the most aren't the ones who are willing to say life is hard. They're the ones who keep expecting it not to be.

When God Goes Quiet on Your Watch

I am writing this from inside a season I did not order.

The last few years have been the hardest of my life. My marriage ended in a divorce I never imagined I'd be a part of. I love my ex and I always will. But the end of that marriage broke something open in me that I'm still learning how to carry. The vast majority of people in my life have responded to my divorce with grace. With kindness. With "we still love you, we still see you, we're still here." That has been a gift.

But the outliers, friend. The ones who decided I was a project to fix or a cautionary tale to gossip about or a person they could just quietly stop returning calls to. Those few cruel responses have a way of being louder than the hundred kind ones. I'm a coach. I know exactly what's happening in my brain when that occurs. The negativity bias is real. Knowing it doesn't make it stop hurting.

Then we walked through David's graduation. My son David enlisted in the Army, and this was his boot camp graduation. The whole family flew in to watch him stand in formation in his uniform, having done one of the hardest things a young man can do. It was the kind of day a parent dreams about. There should have been only joy in that day. There was joy. But there was also pain woven right through it.

I had worked hard to prepare for that day. I journaled about it. I rehearsed. I knew there was a possibility of a hard interaction and I wanted to be ready. I came up with what I thought was a gracious, boundaried sentence to use if it came to it: "Today is about David. I don't want to get into anything about us right now."

I said it.

It got rejected immediately, and then all hell broke loose.

And friend, that is the whole point of this article. I did the work. I did the right thing. I came in prepared and humble and clear. And it still blew up. That is what real life looks like. We can do everything in our power to handle a moment well, and the moment can still go sideways. Joy and pain holding hands at the same dinner table. Anyone who's been through a hard season knows exactly what I mean.

And through all of it, here is the thing I haven't said out loud much:

God has felt distant.

Not gone. Not absent. Not silent in some dramatic way that would make a good testimony video. Just quiet. Different. Like He's in the room but standing behind me where I can't quite see Him. I've kept showing up. I've kept reading. I've kept praying. I've kept doing the work I know how to do. And it's felt like I was talking into a phone that was on mute.

For a long time I thought that meant something was wrong with me.

Then I remembered St. John of the Cross.

The Dark Night Isn't a Detour

Way back in graduate school I read St. John of the Cross. He was a 16th-century monk who wrote about something he called the dark night of the soul. The short version: there are seasons in the spiritual life when God seems to withdraw the felt sense of His presence. The prayers that used to feel warm feel hollow. The scriptures that used to leap off the page sit there like a grocery list. The community that used to encourage you starts to feel like it doesn't fit.

You haven't done anything wrong. You're not backslidden. You're not losing your faith.

You're being weaned.

That's John's whole point. He says God lets the comfort dry up so that we stop loving Him for the comfort and start loving Him for Him. He's purifying the relationship. He's pulling us off the milk so we can finally eat real food. The dryness isn't the obstacle to the spiritual work. The dryness is the spiritual work.

I needed that reminder lately. Maybe you do too.

If you have been doing all the right things and God still feels distant, you might not be in trouble. You might be in the middle of the most important season of your walk. The one where He stops giving you spiritual snacks and starts giving you Himself.

Why Church Has Been Hard

I'll tell you something I've struggled to admit out loud. Going to church has been hard for me.

A lot of churches are quietly designed for the married couple sitting in the third row holding hands. The sermons assume you have a spouse to go home to and discuss it with. The small groups are couples groups. The events are family events. None of that is wrong. The Church is a family and family includes marriage. But when you walk in alone after a divorce you didn't see coming, the gravity of those rooms can feel like it pulls you sideways.

I have been resistant. I have used my daughter in law and my grandson as a reason to stay close to home on Sunday mornings. I have leaned into my own community of clients and Sojourners and friends instead of pushing into a local body. I am not telling you this to brag. I'm telling you this because if you've felt the same thing, I want you to know you're not crazy and you're not faithless. You might just be a person trying to figure out where you belong now that your old map doesn't work anymore.

That's part of the dark night too. The places that used to feel like home stop feeling that way. Not because they're bad. Because you have changed and the spaces around you haven't caught up yet.

"Life Sucks, Then We Die" Is Not Cynicism

This is where the motto comes back in.

When I say "life sucks, then we die," I am not saying life is meaningless. I am saying life is hard and then it ends. That is not a depressing thought to me. It is a liberating one. Because once you accept that suffering is woven into being human, you stop being shocked by it. You stop demanding that life be different than it actually is. You stop being a child throwing a fit at the universe.

And once you stop fighting the fact that life is hard, two things happen.

First, you stop suffering on top of suffering. Most of our pain isn't the original pain. It's the layer of "this shouldn't be happening" we put on top of the pain. The Buddhists call that the second arrow. Jesus said it differently. He said in this world you will have trouble. You. Will. Have. Trouble. Present tense. Future tense. Until the end. He didn't promise a trouble-free life. He promised His presence in the trouble. There's a big difference.

Second, you actually start enjoying the good parts. Because you stop assuming the good parts are the default and the hard parts are the interruption. Once you flip that, every good moment becomes a gift instead of a baseline. My grandson laughing. A meal with my kids. A client breakthrough that shifts a marriage. A quiet morning with coffee and the sound of nothing. These are not the air I breathe. These are oxygen tanks I get to use for a few minutes before going back into the deep. And that makes them precious in a way they never were when I expected life to mostly be smooth.

There is a word for what I'm describing and it's not nihilism. It's acceptance. And acceptance is the doorway to peace.

Solomon said it like this in Ecclesiastes: "For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build up. A time to cry and a time to laugh. A time to grieve and a time to dance." (Ecclesiastes 3:1-4 NLT)

He didn't say a time when everything is fine and a time when life makes sense. He named the whole spectrum. He included the killing and the tearing and the grieving right alongside the dancing. That's the design. Not a flaw in the design.

What I'm Doing in the Quiet

I told you I'd be honest about where I am, so here it is. I am still in this season. I am not writing you from the other side. I am writing you from inside.

Here's what I'm trying to do, badly and unevenly, on most days.

I am still showing up. I am still praying even when prayer feels like throwing pebbles at a closed window. I am still reading the Bible even when the words don't catch fire. I am still leaning toward Jesus even when I can't feel His face. Because John of the Cross says that the showing up is the trust. The fidelity in the silence is the very thing God is forming. If I only loved Him when I felt Him, I'd be loving the feeling. He wants more for me than that.

I am letting the cruel voices be small. Not by fighting them. By starving them. The people who hurt me with their reactions to my divorce don't get to live rent free in my head anymore. I see them. I forgive them. I keep moving.

I am letting the kind voices be big. The friends who showed up. The clients who keep saying my work matters. My kids. My grandson. My Sojourners community. These are the people God has actually given me right now, and I am refusing to grieve the relationships I lost so hard that I miss the ones I still have.

I am open to a new kind of community. I don't know what church looks like for me yet in this season. But I'm holding the question with curiosity instead of dread. And I trust that God will make that clear in His timing, not mine.

I am letting Jesus love me without making me earn it. This is the hardest one. As a high Otter and a recovering performer for God, I am terrible at receiving. But I'm trying. Because the dark night is teaching me that He doesn't need my performance. He just wants me.

A Word for You, Whoever You Are

If you are doing all the right things and God still feels distant, I want you to hear this from a guy who's in it with you:

You are not in trouble. You are in transition. The silence isn't the absence of God. It is the presence of a God who loves you enough to take you deeper than the version of Him you used to settle for.

Life sucks, and then we die. And in between, there is a Savior who walked through more suck than any of us ever will, who knows your name, who is not surprised by your dark season, and who will see you through to the other side. Maybe not when you want. Probably not how you want. But He will.

In the meantime: keep showing up. Be honest about what hurts. Let the kind voices be loud and the cruel ones be small. And stop expecting life to be different than it actually is. The peace you're looking for isn't on the other side of all your problems being solved. It's on the other side of accepting that some of them won't be.

That's where I am. That's what I'm learning.

If you're somewhere in the same neighborhood, I'd love to walk it with you.

A Place to Walk This Out With Others

If something in this article hit you and you're tired of carrying the silence by yourself, let me invite you into the Smalley Sojourners community.

It's a small group of imperfect people meeting twice a week on Google Meet, encouraging each other through a WhatsApp group, and walking through honest spiritual content together. Right now we're in a 6-week study I wrote called Loved because most of us have forgotten that we already are.

It's not a church replacement. It's not a fix. It's just a few people who decided to do this thing together instead of alone.

You can join us at smalleyinstitute.com/offers/FEfWKzN7/checkout.

You can also text me at (303) 435-2630 or email [email protected] if you want to talk about anything in this article. I read every message.

Are you in a season where God feels distant? You're not alone. Drop a comment if this resonated, or just send me a quiet "me too" so I know you're out there.