Stop Roasting Marshmallows In The Pit of Despair

Life has seasons where the only honest response is to sit in grief, acknowledge loss, and feel its weight. There is wisdom in not rushing past sorrow. Pretending everything is okay doesn’t create healing; it only postpones it.

This week, my wife, my son Tim, and I returned to our cabin. For weeks I had quietly hoped we might find something meaningful still standing, a keepsake or a recognizable corner, some reminder that not everything had been taken.

We found apocalyptic rubble.
Not devastation with remnants, just charred rubble.

It is hard to describe standing in a place that once held decades of memories and realizing almost every physical reminder has been reduced to ash, twisted metal, and broken stone. I looked it squarely in the eye. I sat with it. I grieved it.
And then something inside whispered, “It’s time.”

Not time to forget. Not time to minimize what happened. Simply time to begin moving forward.

The week also brought time with several people navigating impossible circumstances. My dear friend Sam is now carrying the responsibility of moving a business forward after the tragic loss of her partner, Katrina, and Katrina’s family.

We didn’t ask why. We asked, “What is the next right step?”

There is something profoundly healing about movement. In physics, entropy teaches that systems drift toward disorder unless energy is applied.

The same is true emotionally. Left unattended, discouragement settles in. Momentum disappears. Hope gives way to resignation. It takes real effort to reverse that direction.

Sometimes it isn’t dramatic. Just getting out of bed, making a call, going for a walk, creating a plan, taking the next faithful step. It isn’t glamorous. It’s gritty. But grit is often where healing begins.

The human soul was never meant to live in the lowest notes. Those notes are real and deserve to be honored, but they were never meant to be home. The music changes when we start climbing again. Transition notes may not sound triumphant. They may carry sadness and feel uncertain, but they hold something the valley cannot produce: hope, resolve, resilience.

That is where I find myself today. Not finished. Not fully healed. But moving.

If you’re walking through a difficult season, give yourself permission to grieve. Sit with it long enough to honor what has been lost. But don’t build a permanent campfire there. Don’t spend your life roasting marshmallows in the ashes.

When the time comes, and only you can know when, stand up. Brush yourself off. Take one step, then another.

The human soul was made to move toward the light.

Rich Christiansen

To see my thoughts in the wreckage, click the link below