A Prayer for the First Weeks After Someone Leaves

The flat is too quiet in a new way. There is a gap in the wardrobe where their clothes were, a toothbrush glass with one toothbrush in it, and a mattress that only has weight on one side now. You have already had to explain it once, badly, to someone at work who only asked how your weekend was. You still have to tell your mother. You still have to work out what to do about the joint account, the streaming subscriptions, the dog walker who doesn't know yet. None of this is the grand grief people write songs about. It is smaller than that and somehow more humiliating, and you don't know what to pray because you're not even sure what you're praying for.

This is not a piece about forgiving them. You are nowhere near that and you don't have to be. This is about the first weeks, when the practical and the devastating keep arriving in the same envelope.

The part nobody warns you about

Grief for a person who has died comes with a script. People know to bring a casserole. Nobody brings a casserole when a partner leaves. Instead you get questions. What happened. Are you okay. Was it something you did. You have to answer these while also cancelling a phone contract and deciding what to do with the good sofa. The exhaustion of this is real and it is allowed to be the thing you pray about, not just the ache underneath it.

God does not need you to have the story straight before you talk to him. You can bring him the boring, undignified parts: the passwords you have to change, the mutual friend you're dreading seeing, the fact that you cried in the car park of a supermarket over a specific brand of tea. He is not waiting for the polished version.

What you don't owe anyone yet

People will ask you to explain, sometimes kindly, sometimes just because they're curious. You will feel pressure to have an answer ready, a tidy account of who did what to whom. You don't have one yet. You might not have one for a long time.

He who answers before he hears, that is folly and shame to him.

Proverbs 18:13

This proverb was written for people settling disputes, warning against the fool who rushes to a verdict before he has actually listened, to the other side or to himself. It cost him credibility and made him look foolish. You are allowed to borrow that warning for yourself right now. You do not have to answer before you have heard your own life properly, before you understand what actually happened. Slowness here is not weakness. It is honest.

If someone presses you for the whole story tonight, it is fine to say you're not ready to tell it yet. That is not evasion. That is telling the truth about where you are.

Choosing who hears the whole thing

There is a particular temptation in these weeks to tell everyone everything, partly because you're in shock and it spills out, partly because you want people to be on your side. There is nothing wrong with needing people on your side. But you get to choose who carries the full account.

He who covers an offence promotes love; but he who repeats a matter separates best friends.

Proverbs 17:9

This proverb is about the difference between someone who lets a wrong rest, sparing a friendship, and someone who keeps repeating it, wearing the relationship down until it breaks. It doesn't mean silence about real harm. If there is something unsafe, something a solicitor or doctor or trusted friend needs to know, tell them. That is wisdom, not gossip, and no verse here is asking you to protect anyone by staying quiet about danger to yourself. But the version of the story you give a coworker at the coffee machine does not have to be the full version. You can protect your own dignity by deciding, in advance, who gets which parts.

The 2am trial

There is a particular hour, usually somewhere between one and four, when you lie in the too-quiet flat and start running the whole thing again. Every conversation. Every warning sign you think you missed or ignored. You prosecute them. Then you prosecute yourself. By morning you have reached several verdicts and none of them help you get up.

“Don’t judge, so that you won’t be judged. For with whatever judgement you judge, you will be judged; and with whatever measure you measure, it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but don’t consider the beam that is in your own eye? Or how will you tell your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye,’ and behold, the beam is in your own eye? You hypocrite! First remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother’s eye.

Matthew 7:1–5

Jesus said this to people who were quick to judge others while ignoring their own faults, warning that the standard they used would be turned back on them. It is not asking you to reach a final verdict on either of you tonight, or to excuse anything. It is permission to stop the trial for now, because you cannot see clearly at 2am, and no verdict reached in the dark holds up in the morning anyway. That is not the same as saying it doesn't matter. It is saying it doesn't have to be settled tonight.

Something small for tonight

You don't need a plan for the next six months. You need to get through tonight, and maybe tell God the plain, unflattering truth of what today cost you.

If you want words to start with, try something like this: God, I don't know how to do this yet. I'm tired of explaining. I'm not ready to make sense of any of it. Help me get through tonight.

That's enough for now. If it would help to put the exact shape of your situation into words, you can start a prayer for it at /pray, or see how others have prayed through similar nights at /prayers.