I'm here, you're not alone

A Good Friday Reflection

Apr 18, 2025

After many requests from long-time readers, I am occasionally bringing back some old favourite essays, which had disappeared from the Internet when my blog shut down. This particular Good Friday essay was originally written in April 2015, when I was just a month postpartum with our youngest baby. Since it is Good Friday today and many of us are feeling a bit lonely and scared, I thought that this was a good time to republish it. And keep an eye out for a few more of these revived essays for subscribers in the coming months. - S.

I'm here, you're not alone

I’m here, you’re not alone. Shhhh, shhh now, I’m here.

And with those words, I lift my crying baby up and out of her darkness. She’s unaware of where she fits in her life, perhaps, but I know just where she is. I’m never far from her, even though to her new mind I’ve disappeared every time I’m not in her line of sight, but that’s not true.

And so when she wakes up or when she’s lonely or when she’s hungry or just wants someone to hold her, to calm her heart, she cries out and I quickly come to her, I rush to her, and I lift her up into my arms. After all, she’s gone from being held constantly, fed constantly, with me constantly so of course anything less feels like a downgrade to her. I am glad to accommodate.

For four babies now, this is the liturgy of bringing her back to me: Shhhh, I’m here, you’re not alone, I’m here, I’ve got you, I’ve got you.

I have always rejected the notion of “spoiling” babies through presence and responsiveness. Impossible. Oh, I’m teaching her something all right though: I’m teaching her that I will always come for her. I’m teaching her that she is safe and secure. I’m teaching her that I am reliable, that she is believed, that I don’t believe she’s manipulating me or bossing me. I’m teaching my child that I am here and she is not alone.

Dry your tears, small girl, I’m here, I’m always here.

I will always come for you.

I’ve heard that most of our theology is autobiography. I think that’s mostly true. I think we will often unwittingly project what we learned about authority onto God. And then we will parent our children in the way that we believe God is parenting us. So if we believe God is a terrible judge with exacting standards and a trapdoor to hell, then that changes how we move through our lives, how we judge others, particularly our children. And yes, I think that damages people.

But what if we see God through the metaphor of a good mother with a newborn babe? then what do we see instead? After all, the metaphors for God’s love are diverse and imaginative all throughout Scripture, but in these tender days just after giving birth and caring for a newborn I’m reminded that I’m part of one metaphor God saw fit to embody.1 Me, with my memory of intense labour and pain, with my ferocious protectiveness and my consuming love, my constant presence and my still-healing body.

That entire body yearns for this baby in these early days, watch how we curl into each other, how I protect her, nourish her, comfort her, even how I delight in her – you’re seeing a glimpse of something divine here, I believe.

Isn’t this one of the great gifts God has given us? that we sometimes get just a glimpse into how God loves us? a share of the joy, a sign and a scent of the Kingdom among us already? God in her goodness, sharing with us what it means to love so selflessly, so unconditionally, so completely?

In the Scriptures, there is one little thing often overlooked on Good Friday. In Matthew 27:51, we are told that at the moment when Jesus cried out and gave up his spirit, the very moment he died, the veil in the temple which symbolically stood between God and people, the entrance to the Holy of Holies, was spontaneously torn in two … from the top to the bottom.

There is no barrier between us anymore, the Holy of Holies is open to us all, and it’s not because of anything we did or didn’t do. Because this was a rescue, this was redemption, this was the death that made death die, this was the moment when all of creation was redeemed as Jesus swept into the domain of death and hell, suffering and sickness, violence and power hunger, sin and horror, to cure us and then rise again victorious.

And when I think of that veil being torn from the top to the bottom, now I imagine God sweeping into the world, like a good mother to her crying child in the darkness, with that shared physical yearning, gathering us up out of our loneliness and our hunger, our longing and our needs to whisper into our necks: I’m here, I’m here, you’re not alone, I’m here.

I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you, darling, I’m here.

Sarah Bessey's Field Notes

Discussion about this post