When Scripture Felt Hollow
What I reached for when the words on the page wouldn’t hold me
For most of my adult life, I had been a get-up-early, open-the-Bible, journal-at-the-kitchen-table kind of woman.
I had a chair. I had a lamp. I had a specific cup of coffee. I had a routine that had carried me through marriage, ministry, and motherhood — through season after season of life as a Christian woman who took her faith seriously enough to sit with it every morning.
And then I went through chemo. And the words on the page started to swim. I don’t mean metaphorically. I mean literally.
My eyes would land on a verse, and the letters would refuse to stay still long enough for me to catch them. I would read the same line four times and still not know what it said. I’d close the book. Open it again an hour later.
Same problem.
I would try to pray, and my mind would drift somewhere I couldn’t follow.
I’d start with, “Lord, I just want to thank You for—”
And three seconds later, I’d be thinking about the chemo schedule, whether I had clean pajamas, or how cold my feet were under the blanket.
I’d snap myself back and start over.
Three seconds later, I’d drift again.
I thought I was failing.
I thought being a Christian meant being able to sit with the Word, and that if I couldn’t sit with it, something must be wrong with my faith.
I want to say something to whoever needs to hear this:
Nothing was wrong with my faith.
My brain and body were using everything they had to carry me through treatment. There was simply nothing left over for the kind of focused reading and contemplative prayer I had built my spiritual life around.
That wasn’t faithlessness.
That was a body under tremendous strain.
But it took me a long time to understand the difference. And in the meantime, I felt like a bad Christian for not being able to do what I had always done.
What I reached for instead
Here is the small, strange list of what carried me when my regular practices couldn’t.
One verse on a card
I couldn’t read a chapter. I couldn’t read a paragraph. Some days, I couldn’t read a full verse with comprehension.
But I could see a card next to my chair.
One verse.
Sometimes the same verse for weeks.
I didn’t have to study it. I didn’t have to memorize it. I didn’t even have to feel certain of it on the worst days.
I just had to let it be there, where I could see it, while my body did the work of surviving.
That verse became Scripture for me in a way I had never experienced before.
Not because I was studying it. Because I was living next to it.
This, eventually, is what became Words for the Journey, my Scripture and prayer card collection. When I came out the other side, I realized I wasn’t the only woman who needed Scripture made small enough to hold.
The same hymn, over and over
Music I had known for years would come back to me in fragments.
“It is well with my soul.”
“Great is Thy faithfulness.”
“Jesus, lover of my soul.”
Sometimes it was only a line. Sometimes only the melody.
I would hear it in my head and not realize I was humming until Ferlin asked me what I was singing.
The music was doing work the words couldn’t.
Prayers other people had written
When I couldn’t pray my own prayers, I leaned on words written by people who had prayed before me.
The Psalms, yes, when I could read them.
But also liturgies. Prayer books. The Lord’s Prayer, spoken slowly.
When you don’t have words of your own, you can borrow someone else’s.
That isn’t cheating.
It is part of the communion of saints, the long line of believers whose prayers we get to stand inside when ours have run out.
“I’m still here, and I’m still Yours.”
Six words.
I said them constantly.
In the chemo chair. In the middle of the night. In the bathroom, where I spent more time than I want to remember.
I’m still here, and I’m still Yours.
It was the only prayer I could manage some days.
And it turns out, it was enough.
What I learned, slowly
There are seasons when Scripture may not feel full.
I want to say that again, because I needed to hear it for years before I believed it:
There are seasons when Scripture may not feel accessible, comforting, or alive in the way it once did.
Not because the Word is no longer true.
Not because God is absent.
But because your body and brain are doing other work, and the spiritual practices that once sustained you were built around a version of you that does not currently exist.
There are seasons when faith looks like surviving long enough to find your way back. There are seasons when “I’m still here, and I’m still Yours” is the entire prayer, and God receives it. There are seasons when Scripture is one verse on a card beside a chair, and that single verse does the work an entire morning devotional once did.
This is not faith failing.
This is faith adapting to the body it is housed in.
What I want you to know
If you are in a season when your usual spiritual practices have gone quiet — chemo brain, grief brain, exhaustion brain, postpartum brain, depression brain, caregiver brain, or simply the brain of a person trying to keep going — I want you to hear this:
You are not failing.
Your faith is not broken.
You may simply be in a season that calls for a different kind of reaching.
Make Scripture small enough to hold.
One verse. One card. One reminder that something bigger than this moment is still true.
Borrow other people’s prayers when yours have dried up.
Hum the hymn whose words you can’t quite remember.
Say, “I’m still here, and I’m still Yours,” and trust that God hears you.
The Word does not require your full concentration to remain true.
And God does not wait for you to find enough strength to reach Him.
He is already there, beside the chair you cannot get out of, beside the card you cannot quite read, in the middle of the season whose ending you cannot see.
You are still His.
And that has always been enough.
If Scripture has been hard to reach lately, and you want something within sight on the days when reading is too much, my Words for the Journey Scripture and prayer card collection is here.
Each card holds one verse and one short prayer — small enough to keep on a side table, a bathroom mirror, or the corner of the couch where you collapse at the end of the day.
Sometimes faith doesn’t need a chapter.
It just needs one verse within reach.
[Shop Words for the Journey →]
And if this essay met you where you are, I’d love to have you stay. Every Tuesday and Sunday I write about faith, survivorship, and finding hope in the middle of hard seasons.