The Lingering Dark: When the Afterlife of War Comes Home

There is a specific kind of fury that belongs to the heavy spaces of this life.

In the wake of July 4th, as the country celebrates fireworks and freedom, the true price that our men and women paid for it has been weighing heavy on my heart. We talk so easily about the cost of freedom, but we rarely look at the long, slow, quiet ways that debt is collected at home long after the uniforms are put away.

It is the grief that arrives when the violence of the world refuses to stay confined to history books or distant battlefields. Instead, it follows good men and women home, quiet and toxic, hiding in their bodies until it steals them away from the families who need them most.

Recently, our family was broken by this exact darkness. My granddaughter lost her stepdad—the only father she has ever truly known. He didn’t fall on a battlefield, but make no mistake: he was a casualty of war. He was stolen by cancer, a brutal consequence of Agent Orange, and the toxic chemicals that military service left in his veins.

When you watch a good man break under the weight of a war that was supposed to be long over, and you watch a child you love break beneath a grief too heavy for her to carry, the silence of the sky becomes deafening.

You look for a miracle. You look for relief. And when you only find the “shadows of delay,” you want to scream into the silent blue.

I couldn’t hold my own tears back anymore, so I let them spill into the ink. I wrote this because I am exhausted by the violence done in the name of peace. I wrote this because I know justice will balance the scales by and by—but the “in-between” is agonizing.

If you are carrying a weight that is crushing you, if you are tired of pretending that the brokenness of this world is okay, I invite you to read these words.

How Much Longer

By Deborah Seale

I see the altars turned to armor,
Where holy words are sharpened into knives,
And men with hollow, sinking eyes
Shout praise for broken lands and wasted lives.
They claim the Heavens for their earthly wars,
And build their peace upon a bed of flame,
While true love weeps outside the locked church doors,
Astounded by the violence in Your name.
And through the noise, I hear the longing
A quiet current through the toxic air.
The creation groans, the heavy winds are sighing,
A desperate, whispered, universal prayer.
I stand beneath the quiet evening sky,
My own tears held, my spirit worn and thin.
I know Your scales will balance by and by,
I know that true, pure justice will break in.
But in the heavy space between the years,
While wicked kingdoms think that they have won,
I lift my hands and shout through burning tears:
How much longer, Father, till the dawn?
I want to scream into the silent blue
Because I see why others turn away.
They watch the bleeding earth and look for You,
But only find the shadows of delay.
How much longer must Your children bear the weight?
How many tears before the sky is torn?
We break beneath the violence and the hate,
And suffer in the dark before the morn.

Grief likes to tell us to suffer in silence and to keep a brave face for the world. But sometimes, the only holy thing left to do is to cry out and demand to know how much longer the night will last.

If you are hurting, if you are angry, if you are mourning a loved one stolen by the toxic remnants of war or illness, or if you are simply exhausted by the dark before the morn—lay it down here. You don’t have to be eloquent. You don’t have to fix it. Just scream, weep, or share their name. We will stand beneath the quiet sky together.