I couldn’t wrap my brain around the fact that Dalaiah, a woman of solid faith and my beautiful wife of 48 years, was dying. Two years prior I had retired after 43 years of pastoral and education ministries to become her 24/7 full-time caregiver. I had supported her as she wrestled with breast cancer—and won. Yet things had not gone so well when encroaching eye disease rendered her legally blind. Nor had she been able to ward off other disabilities from a series of strokes. Her multiple hospitalizations in various facilities necessitated long daily drives so I could provide in-person support and encouragement. The house now, for our young adult son and me, felt so empty every time she was hospitalized. Over the months she became completely bedridden and totally blind, and suffered from stroke-reduced mental acuity. All this took an unforeseen and debilitating toll on my own health. Yet, one happy day, I was able to bring her back home again.
Though her verbal communication was now inadequate, Dalaiah still managed to communicate her affection and care for me. This she did through body language.1 A turn of the head when I called her name affirmed our soul-to-soul connection. Appreciative expressions in her sightless eyes “thanked” me when I hand-fed her or cared for her personal needs. A squeeze from her delicate yet strong hands warmed mine when I touched hers. Body language. How I leaned on her body language for encouragement and hope! Of course, I longed to converse again, face to face and eye to eye, as we’d done throughout our years together. Yet my many questions for her must now go unanswered. I fought against sadness controlling my emotions—and exhaustion, my body. Yet seeing Dalaiah’s expressions of connection and love through her body language gave me a sense of peace—as if things would someday be all right again.
Unanswered Questions
Dalaiah’s condition occasionally led me to reflect on a similar relationship from my childhood. Our family of four sometimes traveled from the bustling urban town of Compton, California, to visit family in the rural Greater Ozark Region near the Missouri River. There, with some of my 30-plus first cousins, I’d explore every corner of Grandpa and Grandma Hill’s property. Their “farm” consisted of several adjoining rural lots. What adventures! In my mind’s eye, I can still see the livestock, the hog pen, the rough-hewn outhouse. In memory I still taste their garden-fresh vegetables along with the pecans and black walnuts from their orchards. At various seasons in his life Grandpa Hill worked on the railroad. Yet he always carved out time to teach his eight children how to maintain a home place, function as a family, and provide for one another—even if it meant bringing home food from forest, lake, or stream.
Seeing Dalaiah’s expressions of connection and love through her body language gave me a sense of peace— as if things would someday be all right again.
My grandfather—whose own parents and earlier ancestors had been slaves—was strangely silent. He simply did not speak. In fact, he never, ever had even one conversation with me. Why? I wondered. When I grew older, my mother explained that she suspected centuries-long suppression of Grandpa’s forebears had had a lot to do with his silence. Slavery’s generational and doleful effects on the African American psyche were profound. “I think,” Mother told me, “that slavery’s somber legacy was the main contributing factor to my father’s near incapability to verbalize his feelings—or much of anything else.” Then she added, “I’m sorry, son. But he never had a conversation with me, either. And I was one of his daughters.” This plausible but troubling explanation from my mother didn’t stop me, though, from always wishing I could have asked Grandpa so many questions.
Yet I found comfort in something else: his body language. Somehow, silently, Grandpa still demonstrated love and care for his family. Anyone who watched could see how hard this big, active, silent man continually worked for the welfare of his loved ones. When I observed his body language (though he sometimes intimidated me), I often experienced a great measure of peace in my little soul. When I knew Grandpa Hill was nearby, I always felt as if someone strong and loving was in charge of the family’s welfare, and always would be. Perhaps there is a measure of truth in that old adage: “Silence speaks louder than words.” And perhaps that is why my silent grandfather’s body language had such a powerful impact on me.
Without warning, on Christmas Day 2023, uncontrollable seizures unexpectedly racked Dalaiah’s frail frame. I called for an ambulance. EMS personnel lifted her on a stretcher into the back of the vehicle for a speedy drive to the local hospital emergency room near Twentynine Palms, California. It didn’t enter my mind that I would never again be able to look into her open eyes. That very evening the ambulance brought Dalaiah back home. But she was comatose! Only a ventilator was keeping her alive despite failing kidneys and internal bleeding.
“No!” I protested in desperation. “I’m not equipped to care for my wife in this condition.” Specialists at the larger hospital, to which she was subsequently transported, determined Dalaiah’s brain activity to be acutely subnormal. The unthinkable happened when, a few interminable days later in early January, my wife of 48 years died. In disbelief I stared down at her still form. In my shock and grief I couldn’t help marveling that even after her last breath had been drawn, her body language was still communicating something to me. After a long, painful struggle, she now communicated . . . peace.
When we can’t hear His voice, we can still experience our deepest and most fulfilling peace. All because of His body language.
As with my unanswered questions for Grandpa Hill and then Dalaiah, I was left with more unanswered questions. This time, for my heavenly Father. Though I understand why there is pain in the world (as we are embroiled in the great controversy between good and evil), I had other questions. Of course I had the Bible in which to search for answers. But I desperately wanted to hear God’s voice speaking directly to me. Yet I heard only silence. Looking back now through the tears and the months that followed, I can dimly see that God has been personalizing my experiences to fit my needs, rather than my expectations. Sometimes, though, I nearly suffocate under an unbearable and unrelenting load: financial stressors, emotional roller coaster rides, physical weakness, spiritual valleys, trials, and temptations. I struggle with the loss of Dalaiah’s faithful companionship and even her body language. Most of all, I struggle with the pain of living in an empty house, because the heart of my home, with its light and warmth, is gone.
At the same time, I find myself living under a covering of peace. Inexplicable peace. The peace that Jesus promised His followers in John 14:27: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you” (KJV). As one commentator put it: “Peace stands for everything good. Peace stands for reconciliation and love; the peace [Jesus] bequeathed is peace with God. Peace within ourselves . . . ”2 The purpose of this peace, Jesus continued in that same verse, is to keep our hearts from being troubled or fearful. Or too lonely—at least for those in situations similar to mine. For Jesus promised not only to reveal Himself to us (verse 21) but also to make our empty, broken, lonely hearts His very own home (verse 23)! More than anything, Jesus wanted us to know that even when we feel lonely, we never truly are alone.
When There Just Aren’t Words . . .
Perhaps you too have experienced chapters in your life during which grief, loneliness, confusion, and perplexity buffet both soul and faith. Those times you don’t understand why God is being silent in response to your questions, prayers, and pleas for relief and understanding. Yet through my own season of loss, God has shown me something. It’s related to my lifelong love of nature. Think about this: If Jesus could create reptiles, mammals, fish, foul, and even insect colonies to communicate—through their body language—His love for us, why could not our Creator also communicate His love for us through His own body language?
And He has! See it for yourself: In the Garden of Gethsemane, as He pleads with the Father to be a perfect sacrifice for us, sweating, as it were, great drops of blood. Witness His body language throughout the kangaroo-court interrogations and beatings in the judgment hall, for “by His stripes we are healed” (Isa. 53:5). Observe His struggle to remain upright along the Via Dolorosa—lined with desertion, derision, and abandonment. Yes, observe that long way so filled with sorrow, humiliation, and suffering. Resist the temptation to turn your gaze from His naked body roughly stretched out on a cruel Roman cross. Through all of this, Jesus was silent. In the words of that old Black spiritual: “They crucified my Lord, but He never said a mumblin’ word.” No words—just body language. Body language as He, too, experienced silence: the silence of His Father. Contemplate now His body language on the cross as He bears your sins and mine. With a repentant, broken heart, view His lifeless body in the tomb. Then at last, watch God’s Son, in a blaze of glory, emerge from the grave, leaving it empty. Body language that reveals the gospel in its entirety. Body language that assures us of healing throughout eternity. When you can’t hear His voice, look at His body language, and trust that healing is possible.
More than anything, Jesus wanted us to know that even when we feel lonely, we never truly are alone.
We need healing from wars, genocides, cultural clashes, disease, famines, atrocities, and endless geographic displacements of large people groups! We need healing—you and I—from slavery to sin, addiction, prejudice, abuse, bitterness, broken homes. Some of us need healing from Satan’s lie that our grievous sins that put Jesus on the cross can never be forgiven. Friend, I am here to tell you: We can be forgiven. We can be healed. We can experience what Dalaiah’s body language said to me: peace. Peace, no matter our current needs, losses, and brokenness. Right now, when we can’t hear His voice—as I could not hear the voices of Grandpa Hill or Dalaiah—we can still experience our deepest and most fulfilling peace. All because of His body language.
Someday soon we will look into the heavens as Jesus descends on a cloud to gather home His lonely, grieving children. Not only will we see Him face to face, but we will also unmistakenly hear His exultant shouts of triumph as He reunites us with our loved ones: “Well done, good and faithful servant. . . . Enter into the joy of your Lord” (Matt. 25:21).
But until then, when there just aren’t words, Jesus speaks to us in ways only the trusting and redeemed can hear and understand. For the indwelling and risen Savior ever speaks unfathomable and healing love through His precious body language.
1 Body language is “gestures, unconscious bodily movements, facial expressions, etc., which serve as nonverbal communication or as accompaniments to speech.” www.collinsdictionary.com, accessed Feb. 4, 2025.
2 Matthew Henry, The New Matthew Henry Commentary, ed. Martin H. Manser (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2010), p. 1824.
