Attention, Attention: When Cicadas Sing Over Grief

Scripture:

“Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the Lord, who has compassion on you. – Isaiah 54:10

“The Lord your God is in your midst…He will rejoice over you with gladness; He will quiet you by His love; He will exult over you with loud singing.” – Zephaniah 3:17

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Beloved,

The cicadas are deafening here in Kansas. Their song is everywhere—an unrelenting hum stitched into the sky. Did you know some cicadas spend seventeen years underground before emerging to sing? All that hidden time, all that waiting, and then they split open their old shell and rise into the light.

This week my mind kept circling back to the cicadas as I sat with my daughter, Althea. She’s 13—brilliant, tender-hearted, and deeply feeling, with a sharp wit, a dark sense of humor, and an unusual love for bugs and anime that makes her delightfully unique. But life has placed burdens on her shoulders far heavier than most kids her age should have to carry.

There’s the ache of a dad who drifts in and out of her world—sometimes love-bombing her with attention, other times disappearing without warning. There’s the wound of being loved and then left, the grief over a friend she believed had died but who really just ghosted her, the ever-churning storm of anxiety and depression that makes ordinary days feel impossible. Her emotions run deep; she feels everything with an intensity that can be both beautiful and overwhelming.

Sometimes that pain has turned inward, showing up as self-harm or suicidal thoughts in the past; other times it leaks out physically, like the stress hives that swell her face when the inside ache is too big to contain. She often feels different from her peers, misunderstood for her quirky interests and deep emotions, unsure where she belongs.

On the second day of school she woke up with her right eye and lip puffy and raw. We didn’t make it to class. She still got dressed—Hot Topic jeans with silver chains, an I Was Made to Worship shirt, and black Converse with Beetlejuice tags and pink flowers. A holy contradiction of beauty and grit. Her outfit said, I’m here, but her heart wasn’t in it. She didn’t want to face school, and she definitely didn’t want to go to the hospital.

While the cicadas screamed outside, I prayed for wisdom. I asked her, “When do cicadas shed their skin?” My bug-loving girl perked up and sighed, “Fine. Let’s go.” When she got out of the truck, she muttered darkly, “F***ing die already,” echoing a line from her favorite anime, The Summer Hikaru Died.

In that story, Yoshiki’s best friend dies and comes back wrong—familiar and alien all at once. The horror isn’t just supernatural; it’s grief itself. It’s what happens when love and loss crash together. Althea loves it because it names what she feels: the ache of being misunderstood, of clinging to people who leave, of carrying secret pain, of having huge emotions and no safe place to put them.

And yet—even there—there is beauty. Cicadas hum their resurrection songs over Kansas fields. Sunflowers bow their golden heads toward the Son. Roofers pound shingles overhead while Isaiah 54:10 whispers of covenant love: Even when storms strip you bare, My covering remains.

It’s been a week of small mercies: my girls humming worship while brushing their hair, Cora writing a kind letter to her cousin, Allie letting me peek into her anime world. These quiet whispers of grace felt like God underlining His presence.

Maybe that’s why, sitting in that sterile hospital waiting room, I felt a holy nudge to remember John 11:44—Lazarus shuffling out of the tomb, still wrapped tight in the linens of death. Resurrection had already come, yet he needed help being unbound. Isn’t that all of us? Raised to life, but still tangled in the remnants of old wounds.

As I sat there, my weary eyes landed on the word attention—not once, but twice, like heaven’s highlighter. A whisper through the static: Look closer. Don’t miss this. It felt like the Lord leaning in: I see her. I see you. Every tear, every hidden ache. I am the God who calls by name and untangles what still binds.

Trauma lies. It whispers that we’re too much—too emotional, too needy, too broken. Or that we’re not enough—not worthy, not lovable, not wanted. But the gospel cuts through the static and sings louder than the August cicadas: Pay attention. What seems dead is not beyond resurrection.

Even brittle husks hum with life when the Spirit moves. Even hearts weighed down with grief can find healing.

Seventeen years underground is not wasted; the cicada teaches us that. Hidden seasons—the ones where you feel buried, unseen, forgotten—are not hopeless. Growth happens in the dark. Roots stretch deep where no one applauds.

And then? The day comes. The shell cracks. The song begins.

Even bowed sunflowers lift again to find the sun. Even cicadas buried for years claw toward the light and sing their ancient hymn. So will you.

Because the One who rolled the stone away still speaks life into graves. The gospel doesn’t just tell you to sing; it gives you a reason to sing. What looks dead can rise. What feels silent can one day sound like praise.

Hidden does not mean forgotten. Buried does not mean done. Your song is coming.

And maybe that’s why Phil Wickham’s Reason I Sing keeps echoing in my heart this week. The cicadas, the sunflowers, the small mercies tucked into a weary week—they’re all whispering that there’s still a reason to sing. Even when we’re bent low, He’s the One singing over us. Let that melody wash over you, too.

With love from Kansas,
Beth 🌻