The bluebird box has been there for years, decades even. It’s nothing impressive to look at—just a simple cedar box mounted to a rusty T-post and sheltered under a spray of spirea and a slender pear tree. Like most things that have lived patiently through the swirl of seasons without changing, it’s a bit weathered—the corners slightly askew, the wood washed to silver. 

But the birds have never seemed to mind its possible aesthetic deficiencies. Over the years, I’ve seen generations of young bluebirds come to life in nests built within those four secure walls—at first emerging from porcelain blue eggs, then finding their wings as fuzzy fledglings, and then returning to the familiar box the next spring to raise families of their own. 

Until one winter—when I feared the cycle had been disrupted forever. 

In the middle of February that year, an unusually brutal cold snap descended, complete with sixteen inches of snow and ice—quite an unexpected weather event for our usually temperate area. The snow came faster and harder than predicted, leaving all of us—the wildlife included—little time to prepare. 

It wasn’t until days later, after the snow had finally begun to thaw, that we found them. Apparently, a cluster of bluebirds had crammed themselves into the box and sadly, had still frozen to death. We mourned this tragedy, but we soon realized that the loss went deeper than that. Whether the bluebird population had decreased because of the extreme weather or whether the birds now associated the box with suffering, I’m not sure. But regardless of the reason, the next spring, they didn’t arrive at the box as usual. An entire summer passed without so much as a flash of blue feathers. 

The pattern continued the next year, with the box achingly devoid of our familiar friends. By the beginning of the third spring since the snow, I had completely given up hope. 

And then it happened. A pair of bluebirds began to hang around. The male sang from treetops and frequently perched on our patio furniture to survey the territory he evidently considered his. A couple of weeks later, I spotted the female flying through the backyard, carrying a wad of nesting material. And then, just after the vernal equinox, I saw them visiting the nest box—a quick visit, but over the next few days, I saw them visit again. And again. 

Still I wouldn’t become excited, not yet. The disappointment of the last two seasons was fresh on my mind, and I held myself warily back from hope. But finally, on a warm Wednesday in the first part of April, I had to know. I cautiously approached the box and peered inside. 

And there it was. Like a renewal, a rebirth, even a resurrection. A loose spiral of grass and twigs—the beginning of a nest.  

The bluebirds had returned. 

And all around me the spring sunshine laughed—not just because the bluebirds had returned to the box, but because they’d brought me an unspeakably precious gift: hope.

I find it hard to articulate exactly what form that hope took. Maybe it was the symbolism of a fresh start. Maybe it was the rightness of it, the nest box once again fulfilling its purpose. Or maybe it was the resiliency of these birds, the courage they had to return to the very place that brought pain and transform it, to rewrite the story. But I think that in the end, the part of the story that grabbed me, that brought me the hope I’d been craving, was the idea of empty places being filled. Because no matter our history with bluebirds and boxes, we all have areas in our lives that stand empty. 

Like the bluebird box, these places begin by brimming with hope. They’re dreams we hold close, relationships we cherish, health we enjoy, or careers we pursue. They’re a landmark in the topography of our lives, a place from which we expect new life to emerge. 

But then comes winter. 

And winter is harsh and relentless and cruel, and it sweeps right into those sacred places. In a bitter mockery, the life we expected is replaced with death. The loss of the dream. The rupture of the relationship. The deterioration of health. The end of the career. Suddenly, the womb has become a tomb.

And those places never go away. The end of the relationship doesn’t remove its pocket of space in our hearts. The dissolution of the dream doesn’t banish its silhouette from our minds. No, the hopes deferred in our lives don’t vanish when they’re lost. Instead, they remain. Like the bluebird box, they sit quietly in the corner of our internal landscape, a peripheral pain that never quite heals. Empty.

And we don’t know what to do with that empty space. What do you do when the promise evaporates, but the space you held in your heart for it remains? There’s no guidebook, no protocol, no three-step method for dealing with such things. So we summon our own best efforts for coping. We might try to simply ignore—training our words and emotions and even our thoughts to sidestep the obvious. Or maybe we try to rip our own empty spaces right out of our lives by shoving back memories, throwing out possessions, undoing all the external signs of what once was. Or we might try to fill it with something else—quickly rebounding to the next idea, the next relationship, the next project to occupy our hearts. 

But in the end, all of these approaches fall short. Because sometimes, the best thing we can do for an empty space is paradoxically the thing that feels the most counterintuitive: just let it stand empty. 

Sometimes we’re not supposed to ignore the empty space, or remove it, or try to cram it full of a substitute. Sometimes we’re simply supposed to sit in the emptiness. Allow it to be there, as uncomfortable or unpleasant or unproductive as it may feel. In the midst of the empty—when it’s the most tempting to ignore it or replace it or rip every last trace of it out of our lives—that’s where we’re told by God to stop. To sit among the shards and hear the dying echoes and truly, truly, feel the empty. 

But why? Why would God bring us to emptiness, one of the most painful and problematic of human conditions, and then simply urge us to soak in all the runaway emotions that even we can’t fully process? I’ve come to believe it’s for one simple reason: to feel Him. 

“O God, my God, my soul pants for you.” I read this verse, and it’s convicting to me. In the midst of abundance, when the bluebirds are nesting and the box is filled, do I pant for God like this? The answer is, regrettably, no. When my life is good, my circumstances are pleasant, and my wants are fulfilled, then God all too quickly becomes an addendum—a nice accessory to my life instead of the centerpiece of it. But when the box sits empty and I ache with the need, then I feel every pang of my dehydrated soul. 

I truly believe that oftentimes, that’s God’s purpose for the empty. Not to punish us, not to judge us, not to blast us vindictively, but to redirect our gaze—away from all that we think can satisfy us and toward the only One Who truly can. 

I’ve faced a lot of empty spaces in my life over the last few months. Places where I had planned something else. Places that were supposed to be occupied by cherished dreams that were quickly fading, or a sense of security that crumbled more with every new unforeseen circumstance. Places that were left empty by the death of my grandmother or the loss of my connection to my heritage or the rearranged elements of what I’d expected my future to resemble. I know the pain of the empty space, how it gnaws and burns, how it tears us back and forth between past and future, how it holds a subtly unspoken condemnation—shouldn’t your faith have been stronger? Did you just want this too much? Did you miss all the warning signs?

But here’s the beautiful paradox—it doesn’t stop there. 

And that is why the nest fills me with such hope this spring—because I know the truth. I know that once we redirect our focus to God, once we yield to Him every corner of our empty, once we stand before Him gut-honest with our despair, our disappointment, our frustration, our fear—then He restores. 

This doesn’t mean that He undoes what’s come before. Or that He’ll tie everything together in the tidy little bow we desire. Or that He’ll always give us back everything we lost increased by a generous multiplication factor. But what it does mean is that He will make the story good. He will bring new life back into the places that were dead. And from the places that ache empty, our greatest purpose, our greatest peace, and our greatest joy will often arise. 

That truth is never more obvious than it is on the day I write this: Good Friday. I’ve been watching the box, and while I’ve been writing, the female bluebird has made a dozen trips to the site, her beak stuffed full of straw, the nest continuing to take shape, the life continuing to return. And I’m reminded of the greatest example of life returning to emptiness ever—the empty tomb. In the midst of sorrow, in the midst of loss, in the midst of an emptiness as wide as the universe itself, Jesus rewrote the story. From the hollow hurt of that rock-carved cave, our resurrection emerged. 

And that’s why I smile as I see the bluebirds, because I know that on the level that is eternal and important, life cannot be denied. Into every crevice of emptiness, God pours His Spirit. And He’s still doing it. So today, I offer up to Him the places where I’ve ached empty. And I wait for His beauty to grow and His life to win.