Grief That Learned to Fly

On the night of June 12, 1963, Myrlie Evers heard the crack of a rifle outside her home in Jackson, Mississippi. She rushed out and found her husband, Medgar — the NAACP's field secretary for Mississippi — collapsed near the front door, shot in the back. He had crawled from the driveway, still clutching a stack of NAACP t-shirts. Their three children had heard the shot.

Many expected Myrlie Evers to retreat into private grief. Instead, within days she was speaking publicly about the cause Medgar had given his life for. She carried his work forward through decades when justice seemed impossibly distant, pressing for the prosecution of his killer, Byron De La Beckwith, through two mistrials with all-white juries in 1964. She never relented. In 1994, Beckwith was finally convicted. And in 1995, Myrlie Evers was elected chairwoman of the NAACP.

Isaiah 40:31 promises that those who wait upon the Lord "shall mount up with wings like eagles." Myrlie Evers's life reveals what that rising looks like — not a life untouched by sorrow, but one that refuses to let sorrow have the final word. She did not deny her grief. She let the Almighty transform it into enduring purpose.

When circumstances flatten you, remember: God does not always spare us from the driveway. But He promises to give us wings from it.