He drank the cup reserved for me

Today, I sat with the ache again.

Not the loud kind that makes you weep uncontrollably…but the quiet kind.

The kind that settles in your bones and makes you feel like everything inside you is bruised.

The kind that walks with you into every room, lays beside you in bed,

and whispers, “This is too much. You are too much. This grief is too heavy.”

But then… I remembered the cup.

The one He didn’t flinch from.

Not the one filled with glory and ease, but the one filled with sorrow, blood, betrayal, loneliness, the full-bodied bitterness of Gethsemane.

He saw the cup that had my name on it.

My sin. My shame. My shattered moments.

He saw it all, and still, He drank it.

Not sip by sip…

But all of it.

The weight. The wrath. The weeping.

He drank what I could never survive,

so that my cup, though still cracked with sorrow,

would never taste like condemnation.

He drank the bitterness,

so I could find the fellowship.

He bore the wrath,

so I could bear the wounds without losing my wonder.

And I keep coming back to this truth:

He did not avoid the agony, He entered it.

He didn’t run from the sorrow. He knelt in it.

He didn’t resist the grief. He sweat it out in blood and groaning prayers.

So maybe being broken doesn’t mean I’ve failed.

I always thought strength looked like smiling through it.

But He wept.

I thought faith meant I had to rise quickly from my sorrow.

But He stayed in the garden until the agony had finished its crushing work.

And maybe… that’s what Gethsemane is really about.

Not just His yes to the cross,

but His permission for us to be crushed too,

but not alone.

Because now,

when I sit with my own bitter cup, this grief I didn’t choose, this ache I didn’t ask for,

I feel Him beside me.

Not rebuking me for my sorrow,

but bearing it with me.

Not demanding I “get over it,”

but whispering,

“I’ve tasted this too.”

And in that moment, the bitterness becomes something more.

Not sweet, no…

but bittersweet.

Because somehow, in my suffering,

I am closer to the Man of Sorrows than ever before.

And He is not just the One who bore the cup,

He is the One who holds me through mine.

So I drink it.

Wounded.

Weeping.

Willing.

Because if He drank His cup for me,

I can drink mine with Him.