GOOD GRIEF!
Living Through Seasons of Loss
Ecclesiastes 3:11, ‘He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.’ (NIV)
October 7th, 2022
FALL: a LOVE STORY
Isaiah 55:8-9, ‘”For My thoughts about mercy are not your thoughts and My ways are different from yours. As high as the heavens are above the earth so My ways and My thoughts are higher than yours.’” (TPT)
Our relationship was always so very complicated. From as far back as I can remember, you were my hero. Or I wanted you to be. I watched other father-daughter relationships and ours paled in comparison. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get your attention. You were very focused on your job; you were important, a bigwig. You were important, a bigwig, to me too. I was so proud to visit you at work, to sit in your big chair and swing it around, at your big desk. The wooden desk laden with a desk calendar bathed in appointments for everyday, cluttered with little pink ‘While You Were Out’ messages from all the people who were unable to reach you. I was unable to reach you too and I wrote you notes also that you had missed me…could you please call me soon and I would list our home phone number, the one sharing a party-line. You seldom were available for long when I came to visit you at work, but I made sure everyone knew you were my dad.
I remember one high school December, you and Mom allowed me and my best friend to come with you to your company Christmas party. It was held at a swanky resort dressed magically with holiday cheer. All the men were drinking and snacking, their wives and girlfriends snarky and touting attitudes befitting of wannabe high-class women, thinking they were someone they weren’t. It made us giggle as we rounded a corner of the staircase, almost running into you and the gentleman with whom you were conversing. I almost cut-up to make you notice me, but instead I heard the words I’d been dying to hear my entire life fall from your mouth. You were telling your colleague about your amazing daughter, how bright she was, how she was going magnificent places and would become someone with her perfect four-point GPA, how you were so proud to be her dad. As we slunk backwards like Slinkys down the stairs, I yearned to have a voice recorder so I could always hear you say those words, over and over on repeat.
It would be years later before I heard them again, even though I replayed what I chanced upon like a broken record, almost ‘til the words wore out and became warbled and slurried. My life would go on a rampage, and I wondered sometimes during those wonder years, if I had earned your attentions and held your esteem, if perhaps I wouldn’t have so badly needed the awareness from other men, if I had been able to capture the spotlight of my dad’s. I searched for you, I think, in the eyes of everyone, and each time I disappointed you or felt as if I let you down, I had to start from scratch again, rolling my self out on a well-tended surface, an un-stickable surface, cutting my heart out with a cookie-cutter belief that it didn’t matter. I grieved you for all those years even though you sat across the table on occasion, even though I worked shoulder to shoulder with you on projects that mattered to you, even though I was close enough to touch but you never did. I grieved what we had and what we didn’t have.
When you met Jesus, another wall was built where a creaky partially-open door once stood. I couldn’t comprehend God because you were so conditional, and I was told He was unconditional. I could not grasp something I didn’t have to perform for, I didn’t have to attain. The closer you grew to Jesus, the further apart we became, which I didn’t think was even possible. You couldn’t accept my actions and I couldn’t accept that you couldn’t accept me. I grieved you again, this time from a distance. I couldn’t understand the heart of the father, nor the heart of the Father. So I ran, I bolted, I darted, I hid, I burrowed myself in bottles of all kinds of things that kept me from thinking and missing you. I onlooked other father-daughter relationships, the ones which had grown up, while ours never did.
And then one day, it happened. I outgrew the world and you lowered your expectations, and somehow, we met for the first time maybe, in the middle. It was like a blossoming love story just being scripted, even though we had been being written for an entire lifetime. We were almost to the last chapter, and I no longer wanted to hold my breath to see how our story finished, and if it had a happy ending. I suddenly didn’t want to know; I didn’t want it to end. Ever. Essentially, I wanted a Happy Ever After ending. We had so much, so many years, to make up for. All the years I had grieved you, us…all the years I had wanted so much more…all the years…we had wasted so much time. The many times I thought I saw us try to reach each other but eventually pass away, all the memorial services I held in memory of you and I, all the grieving for what never was. And now suddenly, we rallied. We put ourselves aside, allowing the Lord an opportunity to heal broken pieces, to make a new peace, and to begin again.
‘Have I ever told you how proud of you I am?’ you asked. You looked deep into me with your kindly eyes.
I sighed, unsure how to answer, then slowly I whispered, ‘Well, Dad, ummm, there was this one time…’
TO BE CONTINUED (Monday, October 10th)
Isaiah 55:10-11, ‘”As the snow and rain that fall from heaven do not return until they have accomplished their purpose, soaking the earth and causing it to sprout with new life, providing seed to sow and bread to eat, so also will be the Word that I speak; it does not return to Me unfilled. My Word performs My purpose and fulfills the mission I sent it out to accomplish.”’ (TPT)
