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 10th, 2022
WINTER: the Dying Season
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)
CONTINUED (from Friday, October 7th)
‘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…’ Tears left track marks where they traveled your cheeks as I told you my memory and why it was indelibly etched in my mind, why I’d never forgotten one word you’d said about me to you friend.
We made new memories as the walls began to fall. I held my breath sometimes, thinking it too good to be true! dreading the new journey we embarked on might come crashing to an abrupt halt. I don’t know what it was that changed but suddenly nothing stood between us, and there was so much joy. I was able to tell you things I never thought I would reveal to you and Mom, and you held no condemnation toward me. You shook your head sadly when I exposed you to the life I led. You cried when I told you I’d owned a bar and made a living serving drinks to people. You held me while I wept as I dealt with my disgrace. You stretched across the distance that had spanned between us for decades, and you reached me, truly reached me. Very slowly I began to climb from the shell of shame I lived in my entire life, since I had been a little girl, dealing with things that go bump in the night that little girls should never have to go through. You listened, really listened, and I did too, and I think for the first time ever, we really heard one another, and it finally mattered. For the first time in years, I wasn’t watching the clock, hopeful it was time to go. I wanted to just be with you, for us to be together, not wasting another moment. I sensed time was short. Perhaps I didn’t realize how short time truly was, how fast it was moving, like a locomotive down a runaway track, while we hung out our dirty laundry and traveled those dusty backroads of recollections and remembrances and regrets.
I spent nearly every day with you whether in person or long phone conversations. You had so much wisdom to impart, so many nuggets of godly truth, so much insight about Who you believed God to be in your life and Who He might just be becoming in mine, so many years journeying with Him that spilled out like secrets, classified beliefs which sculpted who you were. I really listened. I knew I would need to have just what you were giving me to make it through hard stuff ahead in my future. I held onto every word like a fat fish dangling from a juicy worm at the end of a baited hook. For someone who had yearned for years to be in her daddy’s spotlight, it turned out to be quite a show.
I would walk through your door and the whole room would light up by your smile. Your eyes radiated your delight to see me. Your joy was explosive. ‘What are we going to do today, Michi?’ you would ask. Your gratitude to me for taking time to spend with you made me speechless. As if I would be anywhere else but right there, with you and Mom. As if…if only you knew how badly I always longed for what we now had.
You would say things like, ‘I wonder what my Michi is going to bring me today?! She always brings me something!’ And I did, a Starbucks and some breakfast or maybe lunch, treats, little tidbits of happiness for you. Anything to see your smile eat your face. Mom told me you would say on those days I came to spend with you, ‘This is the day our Michi comes! YIPPEE!’ Childlike pleasure. You would pat the seat next to you, beckoning me to sit. ‘I was praying for you,’ you’d begin, and raptly I’d listen to these prophetic words you would speak over me. The hours melted like a Spring snow squall. And too soon it was gone, over. You were gone, all the years we were rapidly making up for, over. The thud in my heart couldn’t stop. It kept thudding and resounding. You were gone. Just like that. Like a door slamming shut on hinges of grief and overwhelming sadness. It was so sudden and tragic, but later, as I moved through my grief, I could see how God had been scripting US all along. He had been preparing us and unearthing for us the buried treasure of time and healing and repair.
There are so many things I didn’t say amongst the many I did. Not many could affect me the way you did, Dad. I was the once-in-a-lifetime little girl who was given the gift of a once-in-a-lifetime kind of Dad. I don’t know if anyone else has ever been given the heirloom I was gifted—to have you for my dad; to be given the opportunity to have all the years the locusts had eaten restored, to have returned to me, to us, all that the enemy had stolen.
I look back on it now and realize the priceless gift a loving Father gave me. Somehow, He stretched my finances far enough so I was able to take those many months off work just so I could be with you. It was a loving Father who gave me time to make amends with my loving father. I can see clearly now, Dad, His fingerprint on both of us, how He was perfecting all that concerned you and me (Psalm 138:8). He was setting the lonely in family (Psalm 68:6) and the fullest of lives in the emptiest of places (Isaiah 58:11) so I could know that the boundary lines had fallen for me in pleasant places Psalm 16:6). I can see it now, Dad. What He was doing all along. He gave us each other back. There is no need to grieve you because I get to carry a pocketful of irreplaceable remembrances everywhere I go, and it’s like you are always right here, next to me, inside. I finally got my Happy Ever After ending, the one I had dreamt of us writing my entire life. I am eternally grateful. I love you forever, Dad. And I miss you. Everyday.
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)
