Walk With Me

You would be hard pressed to find anyone who loses a loved one and doesn't feel untethered; life a bit like an unmoored ship. It seems pretty damn near impossible to not feel lost after loss. I hate the untethered feeling. I mean, who doesn't? We humans like to be in control.  Even when I've read so much over these years about how there is no timeline for grief, I unknowingly and yet knowingly put myself on a timeline. The kind which tells me I should "be over" Dad's death by now. My mind has wanted to breeze past the heartache I still feel. My mind detaches when the girls still feel sad and I try to be strong for them. I've numbed out with busy-ness, the list goes on.  The thing is, my heart knows I will never "be over" losing such a loving force in my life. So often, my Dad was an anchor to my unmoored ship.  As this ship of mine has been aimlessly wandering, I'm learning it's one thing to name all that's been lost (and even t

My posture toward “seeing the good” used to be grounded in only seeing the good as good and the bad as bad. I could never make the connection of seeing goodness by looking through that lens of loss. Until life in many ways became dark. When life became only about loss. I believe part of the reason loss is so particularly hard is because we spend much of our lives straining to look through the lens of gains. Whether it be a job status or title, the amount of kids or cars, the number of degrees on our wall. And look, all of those things are not inherently bad. But, what happens when our being, our foundation is grounded upon everything we achieve and acquire gain? I wonder if that is why our world is struggling so much right now. Is it because we have lost the art of learning how to live in loss? This morning, I pondered what it would be like to live in a time where we still wore black when grieving; to wear black until we felt a time of moving forward in our grief? Part of me absolu

Sometimes I have moments where I feel kind of mad at Dad; mad at him for leaving us. Not long ago, I was having one of those moments. Sulking about how Dad died and then the world went haywire and wishing he were still here. Worrying about family genetics and wondering if this will be my fate too. Then, I heard this song . While I’ve been listening to the Wailin’ Jennys for several years, I had yet to hear their rendition of this folk song ‘Old Churchyard’. I tried to find the origin of this song; I wanted to know the history. Yet, maybe there’s no need to know the history. Maybe, it was solely the need hear these words at the right moment and to feel the grace that came with it. Because standing there in the kitchen, knee deep in canning applesauce and wallowing in the “it’s not fair” of Dad being gone, their succinct harmonies reminded me that while death is so incomprehensible, sometimes we must accept that death simply is. Trust me, I don’t say that and feel much better or th

Dad, I’ve been at a loss for words lately. Maybe that’s okay; sometimes the silence is okay. But words help me and words heal me and it’s just hard when right now I cannot seem to find them. All this time I thought I was already walking in the wilderness when really maybe I was just on the outskirts. But now, I feel knee-deep stuck right in the middle of the wilderness. It’s because of you Dad that I’ve come to know the wilderness place is an okay place to be, that maybe the silence is okay. And while it’s so dang hard I am grateful for this lesson I am learning. “What if, rather than dreading them as seasons of oppression, we considered wilderness seasons as an opportunity to grow deeper in our faith while discovering Emmanuel—the God who is with us always?" (Camealy, Kris, 2019, Everything is Yours , pg. 43) I walked into Aldi 2 weeks ago and immediately saw the display of Father’s Day cards right inside the door. I cried and in that moment I’d never be

Erda Estremera on Unsplash I finally did it, I took out the stone.  There was some nice landscaping around our house when we moved in (although, there is such a thing as too many hostas). Over the years, I've moved some flowers, weeded out others, and added new. The spot in front of our bay window had nice stone landscape edging with a clump of 3 small birch trees surrounded by hostas and another shrub. Eventually the trees rotted. This happened before Jon had purchased a chainsaw so Dad came over with his and helped us out. I was sad to lose the cover, but I remember seeing it as an opportunity to move some beautiful irises to the front and plant some daffodils.  Now there was also this shrub.... I never did find out what it was. I could have tried, but I think I didn't bother because I never really cared for it. There were early spring blooms but by mid-summer it would get all straggly and die away. Regardless, I just left it mostly because I didn't know wha

Today, one of my favorite authors @emilypfreeman dropped her weekly podcast and today of all days it makes me weep. I weep because it's a simple, yet profound podcast about Psalm 23 - one of Dad's favorites, one I read at the funeral. A Psalm that has ebbed and flowed with me throughout the years, but has taken on a whole new meaning in recent months. I'm still marking time. Here in the midst of this pandemic - when all the days are crazy making and hours are jumbled together - the only time I still seem to truly be marking is the time it's been since Dad went home. It was a Tuesday, it was the 28, the weather was gloomy. Three months and yet the time of loss has spanned much longer than that.  When Dad passed it felt like a reprieve from the constant feeling of helplessness and heartbreak watching Dad suffer. But it was replaced only with a deeper sorrow and loss of which I wouldn't truly understand until I started living it. As I've grieved these

While it’s been over 10 years now, we lost my Grandpa (Dad’s Dad) on Easter Monday. We spent the days of Holy Week visiting and sitting with Grandpa much like we did with Dad a few months ago. I remember driving to the nursing home and asking God where he was. I loved my Grandpa and I was hurt and I was sad. Dad never really talked about losing his parents, but I know it was hard on him. I remember it was hard watching my Dad try to do all that needed to be done in his role as pastor during such a busy season in the church. Holy Week was hard. Just a few years later I lost my other Grandpa to cancer two weeks before Easter and I was heartbroken. Months before he had held my tiny little Lydia in his big strong hands and I remember thinking how fortunate I was to have my Grandpa holding her. For me, he was a very silent force in my life and he left a big hole down here. While my Mom didn’t talk much about it, I know it was hard for her too and as a new, young Mom it was h