i've been mia lately on the blog front. partly because of exhaustion. partly because when i have free time, all i feel like doing is laying on the couch and watching shows on netflix. but honestly more because i've been struggling over the past couple of weeks and feel inadequate to express what i'm feeling into words.
it's amazing how grief sneaks up on you. as a counselor, i used to tell people this. advising others through the grief journey and actually experiencing it are two very, very different things. now i find myself as the one stumbling through this painful season of life where my mood is subconsciously dictated by birthdays and other various dates, memories, and random songs on the radio. these things have the power to take my otherwise cheerful, contented self and suddenly plummet me into a dark pit of loss and loneliness.
grief is tricky like that.
last week would've been dad's 53rd birthday. i knew the days leading up to march 22nd would be tough. but again, i had no idea how these feelings would blindside me. one minute i would be just fine. the next minute, nick would find me curled up in our bed, sobbing. i was also preparing myself to watch march madness without dad for the first time in my thirty one years. it was one of our favorite times of the year, me and dad. and last week my sweet niece, lucy mae, entered the world. she met all of her family that has loved her and prayed for her while she grew inside my sister's belly... except for her bampy. i kept picturing him in the waiting room with all of us; hearing his loud, booming laugh and seeing his eyes, wide with excitement. i could picture him holding his newest granddaughter and beaming with pride. there was definitely a hole there where he would have been.
of course this made me even more emotional, thinking of him not being there to greet emmy when she enters the world in just a few short weeks. he would be so proud; he had fallen in love with both of them the minute gretchen and i told him that we were expecting. if you knew my dad--or had met him even once--i'm sure he made a point to tell you that he had two grandbabies on the way. he thought it was so cool. i'm so very thankful that dad was able to know this exciting news... i just can't help but think how unfair it is that he was never able to meet either of these precious girls. they would've had their bampy wrapped right around their little fingers. why god didn't allow him to share in their lives, i'll never know. but i'll have to trust his sovereignty anyway.
it has been a rough couple of weeks for me, taking all of this in and feeling the loss of my dad's presence in such vivid ways. but i have hope. i have hope because i look back a few months ago to this fall. everything in nature was dying around me, and i felt it in such a real way in the very core of my being. i've never been in such despair in my life. nick&i had just moved here. we were still settling in. we had left the most amazing circle of close friends that had been our family for years, and come to a place where we were trying to make new friends, but didn't really have any yet. it was lonely and scary. we were both adjusting to new jobs, new responsibilities with living in a house we had just moved into, and new stages that our sweet bella was going through. on top of all of those hardships, dad was not good. i watched the dad that i had always known--one of my closest companions, biggest encourager, my rock--diminishing before my very eyes. as we were thrown into adjusting to a new life, we were making trips almost every weekend to visit him in the hospital in boston. i talked to him every day while he was there, several times hanging up in tears feeling as though my dad was slipping away. with each passing week, his voice began to get softer and his speech more slurred. his usual, jovial spirit was replaced with one of utter despair. poor bella saw her mama cry much more than any one year old ever should and i remember feeling so guilty one night as my little girl comforted me as i wept for my dad. and nick, in the middle of holding the weight of the world on his shoulders, was trying to stay strong for me. yet i'm sure felt as if he was going to crumble under the heaviness of his own grief and sadness at the loss of his father-in-law and all they had wanted to get to share together.
it was honestly the worst time of my life. and the hardest time in our married life.
but i look back on that season and i see how god clearly carried us. i mean: he knelt down, scooped us up into his almighty arms and held us as we walked through the darkness that felt so heavy and burdensome. he was our strength, our shelter, our grace. and we as people--and as husband and wife--will never be the same. as hard as that season was, god has used it--as only he can--to bless us and remind us of his character in such an intimate way.
last week, i was having a particularly hard day missing my dad. i was on my way up our front walk to step onto our porch when something caught my eye. we had started digging up old shrubs and landscaping along the front of our house last summer, so all that remained were a few stubborn bushes with gnarled, old roots and the remains of the existing mulch. but there, on that day as i felt weighed down by grief, i spied them. beautiful crocuses just beginning to peek their purple heads out of the dead shrubbery that surrounded them. i stopped in my tracks and almost started to cry. i knew it was jesus reminding me "spring does come."
spring. there is hope. a sense of renewal. new things being born; life being breathed into things that were once dying. and this, my friends, refreshes my soul. it's what pushes me through the hard seasons of missing my dad. the times where the loss of him seems too much to bear. the fear i feel when i think of losing anyone else. the uncertainty of what's lurking around the corner.
spring does come.
a verse that i stumbled upon when i was first grappling with dad's diagnosis seven years ago keeps coming to mind. psalm 84:5-7 says "blessed are those whose strength is in you; whose hearts are set on pilgrimage. as they pass through the valley of baca, they make it a place of springs; the autumn rain also covers it with pools. they go on from strength to strength until each appears before god in zion."
no matter what we may be facing today, may god give us the grace to "make it a place of springs."
(photo source)
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