The Heartache of Hope Deferred

This morning, I rolled out of bed, put a fresh estrogen patch on my lower abdomen, grabbed my coffee, and sat down to do my devotions. As I sipped from my favorite mug, I flipped open my Bible to a random passage that just so happened to be about the new heaven and the new earth. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this or if I’m just hypersensitive because I’m actively going through infertility treatment… but scripture uses the analogy of childbirth a lot when talking about the coming Kingdom.

I’ve always found it fascinating how God uses the feminine form, the form of a mother giving birth, to describe the passing of the old heaven and earth and the coming of the new. In books like Matthew, Mark, and Revelation, the signs of the end times—things like wars, earthquakes, and famines—are described as “birthing pains.” They are the contractions coming closer and closer together, the last cries of a broken world on the cusp of change.

In this analogy, I’ve always focused on the pain of labor. But after going through four years of infertility and two miscarriages, I’ve only now begun to consider the pain of patience.

“As a woman fiercely strains to give birth, I will gasp, pant, and cry out. I have been quiet for a long time; I have held back in the face of it all.
Well, no more.”

— Isaiah 42:14 (MSG)

Revelation 21 lays out the rebirth of heaven and earth. In it, John describes this new reality as a place where there is no more death, mourning, crying, or pain (v4). It is a place where God becomes physically accessible, literally dwelling among his children (v3,v7).

In other words, this is the END GAME.

The new heaven and earth is when everything, everything, is made right. This is the paralyzed walking. This is the dead rising. This is the diseased healed. This is the wronged receiving recompense. This is the depressed knowing unfettered joy. This is the forgotten being cherished.

So imagine, for a moment, how much God’s heart must ache as he waits for the birth of this new reality. Every time he sees injustice or cancer or abuse or starvation or addiction or suicide or genocide or disease or grief or hatred or war or a million other symptoms of a fallen and broken and very unfair world—how his Spirit must agonize over the not yet.

Even creation is groaning as it waits to be liberated from its bondage to decay (Romans 8:21-22), so how much more so the Creator?

The entirety of Scripture is a story of longing. And if infertility has taught me anything, it is the heartache of hope deferred.

It is hard to understand why, when we pray for something objectively GOOD, it does not always come to pass or does not come to pass in the timing or way we would like.

And honestly, I don’t have an answer. But I have this: God knows what it is to endure the pain of waiting. He knows what it is to long for the birth of something new. So whatever you are waiting on—be it a child, a relationship, or a functioning body—you are in good company.

“We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? ”

— Romans 8:22-24

And it’s not all bad news. Because I can guarantee that exactly when God’s waiting ends, so too, does ours.

He will not make you endure a second longer than he, himself, endures. And so not even a moment of your pain goes unwitnessed, unrecognized, or unsympathized with.

Let's Get Real.

A few weeks ago I was back at my least favorite place - the Mayo Clinic waiting room. I’ve been there on and off over the past four years both as a caregiver and as a patient and I’ve hated it every single time. It’s not that the Mayo isn’t a wonderful establishment… it’s just that I’m never there for fun.

But before we get to that - let’s take a trip back to yesteryear. In 2017, I developed severe anxiety and OCD. It had been increasingly taking over my life since the death of my dad, my miscarriage, surgery, and caregiving for my mother-in-law, and then shortly after she passed away I really lost it. At the time, my husband was at a week-long training for work and I had an anxiety attack so severe that I was incapacitated on my kitchen floor. My mom drove three hours to come and pick me up, and that was the turning point. I called my doctor for medication and began therapy and - by God’s grace - since then, I’ve been mentally very stable.

That said, something else I rarely talk about is that I’ve also suffered from a chronic pain condition for about the same amount of time; one that I’ve seen no less than five doctors for, had two surgeries for, and tried numerous medications and holistic healthcare remedies for. It’s been exhausting, depressing, and you know… painful.

Well, this month I was referred to a new doctor at Mayo who wanted to get me off of the anti-anxiety med I’ve been on since my world imploded in 2017 to see if I had developed some kind of freak allergy to it that could be responsible for the nerve pain. I agreed to go off the anti-anxiety med, hoping that (miracle of miracles) the solution could be so simple! Wouldn’t that be great?! PLUS, I figured that the anxiety had just been a situational thing - so I should be fine now, right?

Spoiler: my anxiety is back with a vengeance, my pain didn’t go away, and to top it off my doctor also suggested scheduling an appointment with an infertility doctor because we’ve been trying for over a year with no success.

Now - I’m not writing all of this to say, “WOE IS ME! Pity me, dear reader!” I’m writing it because all month I’ve felt like a TOTAL FAILURE.

I can’t manage my thoughts. I can’t control my emotions. I can’t cope with regular stressors. I can’t seem to breathe normally. I can’t deal with my life without medication. I can’t seem to have enough ‘faith’ that this pain will end or that my fear will be removed. I can’t do the one thing a woman’s body is designed to do. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.

Satan has whispered these lies in my ear- breath hot and close. And like all of his lies, they are rooted in a bit of truth.

Because truthfully - I can’t.

But God can. He can calm my thoughts and emotions. He can help me to cope with my stressors. He is the breath of life. He is the maker of the minds who came up with and prescribe medicine. He is the giver of faith and peace. He is the designer and creator of my body. He can. He can. He can.

And I don’t mean that in a trite way - that God will instantly take away all pain, or mental health disorders, or chronic illnesses, or injuries, or infertility, or loss, or grief, or addiction, or hurt (although he very well MAY and that is worth asking for!)

But I do know that God heals. Whether here or in eternity. Whether physically or spiritually. Whether through prayer, or modern medicine, or a combination of both. I do know that God does miracles. Whether the miracle of relief or the miracle of perseverance.

And we don’t talk about that enough.

“Not all stories of healing are the ones where sight is restored or diseases cease. But we won’t be discipled to witness the miracle of perseverance unless stories of suffering are shared in sermons as stories of profound grace.”

— K.J. Ramsey

We don’t talk enough about issues like mental health and chronic illness, infertility and miscarriage, grief and heartbreak. We don’t talk about them because they are uncomfortable and hard to address and messy. Because often there aren’t easy answers or fixes. Because sometimes God doesn’t show up how we WANT him to show up.

But what if that is the point?

That sometimes God allows us to walk through incredibly hard things, through dark valleys, so that we can exerpience his grace in the midst of the mess and learn to rely on him instead of on ourselves. So that we can witness the miracle of perseverance in the face of suffering. So that we can testify to a hurting world about a God who not only understands but enters in.

How will the world ever see Emanuel, God WITH us, if they never see us be real about suffering and the God who shows up in the midst of it?

So if you have had a month like mine - the kind where Satan is whispering failure in your ear - remember that struggling, feeling, wrestling, waiting, and suffering do not equate to failure. God wants to meet you exactly where you are, mess and all.

The fact that you are not a living picture of perfection is exactly why you are a living picture of grace. And OH how the world needs grace right now!

“ The moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our... condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.”

— Romans 8:26-28, the Message

How do you pray in days like these?

My grandfather was recently diagnosed with a rare kind of skin cancer - the particularly aggressive kind. The kind you can hold out against, but you can’t win. The call where we found out his cancer had spread shot me back to four years ago - sitting in the hospital with my mother-in-law hearing that, outside of divine intervention, her days were numbered, and the number was small.

It’s a strange sort of torture to know your enemy - to know in advance what will cause you to suffer, what will cause you to die. To stare it in the face as it opens its maw to swallow you.

And how do we pray in days like these? Days where the hot breath of suffering pants at our neck, waiting to devour us?

"And [Jesus] withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and knelt down and prayed saying, ‘Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.’ And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. And being in agony he prayed more earnestly…” - Luke 23:41-44

How often we forget that in Scripture Jesus is referred to as a “man of sorrows, and aquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). That he saw his demise coming from a mile away - and on the cusp of it’s arrival he prayed, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me.”

Jesus prayed to be spared from his suffering. Don’t miss this - he prayed that his good and perfect Father would stretch out a hand and remove the source of his agony… and he knew that God was more than able to do so. He lacked no faith in his petition. But he also said these four little words - if you are willing.

If you are willing, God, remove this cup from me. If you are willing.

How many times have I found myself on my knees weeping and saying this same prayer? If you are willing, God, let this cup pass. If you are willing. And friend - let me just say that sometimes he is! There are many beautiful accounts of God’s merciful and miraculous healing and protection. But sometimes, for reasons we cannot comprehend, he allows the cup to come square into our hands.

But in these “nevertheless” moments, when the bitter drink rolls through you and the agony seems unbearable, you are not left to carry it alone. He will send his angels to strengthen you - to hold you up and sustain you even in the unending shadows of death’s darkness.

“Even in the unending shadows of death’s darkness, I am not overcome by fear. Because You are with me in those dark moments, near with Your protection and guidance, I am comforted.” - Psalm 23:4, VOICE

No one knows why some are called through the valley of death early - why some are allowed to linger in its terrifying shadows. But we do know this - the valley ends. And at its exit is a stone rolled away that opens to the Holy Road; to the place where sorrows and sighs scurry back into the night, and no darkness is allowed in. To the place where those who have gone before wait with arms wide open and gifts of joy and gladness.

“There will be a highway called the Holy Road… Only the redeemed will walk on it. The people God has ransomed will come back on this road. They’ll sing as they make their way home to Zion, unfading halos of joy encircling their heads, welcomed home with gifts of joy and gladness as all sorrows and sighs scurry into the night.” (Isaiah 35:8 -10, MSG)

This weekend my mom sang by my grandpa’s bedside as he crossed from the valley to the Holy Road. And her singing became his singing as he made his way home where he was welcomed by a host of Saints who had gone before… including my dad.

And I remember something, here in the mourning: that all along the way - through darkness and shadow and fear and suffering and even unto death itself - he was not alone. And you are not alone. And this darkness is not forever.

“But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzeling apparal. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, ‘why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.’”

Grief is uncomfortable. Ask about it.

The scent of roasting coffee permeates the kitchen. The batch of dark roast, single origin, Brazil is almost done - a haze drifts through the air and I close my eyes and inhale deeply. It reminds me of my dad trying to roast coffee in an old popcorn popper on the back porch, the smokey smell mingling with wet pine.

I’m not even sure when I started to cry, but it’s really coming down now. A veritable typhoon.

A million images pass through my mind’s eye there in the kitchen - a million memories - a million moments I wish I could live over. It’s like the almost thirty-year-old me has disappeared and the thirteen-year-old me is left standing there, utterly unsure and vulnerable and in desperate need of her dad.

And as I wipe my snotty face with the back of my hand, I realize something: the missing and the needing and the hurting are never going to go away. The idea that “time heals all wounds” is a giant piece of bull crap fed to a grieving world that wants there to be an easy way out of loss, out of love.

It’s like saying your arm will regenerate after it was amputated. But it won’t. It won’t until we reach the other side of heaven.

And I’m so very tired of people shoving platitudes at the heart-amputees of the world. I’m tired of feeling like it is somehow weak or shameful to cry in my kitchen on a random Thursday because I just really freaking miss my dad. I’m tired of feeling like I can’t talk about him, or about his death. I’m tired of feeling like I should somehow be “moving on”.

My mom recently asked me, “Do you think I’ve been handling my grief poorly?”

I said, “How are you supposed to handle losing your whole life in an instant?” But what I wanted to say was, “Who gave you the impression that there was somehow a wrong way to grieve?”

And sadly I think the answer to that is: pretty much everyone.

We live in a culture where grief is five stages. Where when someone asks, “how you are doing?” the expected answer is “good”. Where after the first year has passed by, people just stop asking you about your loss.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think anyone means to shame or silence the losers (as in those who have lost someone) of the world. But I do think they are afraid of being uncomfortable… and grief is very, very, very uncomfortable. It’s uncomfortable to go through personally, uncomfortable to ask about, uncomfortable to talk about, and uncomfortable to listen to.

But the silence is so much worse.

I guess what I’m trying to get across is this:

If you lost someone last week, last year, 5 years ago, 20 years ago - it’s okay that it still hurts. Give grace for yourself because your grief is an extension of your love.

If you know someone who lost last week, last year, 5 years ago, 20 years ago - ask them how they are doing. Hold space for them to talk about their person.

So here I am, friend. Thanks for still listening.

I lost my dad 3.5 years ago. He was the best person I’ve ever known.

He was always tinkering with some broken object or another. I can still remember his hands - the really square hands of a norwegian - the way they always had random cuts or scrapes from working on things. He spent his Saturdays out clearing trees in the woods of our property and when he would come in for lunch he smelled like pine and sweat and gasoline. He was ridiculously wise and good at listening and asking questions. He always knew what to do in every situation. I miss his goodness, his gentleness, and his strength. He had a billion hobbies and was always learning something new. He loved to be in the outdoors. He took me out on breakfast dates and split an omelet and french toast with me, and gave me his undivided attention, even when I was a dramatic teenager. He loved to bake bread and to garden. Every dog we ever owned was obsessed with him. He gave his everything to God and to his ministry. He was funny and he laughed a lot. He loved my mom unconditionally and never stopped romancing her. He was utterly human and flawed and covered by grace.

I miss him so much it turns me inside out.

But somehow the talking about him, about who he was, helps soothe the ache a little.

So what about you, friend?

I enabled comments on this post so that you can tell me about your person. Tell me about your heart. Because in the remembering we remember that they are worthy of the missing.

A letter to you on the cusp of a new decade.

In my bedroom there is a large, beige box under my desk. It is covered in dust and rarely opened; it houses my heart.

In honor of the new decade, I lifted the lid for the first time in a very long while. Inside there are over 10 years worth of journals - the first one gifted to me by my dad when I was entering middle school.

In the front cover he wrote a letter to me, the only piece of writing that I have from him.

“I am giving you this journal so that you can use it as a place to talk with God. Hannah, I love you so much. Please know that I will be here for you always, no matter what you face. You will always be my little girl, my blessing from God.”

— Dad

My dad gave me a place to talk with God. A way to express my heart, my hurt, my hallelujahs.

For the first 3 years of written prayers, I signed my name at the bottom of each entry - as if God needed me to say who the prayer was from. My signatures varying from “Hannah” to “Hannah M Sorvik” to “Sorvik” to “Hannah Sorvik”, each one swirly and twirly and in colored gel pen. I wrote about my teachers and boys and youth group and friends and music lessons and how much I hated gym class. In high school, I dropped the signature and started journaling my prayers more regularly.

Then in 2009, on the cusp of a new decade, my brother was paralyzed in a skiing accident and the prayers in my journals took a sharp turn.

They became wrestling matches with God. They became expressions of hurt and of longing, of faith and of fear, of hope and of sorrow.

Writing is what kept the wheels on my wagon, it was how I communicated with God when it felt like he was so far away. It was where I declared the truth of his love when my emotions said otherwise.

From that journal in 2009 through my most recent journal in 2019, so very much has changed - I graduated high school, college, graduate school. I dated boys and married the right boy. I moved five times and held way more than five jobs. I became a mom, I lost a child. I served as a caregiver, spent too much time in the hospital, lost my dad, said goodbye to my husband’s mom.

In the pages of those journals I read about a little girl who so often felt lost, unsure, afraid and inadequate. There were some entries where all I wrote was, “Lord help me get out of bed”. There were tear stained pages and things I remember scribbling by the side of a gravestone.

I read the story of the last 10 years and I felt the pain of those losses anew. And yet…

And yet…

There was prayer after prayer after prayer that was answered.

In the midst of so much trauma and mess I saw the hints of a design; of HIS design.

“On earth, the underside of the tapestry was tangled and unclear; but in heaven, we will stand amazed to see the topside of the tapestry and how God beautifully embroidered each circumstance into a pattern for our good and His glory.”

— Joni Eareckson Tada

Some of the questions I wrestled with in the last 10 years have been answered - some are still a mystery. But through each page, each prayer, each journal, each year I see God’s faithful presence in my life - holding me together, shaping my perspective, guiding my steps forward.

Not a single day have I walked alone. Not one. single. day.

In that first journal my dad gave me a place to talk with God - and everyday since I have.

There were no moments too small for God to care, no fears too big for him to handle, no doubt he couldn’t meet, no sorrow he couldn’t comfort.

When I was a child I was told that I talked so much it made people’s ears hemorrhage. Heck, I’m exhausted of myself when I read those middle school entries!

But God’s ears don’t tire of listening to your life. He doesn’t tire of you.

When everything changes, when circumstances shift like sand, there is one thing that will never will.

“For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.”

— Malachi 3:6

Perhaps the next decade will be full of loss. Perhaps it will hold miracles and delight. More likely it will hold all of it.

As you stand on the brink of a new set of unknowns - both hallelujahs and heartbreaks - may the God who does not change, who does not grow weary of you, guide your steps forward. May you rest in the knowledge that he is weaving something beautiful out of your life, something beautiful out of you.

You are dearly loved. You are always heard. You are worthy. You are never alone.

“And remember, I am with you each and every day until the end of the age.”

— Matthew 28:20

Love,

- Hannah

- Hannah M Fordice

- Hannah Fordice

- Fordice

When breathing is hard.

I’d never seen someone die, so I guess I didn’t know what to expect.

In movies the family is told there isn’t much time, they gather around the hospital bed and whisper their goodbyes. The passing itself a flutter of eyelids, a chest that stops moving and the soul is gone.

Perhaps that is what death looks like in some cases, I can’t really say. But it’s not what it looked like for her.

She went into an unresponsive state on a Monday morning in October. The leaves outside were turning flares of red and orange, like the trees had caught fire.

“There isn’t much time”

So we gathered around her bed and whispered our love, our goodbyes. They said we should tell her that it’s okay to go home, to go to heaven, her work here was done. As if somehow our lips held the key codes to the door of eternity.

But the door stayed shut.

We tried pounding on it with our prayers, begging it to open just a crack for her soul to slip through, for the suffering to end. But it held fast, as eternal things have a way of doing.

Eventual her chest stopped moving and we all wondered if this was it, if the battle was over.

Thirty seconds. A minute. And then against all odds, another labored breath.

It went on like this for two weeks. Us taking turns timing her breaths on a stop watch, sometimes nearly two minutes apart. Waiting, waiting for when another one wouldn’t follow. 

Unsure whether to pray for more time or for it to be finished. 

And in that purgatory between her breaths, I thought about the very first breath. Darkness and silence and deep nothingness.

Then He exhaled.

A million stars and galaxies flared into being, their orbits set by the swirling eddies of his sigh.

Thirty seconds. A minute. A forever. And then against all odds, another breath and the world with all its creatures was expelled.

“By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth all their host.”

— Psalm 33:6

The pause between the breaths, the waiting. There within that sacred, silent space that goes on for a tiny infinity is the anticipation of birth, death, rebirth. Both tantalizing and terrible. Both desirous and disastrous. 

There was the breath God used to breathe her into being and eventually the final one that expelled her into the heavens.

She died on a Friday morning in October. 

The leaves outside crumpling up and letting go of their branches, her body releasing its tenuous grip at last, her soul floating away. And we gripped the blankets around her in fists and cried and prayed. 

And on the other side of that last earthly exhale she was inhaling the sweetest, purest air of paradise. No more cancer or treatments or crying or fear or tumors or pain. 

“And Jesus replied, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.’”

— Luke 23:43

Here we are two years out from that final earthly breath, and the leaves are crunching under our feet on the way to the grave and there is an early flurry of snow in the air.

“Cold like death” I keep thinking.

But thats how seasons work, and spring and new life can’t be born without death first.

And on the days I feel like the missing is crushing my own chest in, like I can’t manage another gasp of this cursed air of grief, I hold onto the space between breaths. 

The reminder that we are waiting for the world to be made right, and that the God who created it all is still exhaling redemption.  

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’”

— Revelation 21: 4-5

Fight the good fight.

Last week was my family’s annual camping trip up the north shore of Lake Superior. Every year, for as long as I can remember, we’ve gone to the same campground at the end of the summer. I’ve always felt like I could breathe easier up there, as if 51 weeks of the year I was unintentionally holding my breath.

But since my dad’s death, the north shore has felt more like a scab - I itch to go there but when I indulge the urge, I just end up bleeding.

Because the house burned down and the land was sold, there is nowhere to go that is full of my dad’s memory. No items that were his. No backyard where we played. No dining room where we had family dinners. The north shore is the closest thing I have to being tangibly near him.

Its one of the only places where I feel like I could turn around and he will still be standing there next to me. Like my dad is just out of reach… a word on the tip of my tongue; there and yet not there at all.

How is it that something can feel so dear and at the same time so incredibly painful?

All week I battled a cruel version of deja vu - as if I’d lived this trip 26 times before but in versions where he was still alive. And there were so many moments I wanted to cry… but I just couldn’t. As if somehow remembering my childhood there made me revert to my childhood habit of stuffing my emotions deep, deep inside.

But just like when I was a kid, the emotion had to come out sometime.

A couple days after the trip, I got home from work and was just so angry.

Angry at the dirty dishes in the sink. Angry at the medication I still have to take to function normally after my world imploded. Angry at the pile of laundry in the corner, the cats rubbing against my black pants, the soap bottle that was empty in the shower, the dinner I still had to make.

Angry that my dad is dead.

I walked in the door and straight down to the basement, wrapped my hands, put on my boxing gloves and started to beat the crap out of the heavy bag we have hung there. And each time I punched with my right hand, I saw the edge of a tattoo on my wrist that says, “it is well” peeking out from under my glove.

If I could’ve punched that statement in the face I would’ve.

I’m not even sure when I realized I was crying, the tears were so mixed in with sweat. But when my arms gave out, I sat on the concrete floor and wept like I did the day he died.

I always feel like I should be further along by now. Like I should miss my dad less, like I should be stronger, braver, more put together. Like grief is a weakness and joy should be easy.

But its not, and it isn’t.

As I slowly unwrapped my hands I thought about those words on my wrist, the song they came from.

“When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll
Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say
It is well, it is well, with my soul”

— Horatio Spafford

Thou has taught me to say. Taught. As in practiced skill.

Because the truth is, a lot of the time it isn’t easy to say “it is well” and it sure doesn’t feel like “it is well”. No… it is an intentional, every. single. dang. day. choice. to claim that God is still good even when my circumstances aren’t. It’s a fight.

And sure, some days I feel “eye of the tiger” pumped - it’s near effortless to fight the fight of faith. And other days my spiritual arms feel like jelly and my sweat is mixed with tears because it’s so hard to keep going.

But isn't that what makes a mediocre fighter into a great fighter? The tenacity to keep on when everything in you screams to give up. The showing up  every day. The gritty determination to finish when you are battered, bruised and bleeding. The refusal to give in to the odds.

There is no such thing as an easy boxing match. There is no such thing as an easy life.

Jesus said:

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you WILL have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world. ”

— John 16:33

You will have trouble - its a guarantee. No one gets to go through life without taking some punches. And some of those injuries don’t heal quick, some don’t heal at all.

BUT TAKE HEART.

“We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance character; and character hope. And hope does not put us to shame...” ”

— Romans 5: 3-5

So hear this: if today you found yourself down on the metaphorical concrete floor crying and weary, broken and battered, remember - it takes courage to wrestle with grief. It takes strength to get up again. It takes perseverance,  practice, and most of all prayer to cultivate a well soul - a hope for the future.

And the future will not disappoint.

Every fighter, every soldier, every warrior is fighting not to win the round or battle - but to win in the end. And dear friends, we do win in the end.

Death, heartbreak, depression, hardship, hurt, disability, loss, weariness - these do not get the final say. They don’t even get the final hit.

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. ”

— 2 Timothy 4:7

All the best people are eccentric.

The vast majority of this blog has been dedicated to remembering those who have died and to wrestling with the unknowable reasons behind suffering. Nearly every post, I write about the amazing impact that my dad had on my life; however, I would be hard pressed to remember a time I told him that while he was living.

Isn’t that the irony of death? We all want to know that we matter - that we are loved and seen and have made an impact – but no one thinks to tell us till we are 6 feet under.

Then of course, they gather in hoards.

Heck, I saw people at my dad’s funeral that hadn’t talked to him since high school. He made ripples in the world that were so much broader than he ever believed. And frankly, I wonder how much richer his life would have felt if he had been told a little more often about the impact he was making on individuals. I wonder how much richer all of our lives would be if we took the time to tell others what they meant to us while they were still here, while there was still time.

With that in mind, I want to veer off the well-traveled, R&R road of grief today.

I want to talk about the living.

More specifically, I want to talk about the person who taught me what it looks like to live.

You called it reader – I want to talk about my mom (heyo mother’s day!)

Let me set the scene:

I am in middle school, the early teenage years when every girl goes through a near constant state of PMS and angst. Decked out in an oversized red hoody, flare jeans and with a lip-smackers chapstick and Walkman CD player bulging in my pocket, I got into the car for day-trip to Split Rock Lighthouse with the fam. If you haven’t had the pleasure of going to Split Rock during the summer season – let me tell you – it’s unique. You see, similar to Old Fort Williams in Canada, they do period reenactments from the 1800s. Oh yeah. My mom LOVES that stuff.

While on the drive, undoubtly spurred on by my sassy tween attitude, I complained that my mom was eccentric for making us go to a lighthouse and talk with actors pretending to churn butter. Of course she vehemently denied this accusation and told me it wasn’t eccentric, it was educational.

Not ten minutes later, in the course of conversation mom says, “I’ve always wanted to be a Christmas elf”.

Don’t ask me why it came up, or why she aspires to be such an odd mythical being (I would certainly choose a wood elf over a Christmas elf – hello, Legolas), but it did and she did. In that moment, she was branded with a giant “E” for eccentric, all defenses destroyed by a single comment.

Ever since that sunny car ride in the early 2000s, mom has tried to prove to me that if she is eccentric, so am I; like mother like daughter.

For years afterward, I vehemently denied any association with the “E word”. But at nearly every turn, I find that I make my own Christmas elf admissions – my secret love for Korean Dramas, extreme Star Wars fandom, annual attendance to Renaissance Festivals, dream of owning a cape - the list goes on.

At this point, I can practically feel my mom fist pumping at my admission of eccentricity because it’s true, I am.

But don’t you think all the best people are?

When I said that my mom taught me how to live, I meant she taught me how to live full.

She laughs so loud and hard that I can track her down from several blocks away. She delights in good theater performances, and art and indulgent chocolate cake. She can imagine whole worlds and make my niece and nephew feel like they have entered them with her. She cries over the hurting heart of a friend. She hops up and down like a little kid when she hears good news. She reads books out loud and does a different voice for every character. She was a clown in the pediatric ward of a hospital. She inspires people with her worship leading. She watches Dick Van Dyke reruns almost every night. She prays like God is tangibly across the table from her. She is so incredibly, undeniably WISE, like no one else I know.

My mom lives full out. Even in loss, especially in loss, she lives. She chooses every day to be authentic; to cry when she is lonely, to laugh when she tastes moments of joy again, to rest in the arms of Jesus when she can’t sleep, to wrestle with God over the loss and hurt, to come back to the cross over and over and over again.

The dictionary has two primary definitions for eccentric:

1. “A person that is unconventional and slightly strange”

2. “not placed centrally, not centered on the same point as another”

My mom is eccentric.

She is unconventional in the very best of ways. She is strange in a way that makes you want to be strange too – that makes you want to forget what everybody else thinks and just go love others and enjoy your life.

She is not centered on the same point as others. She doesn’t form her life around what the world cares about or values, rather she has made God her axis. Everything she does, it is focused on Him.

I used to fight the idea that I was eccentric like my mom. But now I crave being compared to her. I even kind of get the Christmas elf wish – after all, their job is to bring the gifts of Christmas to the people of the world and isn’t that really the gospel?

So here is what I propose: that all the best people have an “E” branded on them: eccentric, evangelistic and hey, maybe even elf.

Thank you mom - for showing me how to use my imagination, for teaching me to pray, for mentoring me in grace, for geeking out with me over Disney, for singing opera in the kitchen, for crying with me when it felt like there was nothing but hurt, and for showing me what it is to be a woman after God’s own heart - a woman who is authentic, eccentric. I love you fiercely and I am so incredibly proud to be your daughter and friend.

“She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come. She speaks with wisdom and faithful instruction is on her tongue. ”

— Proverbs 31: 25-26

Woman, why are you weeping?

The last time I went home was in early spring. It had become increasingly obvious that it wasn’t feasible for us to keep the property any longer. After all, there was nothing on it anymore.

My husband and I drove down the familiar dirt road in silence until we came to the mailbox I had passed a million times throughout my life. But that’s where the familiarity ended. When we turned in the driveway, I was met with… nothing. That place where the log house my dad built stood nestled in pines like a postcard was now empty. It looked like a hockey player’s mouth where the front teeth had been knocked out.

I slowly got out of the car and walked over to where the front door had been. I stood there, in that gaping black hole surrounded by emptiness and burnt trees.

I remember falling to the ground and crying, running my hands through the dirt hoping to find anything that was left – anything I could recognize as having been from home.  At that moment, I would have preferred the twisted, deformed debris to the suffocating sense of emptiness.

Only a few months before, there was a log cabin and a man in red flannel chopping wood out by the porch; just weeks before, there was rubble and a body marred beyond recognition.

 Now, there was nothing.

All the remnants of our life, of dad, had been removed by an excavator. And I felt like my heart had been dug out and disposed of along with it.

In my soul, I felt that I was robbed of the chance to say goodbye. There was no warning on the day the house went up in flames, no last words or “I love you”. There wasn’t even a body to see – he was just gone. I didn’t get to take anything that reminded me of him, or my wedding dress hung in the closet, or any of the countless treasures from home. And now even the remains of the house were wiped away.

As I sat there and wept in the most profound sense of absence I’d ever known, I couldn’t help but think of Mary at the tomb of Jesus.

Just days before she had sat with him, talked with him; then she was robbed of the chance to say goodbye. There was no warning on the day he was arrested and taken to trial. No way she could have known he would be beaten to the point that “his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form marred beyond human likeness” (Isaiah 52:14). That he would be murdered.

And then when she went to the tomb to anoint what little was left of his body with oil, there wasn’t even a body to see – he was just gone.

“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we don’t know where they have moved him!’ … Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying.”

— John 20: 1-2,11

Mary knew what it was to lose the one she loved most in a sudden and brutal way. She knew what it was to sit in a gaping black hole of emptiness and sift through the dirt for anything that might remain. And I’m willing to bet, that at that moment she would have preferred the twisted, deformed debris of Jesus’ body in the tomb to the suffocating sense of emptiness, the profound absence of her Lord.

“But as she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, ‘Woman, why are you crying?’ ‘They have taken my Lord away’, she said, ‘and I don’t know where they have put him’”

— John 20: 11b-13

As I slowly stood up and began my final walk around the perimeter of the property, I bent over and found something surprising: where at first I assumed there were only dead trees and plants – shriveled from the heat and smoke of the fire - there was a low lying, thick blanket of forget-me-not flowers.

These delicate blooms in white and blue were seated where my dad’s body had been. They seemed to say to me, “Woman, why are you crying?”

I thought again of Mary, weeping over the emptiness; surprised by these messengers in white, promising something so much better than the ugly remains of death.

“The [angels] said to them, ‘why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen!”

— Luke 24:5-6

And in that moment, looking at those impossible forget-me-nots in the ash, I knew I was being given a promise of something so much better than the remains of a burnt up house. I was being promised eternity. As if God sent down these little flowers to say, “Forget me not child. Forget not the empty tomb. Forget not my risen son. Forget not my promise of everlasting life. Stop looking for the living among the dead.”

We live our lives on earth as if in a perpetual Good Friday, a series of robbed lives and emptiness. But are we not Easter people? Are we not the ones who know the empty tomb is not an absence of life but the very promise of it?

“For God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not parish, but have everlasting life.”

— John 3: 16

Easter always makes me miss my dad – the sermon’s he preached each Easter Sunday, the liver and onion he ordered once a year on this day, the way he laughed and greeted every person who walked in our church doors. I still feel like I was robbed of the chance to say goodbye. But I also know that it would have been a temporary sentiment because I am certain that, like our Lord, his proverbial tomb is empty. And someday, I will have the chance to hug my dad on the shores of eternity.

“I want to know Christ – yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. ”

— Philippians 3: 10-11

How to hold joy.

I love this photo - even though its grainy and low quality - it is one of my dearest possessions. Here we are at our wedding a mere five years ago, dancing with our parents to the song “Unforgettable”.

That both of them are gone this Christmas is unfathomable still.

And everywhere I go, everything I watch, everyone I talk to during the holiday season is a reminder that our families aren’t the same.

My family home was reduced to ash. No 18’ tall Christmas tree cut down from our property will grace the living room. My mom’s fine white wedding china won’t be set on the dining table. My mother-in-law’s traditional wild rice soup won’t be made by her careful hands. And at both family tables there will be one less place setting than there should be.

I have cried more leading up to this Christmas season than I care to admit. I somehow thought that all of the “seconds” would be a little less painful than the “firsts” - sorry to play the depressive realism elf but FALSE. It still sucks.

In the car yesterday my husband said, “I am so emotionally conflicted about Christmas this year. Its a season thats all about being joyful, but Im not sure how to have joy when both of our families are broken.”

Doesn’t that just sum it up.

How do you celebrate the season of giving when it seems like so much has been taken away?

How do you let go of the expectation that things will go on as they did before when they never can?

“People touch our lives if only for a moment, and yet we’re not the same from that moment on. The time is not important, the moment is forever.”

— Fern Bork

The time is not important, the moment is forever.

I love this quote because it says what I can’t seem to put into words. That all those moments - the Christmas mornings and laughter filled dinners, the silly gifts and the prayers around the table, the cookie baking and tree cutting - they changed who I am fundamentally. My dad, my mother-in-law - when they loved on me they were investing in eternity. They were investing in my soul.

And maybe this is how we hold joy in the midst of a radically changed Christmas:

We remember that because of a child born over 2,000 years ago, I will someday dance with my daddy again and my husband will hold his mom. We will sit at the final feast, one that will never have to end, and we laugh harder than we ever did around my childhood table.

And as I think back on those moments of joy, I anticipate the coming of an even better future.

You see, our memories serve as signposts of hope.

“But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.”

— Romans 8: 24-25

Like a child on Christmas morning - anticipating the gifts about to be received, things they cannot yet see and do not know - so too do we wait in eager anticipation for the promise of a reunion in heaven, of all things made right and all tears wiped away.

All I wanted for Christmas was one more hug from my dad, one more ‘I love you’; and though I may not get that gift this year, I eagerly await the promise of it in the future. The real gift of Christmas, the real joy, is that we are promised heaven.

“Unto us a child is born, to us a son is given… and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

— Isaiah 9:6