How to hold space.

When you lose someone you love, there is this hollow space in your life that used to be filled with them – and it seems like every well-wisher and sympathizer wants to fill that hole up. They ask “how are you doing?” which is code for they’d like to hear that you’re fine, or better, or good, or normal. They want to hear that you’re whole.

But I don’t think that you’re ever really whole again – instead you’re filled with holes. Like a graveyard where the soil is turned over, dug out, and replaced with something dead.

The week my dad died, my brother and I went to the cemetery to pick out his plot and tomb stone. We sat in a dingy office at the entrance to the graveyard and flipped through this morbid shopping catalogue of grave markers and granite. Then we took the hand-drawn map of open plots and drove to the one we had selected.

Keep in mind, it was February and insanely cold out. So we sat in the heat of the car, starring at this frozen piece of dirt that was about to house a stone with dad’s name on it next to an end date.

And we cried. Which grew into sobs. Which turned into hyperventilation.

But I’d never felt closer to my brother, and I’d never felt more comforted than in that moment of shared desperate sorrow at the side of an imminent grave. And I think it came down to this – instead of trying to pretend it was okay or power through or preach trite truths to each other, we just held space.

There is no ground more HOLY than by the side of a friend with a hole in the frozen ground of their heart.

The night before Jesus was arrested, falsely accused, beaten and crucified, he asked three of his closest friends to come and wait with him. Note that he didn’t ask them for their advice, for their comfort, or for them to say - ‘its okay Jesus, this is only temporary and you’ll rise again in three days!’ , even though its true, he would.

Instead Jesus asked them to remain and keep watch with him.

“Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to His disciples, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and distressed. Then He said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me.” ”

— Matthew 26: 36-38

We have a God who is familiar with pain and familiar with the isolation of a fresh grave. And we also have a God who knows that in our Gethsemane moments, nothing means more than holding space for the hurting heart to do just that, hurt.

Grief demands to be felt, sorrow acknowledged. And no platitudes or procedures will fill in that hole left by loss.

But my friends, it is sacred territory to wait with someone who is in pain. It is the work of God, to love them by just showing up.

“Our most difficult task as a friend is to offer understanding when we don’t understand.”

— Robert Brault

When you lose your child’s future.

Although 15-20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage, I don’t often hear about the effect this kind of loss has on the women who’ve experienced it. Its like society has gagged 1/4 of the female population into silent, invisible grief.

And to be honest, I’m guilty of holding the gag in place.

Its not that I haven’t wanted to write about my miscarriage… I have. I just honestly didn’t know how.

Because how do you describe what it is to miss something you never got to have?

I remember when my brother was paralyzed during his senior year of high school in a skiing accident; among other things, my mom would talk about the unique grief of losing the dreams and hopes she had for her child’s future. She had visions of him dancing with the bride at his wedding, giving his kid’s piggy back rides, hiking with his family, reaching up to grab a box of mac and cheese off the highest shelf at the grocery store for a rather short old lady…

You see, of course she grieved the loss of her son’s legs, but she also grieved the loss of a future she had hoped for him.

I guess miscarriage feels a little like that. I grieve the loss of who my child would have become. I dreamed of all the things she would have done in her life, the people she would have known, the tea parties and game nights and broken hearts and triumphs.

But instead, I watched the dreams for my baby’s future bleed away onto the hospital floor.

Afterwards, as I sat empty and hollowed out, I couldn’t help but wonder why God allowed me to get pregnant, allowed a new soul to be held within me, only to take her away before I ever got to hold her in my arms - let alone witness who she would have become.

I wrestled with that question as a part of the mostly mute majority. And it wasn’t until my baby would have turned one year old that I stumbled, by the grace of another mom who was willing to break the silence, on these words:

“I sat in the rainy half-light of my tiny English living room, in the blank silence of the loss of my first child, a “little bean” I would never meet... I read about Julian of Norwich’s vision of something that looked “small as a hazelnut” but was actually the whole world, cradled in the palm of God’s hand, and her knowledge that “God made it. . . . God loves it. . . . God preserves it.”

I remembered that my baby was about the size of a hazelnut when he died.

And I began to weep as my mind filled with the image of my own lost babe, held like the hazelnut of the world in the palm of God’s hand—not lost, but found, and waiting for me.”

— Sarah Clarkson

Oh my soul - how it cried out at those sweet words of truth!

That entire worlds are hidden within something small as a hazelnut, small as an acorn. And my baby, the size of an acorn at her passing, was buried in the earth so that she might grow into an oak tree on the other side of heaven.

She wasn’t just tissue, she wasn’t someone who never got a future…

She was a seed in which the whole world was encased, lying dormant, until the light of the Son shone on her and told her to awaken.

And somewhere, someday, I will have the chance to stand within the shadow of her figure; full, graceful and everything that she was intended to be. And I will recognize her as the acorn that I once held within me - all grown up.

“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb... My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. ”

— Psalm 139: 13, 15-16

Moonrise.

The moon unraveled like liquid silk on the surface of the lake.

He could have asked anybody to traverse the narrow trails to the rocky shore; mom and the boys would surely have left the circle of flashlights and the puddle of spit toothpaste they were congregated around in the campsite. Especially the boys – to put off bedtime was practically a sport in our family.

But for whatever reason, he didn’t.

He asked me.

I still remember that night - the full moon sitting heavy on the horizon, the lapping of waves against the stones, dad standing next to me in his flannel and jeans and me in my pajamas and a sweatshirt. I was maybe 13.

I’ve likely witnessed thousands of moonrises over Lake Superior, but none that stick in my mind like that August evening with dad on the North Shore.  

 Mom once told me that wherever we are in the world we all look at the same moon, which is comforting. Unless of course, the person you miss isn’t in this world.

Then, I think the moon feels awful lonely.

“What if it’s the there
and not the here
that I long for?
The wander
and not the wait,
the magic
in the lost feet
stumbling down
the faraway street
and the way the moon
never hangs
quite the same.”

— Tyler Knott Gregson

This week is my first time camping in the place I watched the moonrise with my dad since his passing. It feels simultaneously like he may walk off the trail at any moment and like the vast emptiness left by him has been torn a bit wider by the memories this place holds.

And how do you cure a homesickness for someone who isn't under the same moon as you anymore?

I've wondered it a thousand times, through a million tears shed - 'Can you see me dad? Can you hear me? Do you know how much I miss you?'

And I may never know the answer to those questions, but this I do know: the spiritual world is closer than we think, the presence of God encompassing both this world and the heavens.

Wherever we are in this life or the next, we worship under the same God.

“Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you. ”

— Psalm 139: 7-12

When I stand amazed before the beauty of God's creation, I know my dad is also. When I sing praises, I join with all the saints in the heavens. When I whisper prayers, they rise as a pleasing sacrifice to God in time with the prayers of my father.

I may not be able to go back to that night when I was 13 under the stars, standing in easy companionship with my dad... but I can look forward to this more perfect, more intimate communion with my dad that will never have to end.

And somehow, that makes me feel a little less lonely when I look at the moon.

I like my choices.

Today is my five-year wedding anniversary.

As I tried to think about what to write, how to describe how thankful I am for my husband, I kept coming back to my parents’ marriage. I kept coming back to the end.

I had the rare pleasure growing up of witnessing a real, honest to gosh, love story. My parents had an AMAZING marriage.

When my dad died, it was like a vital piece of my mom was wrenched away. The most traumatizing memory I have of the day he passed away was the unearthly sound of wailing that came from somewhere deep inside her that was torn wide open; it was the sound of pure, audible anguish.

She once said to me, “I would give anything just to be loved by him again”.

Doesn’t that put it all in perspective?

When my husband leaves his dirty laundry in the hallway, or forgets to feed the dog; when he seems incapable of talking about his emotions, or when he insists that he needs another piece of gear for a new hobby… its nothing in the shadow of his love for me.

Everyday my husband walks out the door into a job that is inherently full of risk, so early on in our marriage we established the tradition of always kissing goodbye when he left – even if we had been fighting or it was the middle of the night or I was putting on makeup.

Now, I’m not superstitious and I’m not typically a pessimist, but I never want to reach the day where he doesn’t come home, and find myself regretting that I was too hung up on the small stuff to say, ‘I love you’.

My mom says that her marriage with dad was sweeter in their 31st year than at any other time of life. And when he went suddenly Home, she didn’t have to wonder where they stood.

And as for dad – well he traveled a lot for work, and a few years ago he caught the end of the movie, “The Fault in Our Stars” at a hotel. He called my mom and told her he cried through it – the man that rarely ever teared up – phoned his wife to admit he cried through a John Green story. And here’s why.

When the main character in the movie dies of cancer, he leaves a letter about the love of his life that says:

“I love her. I am so lucky to love her… you don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.”

My dad liked his choices. My mom liked hers.

And here at the end of five years of loss, joy, pain, adventure, sorrow, growth, laughter and sacrifice – I can honestly say that I like my choices.

“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. ”

— 1 Corin 13:7

I am so lucky to love my husband, so lucky to be loved by him.

In a world where nothing is certain except that you will certainly hurt, I find myself clinging to the fleeting joys I'm granted here and the fixed joy of heaven.

So here's to you honey, and here is to the greatest pleasure of my life - loving you.

“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

A Father's Mandate.

I changed jobs recently. It was one of those difficult decisions that I agonized over for way too long, and that left me wishing desperately that my dad was around to advise me.

Growing up, my brothers and I frequently compared dad to “Pa”, portrayed by Michael Landon Jr. on the 1980's show Little House on the Prairie, because he had a way of always knowing the right thing to do. 

That was just how he was – effortlessly wise, inherently wholesome, genuinely compassionate and unflinchingly fair.

When he passed away, I sat for hours in a room with a blank piece of paper trying to come up with SOMETHING to say at his funeral.

But how could I possibly sum up the life of someone so amazing? How could I convey what my dad meant to me?

There is no denying that he left a mark on the EFCA denomination, that he impacted the way that many young pastor’s think about church multiplication. I don’t doubt that there are thousands of people who were impacted by his preaching and thousands more by his counseling and care.

But in the end, I just kept picturing how I used to talk to him until he said his ears were hemorrhaging - asking questions that I didn't even care about, so that our conversation wouldn't have to end. Oh how desperately I wanted to talk to him again, to ask him just a few more delaying questions, to tell him I loved him one more time and to hear that he was proud of who I had become. 

Because although my dad was an accomplished teacher, a brilliant strategist, a profound preacher, a passionate church planter and a great leader… more than all that, he was a great lover of God, his wife and his family. 

If I’m really honest with you, what I admired the most about my dad was that he came home and got down on the floor to play with me and my brothers. He took me out to breakfast regularly and asked about school, my friends, my first crush. He woke me up with a goofy song in the morning and made me a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich for lunch every day. After my brother was paralyzed, he took up hand-cycling and modified kayaking so they could still enjoy the outdoors together. He would kiss my mom in the kitchen while she made dinner and rub her feet while they watched T.V. At Thanksgiving he would bake a homemade pumpkin pie with me from an actual pumpkin. He told us extravagant mystery stories around the campfire each summer and cut down an 18 foot Christmas tree for the living room each winter. He attended the Father Daughter Ball with me every February and we danced the polka until he was sweating through his suit. He sang little made-up lullabies to my brother’s daughter, his first grandchild and the only one he would meet this side of heaven. He officiated all three of his kids weddings and many of his "honorary children's" weddings. 

He loved us.

He loved us in ordinary, extraordinary ways.

And although I know there is so much that I could talk about when I talk about my dad – this Father’s day I find myself missing the man he was behind the scenes. The man he was at home. The man he was to us.

In one of my dad's sermon's on parenting titled "A Father's Mandate" ( found here -> http://www.anchorpointchurch.org/positive-parenting.html), he said this: 

“Our job as dads is to encourage our children to live authentic lives in Christ. Encouraging is about communicating positive truth but also about living positive truth... more in our lives is caught than is taught. So dads - our job is to recognize that we are an example for our kids. ”

— Jeff Sorvik

And what an example he was. 

You see, I wish I had something a little more profound to say today, but honestly I just feel like a little kid without her dad: a bit lost and a lot lonely. 

I keep expecting the ache to become less, but it never really does. I keep thinking I’ll grow up, but it turns out I’ll never outgrow my dad.

“Grief can awaken us to new values and new and deeper appreciations. Grief can cause us to reprioritize things in our lives, to recognize what’s really important and put it first. Grief can heighten our gratitude as we cease taking the gifts life bestows on us for granted. ”

— Roger Bertschausen

The thing is, families are eternal. And the life you lead, the way you spend your time and invest your love has an impact that will echo on forever.

My dad may not be here for me to hug today or for me to ask his advice. But I know that parts of him continue on in me. I know that I want to live in a way that prioritizes the things that I valued in my dad's life. I know that someday, I want my kids to be able to say that what they remember most about me is who I was at home. 

Daddy - you were the absolute best father I ever could have dreamed of or imagined. I miss you so insanely, so deeply, so profoundly. Thank you for loving me in the little ways, for being present, for listening to my chatter, for showing me what it is to live for Christ.

I love you, Happy Father's Day.

House of dreams.

He dreamed about her laughing. 

I dreamed about him burning.

He dreamed about her lying still as death.

I dreamed about him dancing.

I've been haunted by dreams of my dad since his sudden passing just over a year ago. I wake to cobwebs of his essence hanging over me, following me into the daylight hours - hidden in the corners of my heart, wispy and ethereal.

After startling awake with my pillow wet from crying in my sleep again, I asked my husband if he ever dreams of his mom like I dream of my dad... As it turns out, I'm not the only one who has grief come out sideways in the subconscious world. 

Like bits of nightmare and fantasy, their memories clings to us. Night after night, we quietly dread the reliving of cancer, fire, destruction and decay. And yet... I think we each secretly await the midnight visitations - just so I can see my daddy's face again, just so he can see his mom one more time.

And although the dreams are more often bad than good, once in a while I swear God thins the veil between heaven and earth and lets my dad come through.

One month after my dad had died, a week after I had miscarried, and one day since my mother-in-law had brain surgery for incurable cancer, I dreamed of him.

He stood in front of me, clear as day, and said, "Hey baby girl". I started to cry and said, "Hey daddy, I really miss you and I wish you were here to help me through all this. Please help me daddy, I don't know what to do". He looked at me with such love, such compassion, and replied, "well I suggest that you cry or go outside, its a beautiful day". I looked up to the most stunning blue sky and white fluffy clouds. When I turned back to him, he was walking away down a dirt road, waving behind him.

“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge... That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death. ”

— Robert Fulghum

Have you ever wished for something so fully, dreamed of a moment so real, that it seems you should be able to will it into being? 

When I close my eyes, I can see it all. I can see him. I can see heaven. 

My dad's arms wide open. The feel of his whiskers on my forehead. The smell of pine and hard work. The knowledge that I'm finally home. My little girl running up to pull on my leg, a spitting image of her dad; a small voice saying, 'mom, come play!' The wide-open laugh of my mother-in-law as she twirls in fields of heavenly flowers.

 "Hope triumphs over experience... love is stronger than death". 

The ashes, the disease, are nothing in comparison to the hope of heaven, the love of a savior that promises to lead me home. Because of this I know that one day my best dreams will be reality and death will be nothing but the lingering cobweb of a nightmare in the dawning light of eternity. 

“Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped.Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy... And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness; it will be for those who walk on that Way...and those the Lord has rescued will return.They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.”

— Isaiah 35: 5-6, 8, 10

For though our souls were made, they were not made to cease. 

Beauty from ashes.

HIs hands are full of scratches and sawdust; they move smoothly down the planks, leaving a trail of deep, rich stain. You would never know that just a few months ago that same wood was stained in black ash and blood. 

When the house burned, it burned fast and hard. So fast in fact, that there was nothing they could do - how many times I heard that phrase - nothing they could do, nothing they could do, nothing they could do, until my ears rang with the sick sound of it. Nothing. No home. No dad. Nothing. 

As a lifetime went up in smoke, a crane had to move the largest, still burning logs to try and find his body in the coals. And those top logs - they are all that survived. And it wasn't a pretty type of survive; they were black as everything else. Black as death. 

I'm not sure who had the idea - to cut one of the burnt logs open - but inside was still the crisp white-yellow of dry pine. A small smile had played over my husband's lips, like a shadow cast by a flame. 

It took several months and several pairs of loving hands (Jeff, Dan, Jake, Andy - you will never know the depths of my thanks) to mill the wood, hand shave the burnt off, design and build - but in the end it may have been the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. A table made from the only scraps left of home. 

And as I watched my husband's work-worn hands carve beauty from ashes, I thought of another carpenter. Hands full of scratches and pierced straight through the planks, leaving a trail of red stain. The ugly, death blackened tree of calvary made into a sign of redemption by the hands of Jesus. 

We who have been told, 'There is nothing you can do to become clean. Nothing you can do. Nothing.' have been made new, have been carved from death into something beautiful. 

““The Lord has sent me... to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion— to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.”

— Isaiah 61: 2-3

So as my mom moves into her new house for the first time this week, as the table is brought into a dining room full of unfamiliar things - things that don't feel like hers because they were never theirs - we will sit down to a meal as a family, and we will remember. 

We will remember home. We will remember dad. We will remember calvary. And most of all, we will remember that we are promised beauty from ashes. 

Cancer lessons.

I haven't written very much about my mother-in-law's brain cancer diagnosis last year, or the subsequent seven months of treatments, surgeries, losses and goodbyes.

Seven months - she was given less time to live than it took her to grow in her mother's womb. 

Isn't that how it so often goes? We take the living for granted, assume the days will be many and long. I'm guilty as anyone else. I wake, eat, work, complain, cook, clean, eat, watch tv, sleep, repeat, Again. Again. Again. Until the cycle seems eternal itself. And its exhausting.

But you don't know the worth of life, the clinging to breath, till its already slipping through your fingers and there is only an inch left. 

And what will you do with your inch? 

"I just want you all to have a happy life, to love each other." She said from her wheelchair, just a few weeks before she passed away. Love each other. 

In the last days, the last centimeters left to her, she found what mattered above all; my mother-in-law who had suffered so grievously - who had lost memory, and language and even personality - did not lose this: that the core of life is LOVE. 

Not success, or pleasure, or even more time... she saw that to have a happy life, a well-lived life, requires only this - to love well.

And that my friends, she did in spades. 

You can't take it with you, or so the phrase goes. But here's the thing... its not what you take, its what you leave that matters. 

My mother-in-law, one of the godliest women I know, is now more alive than ever before. She has moved forward into the resurrection, into the kingdom of heaven, where there is a vast treasure collected from her acts of love. For what is enduring in value in the ethereal is similarly valuable in the temporal: 

Acts of love reverberate in echos that go on forever. 

The only thing that will matter at the end of your days, whether here or in heaven, is this: 

“And he [Jesus] said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” ”

— Matthew 22: 37-39

Not healing, not prosperity, not ease, or jobs, or vacations, or six pack abs, or getting pregnant, or marriage, or model homes, or money, or appearance, or acclaim. None of it will matter when your final inch comes along. None of it will matter when the inch is gone. But how you loved... that will be valuable, be impactful, forever. 

“ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails.”

— 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8a

Grace upon Grace

Do you remember when you were a kid and you saw one of your teachers at the grocery store? There was this visceral reflex to hide behind the canned goods while stuttering about how wrong it was that he/she was there. Because surely teachers lived at school, right!?! 

I don't know about you, but I never really grew out of that reflex. Don't get me wrong, I no longer hide under tables and behind cardboard cutouts from old teachers/professors; however, I do find myself hiding from people who don't meet my expectations - good or bad.  

Grief is a funny thing - it manages to simultaneously bring out the best and worst in us.

There are heroic moments of stepping up to the plate, of gracious conversation, strength, wisdom, beautiful vulnerability. And there are terrible moments of selfishness, sharp words, anger, impulsiveness and judgement. 

I can honestly say I am responsible for both terrible and wonderful things in the many griefs of the past year, yet I continue to find myself hiding behind excuses from the messy reality of other people. 

You see, when the Other doesn't live up to my expectations my instinct is to hide from them, to close myself off. 

“Isn’t it also that on some fundamental level we find it difficult to understand that other people are human beings in the same way that we are? We idealize them as gods or dismiss them as animals.”

— John Green

Like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, who believed they should hold the knowledge of heaven yet became unbearably ashamed of each other in the same day, humanity has always fallen into the original sin: the belief that humans are either gods or animals. 

We idolize our brethren in a million small ways, often without realizing it, and then cut ourselves off when they cannot live up to our expectations of perfection. But ah, what a double standard it is - for when the failure is ours we expect grace. 

In the social services field we often talk about having a "human-first view".

In other words, we must remind ourselves that everyone has a backstory we cannot know and it isn't our job to judge them based on our limited knowledge - they are human first... just like us. 

We are indeed, as John Green wrote, all fundamentally human. And with that acknowledgement we must also acknowledge that we are all some kind of mixture of glorious design and gruesome iniquity. 

As much as I am a proponent of the human-first view, I want to propose an alternative: a "heaven-first view". 

Everyone has a backstory we cannot know and it isn't our job to judge them based on our limited knowledge. In addition, everyone has a spark of the divine and we are called to extend grace towards them in the same way that grace has been extended towards us. 

Because you see, not judging isn't the same as forgiving. Not judging isn't the same as grace-giving. 

The human-first view leaves room to hide in the bushes like Adam and Eve or a school-aged child, to keep a comfortable distance from the ones that let us down as long as we don't "judge" them. 

The heaven-first view requires each of us to stand exposed; to look in the eye of the other and see a reflection of ourselves - impure but invaluable, fallen but forgiven, sinful but worthy of salvation. 

For we are directed to "be merciful even as our Father is merciful" (Luke 6:36) and that "mercy triumphs over judgment" (James 2:13). 

In the inevitable event of being let down by another, may we learn to be merciful rather than isolated. May the reality that we are all human, all flawed, all worthy of redemption, cause us to lean into relationship rather than away from it.

May we - may I - learn to have a heaven-first view. 

“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”

— Romans 3: 23-24

The day the world fell apart, and kept falling.

I hear the phone ring, my brother's sobbing voice on the other end of the line. The kitchen floor rising up to meet me and my husband shaking my arm, asking whats going on. The blurred lines of the road - the longest drive of my life - until we arrive and all there is is wailing.

Flashes of his face on a screen with an end date and hugs of thousands of arms, none of which are his. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. 

The orientation of my office seems to be off and I can feel the room spinning unnaturally. In the background the radio is playing "It is well" and my reality keeps glitching between hearing the song in my office and hearing it at my dad's funeral one year ago. When I reach up to hold my head, to try and make sense of the sudden change in time and space, I notice my face is wet. Somehow I end up sobbing into the arms of my new boss in the parking lot. 

At home, I finally pull myself together - wash my face, drink a cup of tea - and then the lies set in. 

I hate to cry, I hate to cry in front of people even more, and uncontrollably crying in front of my new co-workers and in the arms of my boss is pretty much my worst nightmare.

Gosh, I felt so stupid. So weak. Why couldn't I just pull myself together and get through the work day or at least to the lunch hour? Why couldn't I be strong enough? Why, after one year, was I still so uncontrollably run by grief? 

It seems that there is this stigma: that after one year passes, and you're no longer having all those "firsts", that somehow you should be moving on. But I really think that the "seconds" are just as hard because you realize the space between you and them [your loved one] and the life you had is growing. 

The funny thing with loss is that it has accomplished what scientists have been trying to do for years - it messes with time. It feels like my dad has been gone for years and simultaneously like he could walk in the door at any minute. And to be honest, I'm not sure that the number of years, months, days, minutes since he died actually affects the strange time warp of grieving him. I'm not sure that the number in front of the words "anniversary of Jeff's death" will ever make a difference to how strongly and deeply I react to the song "It is well". 

My dad is engrained not only in my DNA, but in my memories, my heart, my dreams, my behavior, my actions and reactions. He is a part of me. And you never forget that you had a leg, even if it gets cut off. You never stop missing how you functioned when it was there. 

I will never stop missing my daddy. I will never be able to forget the sound of his voice, the feel of his arms around me, the way he danced so terribly, the look of his hands fixing something, the way he tapped his foot when he played the bass, the irritating song he sang off key to wake me up in the morning. 

And there is no shame in that. There is no shame in grieving. There is no shame in crying. 

If you have lost someone dear - whether 30 years ago or 3 days ago - I want to tell you there is no shame in how you continue to miss them. We never really move on, we just learn to move forward - and forward doesn't mean away.

Each day brings us closer to eternity and we are all eternal souls. Each day brings me not further from my dad but closer to him again. 

So here is to you daddy - I miss you so completely and I still can't seem to wrap my mind around the fact that you're gone. But here is to the hope of forever, where I will meet you again and there will be no end date. 

“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.”

— Revelation 21:4