The hustle of the holidays slowed itself down and what was nonstop days filled with Christmas dinners and game nights has now faded back into the routine of school and work. The holidays almost create a Narnia for us. They are an exciting adventure but at some point we come out of the wardrobe and back into our reality. It has been an adjustment getting back into the swing of being disciplined in managing my days. The luxury of Netflix and not setting alarms has disappeared and been replaced with 7 a.m. trips to the gym and reading assignments. To say the least, life is normal.
In the midst of shifting gears, I have realized one thing: I do not like the cold, but I also do not really love the hot. I like fall. I like fall because it’s not too hot and it’s not too cold. Fall feels a lot like living in the valley to me. It is the in between. It is the middle ground. It is learning that you don’t always have to aim for the mountain top with the Lord but it is also being okay with getting up out of the pit. Fall in Georgia though, you go from freezing to sweating. Fall in Georgia changes its mind almost as many times as I change my outfit for church on Sunday morning.
I long to be like fall. I long to be okay with living in the valley. I long to be okay with being okay, but instead, I am just like fall in Georgia. I go from the top of the summit down to bathing in the mud of the pit. This has been a tendency I have had for a while. I battle the question “this or that” all the time. I miss the fact it never has to be or it can always be and.
I know that, yet I still don’t live it. I have to either be in a season of flourishing or in a season of drought.
The times I do this the most is when it comes to my dad. If a significant day of the year comes around that is typically centered around him, I need to be in the drought. If the Lord is taking me back to that time in my life, I need to be in the drought. It is almost like I have decided when I am supposed to struggle and when I am not. I decided that it has to hurt in order for me to learn from it.
It is not real heartache if we do not truly feel it but just write about it. You can learn from the hurt but you can learn even if it doesn’t hurt.
I had one of those moments this past week. A moment where I instantly decided that it was time to pull out my walking cane, because today my limp was going to become more dominant, but then I was going to go tell the world what God was teaching me through it.
I had a dream about my dad last Tuesday. He looked just like the picture that sits next to my bed day in and day out. The frame of his glasses matched those that my mom still has in a drawer downstairs. In the dream I even introduced him to my best friend, Mary-Michael. It was so real.
But I woke up, we always have to wake up.
A dream that real, a dream that significant, it should have sent me into a typhoon of emotion, but if I’m honest, I was okay.
A normal day in fall, it warms up a few degrees in the afternoon and cools off a few degrees in the evening. That day, I really was a like a normal fall.
The more I thought about the dream, the more I started to feel the weight, and the more I started wavering in my position. I wasn’t necessarily staying in the valley, but I also didn’t dive head first into an abyss.
The dream reminded me that sometimes I feel cheated, like God had a stopwatch and mine got stopped sooner than everyone else. I only got eight years with my dad. How could that have ever been long enough? It deposits such a longing for me to have known him. These feelings take me right back to the question, “why me?”
I do not know how many months on the calendar you have flipped, but I know that there will always be days when you take steps back. We all go back to the moments that hurt us the most, but it’s what we do when we get there that matters. I take a couple steps back and tell myself I need to take more.
You are allowed to make progress but you are also allowed for it to still be tender.
I never want to undermine the pain of losing a loved one. I never want to make you feel like you are on a timer when it comes to dealing with it because the truth is you always deal with it. But I also never want you to think that you aren’t allowed to move forward.
You can. You can move forward. It doesn’t mean that you are forgetting them or that you don’t still wish it hadn’t happened. Darling, it just means you are healing.
Healing is not a one-way admission ticket that says once you enter in you can never leave to go back to the hurt. Healing is a process. It’s a road that we drive down, but I think instead of always doing a U-turn and going the complete opposite direction, we could just swerve a little when needed. When it hurts, let it hurt. When it doesn’t hurt, don’t try to make it hurt. It doesn’t have to hurt to matter. I have written so many posts about having permission for it to hurt, but I am realizing you also have permission for it to not hurt.
That entire day I thought about my dad and most of my thoughts centered around the fact: I wish I had more time. I have said it before that time is not a factor to the Lord and the character of the Lord is unchanging. Time can’t not be a factor to Him in one area and then become a factor in another. Every characteristic He possesses is eternal and always applied. If we believe that to be true, then time is not a component in the choice of when God calls people home.
If this is the case, then God did not look down at my eight-year-old self, click that stopwatch of His that I sometimes think He has. He didn’t look at my dad at age forty-six and say, “his time is up.”
Look at Moses…
Moses died at age 120. He got all the way to the promise land, saw it, and died. It’s like his job was to take the journey and to experience/learn what the Lord wanted him to along the way. I don’t think it would have mattered if he had been thirty or 200. I think that he had completed what his purpose was here on earth and when the day came that the promise land came in sight, the Lord saw not that his time was up, but instead that he had done what he was made to do.
I texted a couple of friends and asked them their thoughts on this. One responded and said, “the moment that my death can glorify Him more than my life, not only do I think He will, but I hope He does take me home.”
I drove home that night from babysitting, exited the interstate, and turned down the road that led me home. The song “It Is Well” was playing in the background, the same song that played at the gravesite of my dad’s funeral. I cupped my hand over my mouth and tears started rolling down my face. You see, I knew in that moment that the question wasn’t “why me?” It was never about me; it was always about God’s glory.
Maybe God knew that my life would glorify Him more by learning early on how to let Him be strong when I am weak. Maybe God knew that if I didn’t walk the road that I have my relationship with Him would not be what it is. Maybe my dad dying was because it was going to be the foundation to which God’s glory would become on display in my life.
Maybe it isn’t about what is easy or what seems fair. Maybe it isn’t about finding the road that isn’t filled with the heartache, gravesides, and rehab facilitates. Maybe what it’s really about is the realization that God lets us walk down the roads we walk down because it’s the way our life will show His glory the most.
“After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed: Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.” John 17:1
To glorify Him is to make Him known. Jesus was willing to glorify the Lord, to make Him known, at whatever cost, even to the point of death on a cross.
But what extent am I willing to go?
When Moses asked to see the glory of God, it was one of the most intimate encounters between man and God. Why? Moses had seen God’s power and seen Him fulfill His promises, but he wanted to see God’s person. The glory of God is the manifestation (obvious to the eye) of God’s presence.
John Piper says, “the glory of God is the going public of His infinite worth.” All throughout scripture, the glory of God is used in the context of what you can see.
“And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” Exodus 33:19
“And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.” Luke 2:8-10
“I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him. Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. When I saw it, I fell facedown, and I heard the voice of one speaking”. Ezekiel 1:27-28
The question was not “why me?” The question was, “what in my life is going to allow people to see the person of Jesus the most?”
Maybe God knew that my life would show His glory the most by losing my dad because the greater the suffering, the greater the potential for His glory to be displayed.
Jesus did glorify God by going to the cross. He did glorify God by taking on death. But what showed the glory of the Lord the most was not Jesus’ death, it was Him raising from the dead.
I don’t think it is any different for us. He takes the very thing that we think might destroy us. He takes what sends us into the lowest of lows. He takes the greatest pain we have encountered and He raises us back up. He raises us back up from what we thought would be the end of us.
It is there, oh is it there, that His glory will shine brighter than the stars in all their dazzling brilliance. It is there that you will shine His glory so bright the world will need to cover their eyes. It is there that the world will be unable to deny it was Him. It is there that even the darkness will not be able to overtake His light. It is there that He will be seen. It is there that He will be known.
Jesus rose three days later. It might take you a little longer to get up. But there will come a time when you will. There will come a time when you grab the steering wheel and start driving down your own road of healing. There will come a time when every second of the day doesn’t ache anymore. There will come a time when you feel like you are moving forward. Let yourself.
Let yourself get up.
Let yourself heal.
Let yourself move forward
I pulled into my driveway that night and got out of my car with the monumental truth dancing around me that it isn’t about me, it’s about Him. My perspective has shifted. I don’t see that I was shorted on time with my Dad anymore. Instead, I see that my Dad’s death was going to glorify the Lord more than his life could. Instead, I see that my life was going to amplify the glory of the Lord more without my earthly father being here for the last fourteen years compared to if he had been.
That is a revelation. Something I’ll be processing for a while, but the thing is for today I am okay. I have to let myself be okay. Come tomorrow I might be doing a little bit of swerving on my road of healing. But I am learning that I can stop making U-turns every time it starts to hurt a little. Just as you can take baby steps forward, you can take baby steps back. I don’t have to be fall in Georgia anymore. I don’t have to go from one extreme to the other.
I can just be fall.
I can live in the valley.
It is safe there.
Because isn’t the valley where the Shepherd keeps watch of His sheep?
