Empty Shoes/One Month

At five in the morning, the house is always perfectly still. Yesterday, I was in the dark browsing my phone before beginning a busy day. Out of nowhere, it hit: the mental image of your house shoes, sitting empty. I pictured them as I had last seen them, in the hospital by your bed.

"All of her little shoes are now empty."

The thought sucked the breath out of me and grief thudded its crushing weight on my chest like a herd of elephants. My gosh, you're so very gone! 

I was so afraid your shoes had been left behind when you died, but they haven't. Big Sis has them. I asked her for this lovely photo and she graciously obliged. This image will replace the sadder one in my memory of the hospital the day we said goodbye. I am so grateful to you and  Dad for starting our family with such a quality person. I have found myself hanging onto her for dear life.

We went to the orchard today, my little family of four. You know the one: *our* orchard. The one you, Dad, Jim, Karen, Baby Sis, and I first went to one happy afternoon in 2001. On the ride down today, it struck me that only Baby Sis and I are left alive from our original group. That joyous afternoon blossomed into our annual pilgrimages to document the girls' growth in the chestnut trees.

I am heartsick that we have been without you for an entire month already. It is such a sad occasion to mark on such a special and precious day, but that is life, isn't it? It is death itself that makes the lives we have so incredibly dear. The memories we are making with our children were born in traditions started with you and Dad. How fleeting are these moments! 

So today I celebrate my children and the ways they have grown, inside and out even as today I grieve for you, for Dad, and for the years I feel somewhat cheated out of. 

Every thought, sad or happy, brings me back to the Savior and the overwhelming sense that He is good. 

Thank you, Lord, for giving me the parents I had. Thank you for the time we spent together creating the memories that will have to sustain us. I am so grateful that Dad and Mom are up there celebrating with joyful abandon in the most precious of places. Comfort us as we hold them here in our hearts. Help us to create and carry forward their legacy of loving and serving you. Answer the prayers spoken by lips that no longer utter, and also those we who remain speak over our own children. In your holy name, I pray. Amen.

Thoughts on "Comfort"

I think one of the least helpful things we Christians can do is to when it comes to the loss of loved ones is to tell each other that the body is 'no longer your loved one' because that person is now in Heaven. Bear with me a second and hear me out, please.

I am a Baptist pastor's daughter. I understand as well as anyone why saying that is *supposed* to be helpful. I really do. I heard this a lot when my dad died and, frankly, I cannot bear it. It is no longer a go-to cliche phrase that I inflict on anyone else. I also believe whole-heartedly that my dad *is* in Heaven and that I *will* see his glorified self someday.

That is beside the point. Why? His physical body had the arms that held me close more times than I can count, the knees I sat on, and the heart I used to listen to thumping. It had the big, strong hands that helped me learn to walk, tossed me into the air for fun, checked for bruises when I fell or wiped away tears when I cried. Every good and kind word was spoken from those lips: countless prayers in the middle of the night - even as an adult who called from miles away, waking him from sleep bc I needed that prayer support.

I found after my dad died that I wanted more than anything for the well-intentioned "that's not him" crowd to just back off and let me grieve! It does not threaten God's eternal nature to grieve the loss of the physical person. It no way negates the existence of what we refer to as Heaven to allow tears to spill over the arms that cradled you as a baby and which *are* now forever missing from this world.

You want to comfort someone, truly? Tell them that it is okay to grieve and then hold space for whatever that looks like. God is not unseated from His throne if we miss the man who nurtured us through life in this world.

Grief is not a declaration of defiance against God's plan. It is not a rejection of the notion that eternal life exists with a chance to get to know one another again in a new way. It is an expression of love, nothing more.

Even knowing that He would raise Lazarus from the dead, the man Jesus Christ took time to express profound sorrow over the loss of His friend.

If you miss your love one - the once real, physical representation of them - I validate that grief, and I will sit with you through it without judgement and without trying to take it away. The only way through it, after all, is through it.

I am sending my love, wherever you are on your journey.