Give Me Back My Dad

When she is tiny,
The girl turns to her dad.
So big, so strong.
Monsters never have a chance.

When she is little,
Her personality is known.
Daddy protects her,
Watches her as she grows.

When she is bigger,
He still lifts her to the sky.
Who knew that thumb and pinky
Could cause a girl to soar so high?

She knows everything, suddenly,
When she becomes a teen.
He challenges and questions her thoughts,
Without being terribly mean.

Then comes the day
The girl transforms into a bride.
She walks to the altar vows
With daddy still right by her side.

Who gives this woman?
The question is so simply asked.
Tears in his eyes, he recalls her childhood -
A pleasure, not a task.

Life moves on
With all its ebbs and flows.
Infertility, trauma, depression.
Beauty, too. A miracle and a rose.

Her dad still laughs with her,
Still prays for her as each day is new.
Thinks of her and prays many more times
Before the day is through.

She calls him on the phone.
Daddy, how are you today?
Her cares and joys expressed
In a balance of hurts and praise.

Daddies expect girls to grow up.
This is a truth we hold.
But the girls never truly,
Expect their daddies to grow old.

When a man is his child's hero,
He becomes invincible to her.
His strength taken for granted,
The years with him, a blur.

So when the day comes that,
His strength fades suddenly before her eyes.
It throws her into denial.
It has taken her by surprise!

Dads are supposed to last forever.
It wasn't supposed to happen this way.
There are supposed to be decades left,
Before God calls him away.

My God, why my very own dad!?!
Is her heart-wrenching cry.
Why not men who are merciless?
But God is silent, doesn't answer her why.

I hate this journey we are on.
This is not the road I would ever choose.
Even in my thirties, I am too young,
This giant in my life to lose.

God, help me take every moment.
Let me show him always that I care.
Even though on a soul-deep level,
I find this all so incredibly unfair.

Give him back his days, God.
Give him back his youth.
Give him back strength and vigor.
Keep him walking in truth.

It is not okay!!
My soul cries loudly within me.
Forever is not enough,
And never really could be.

This is one of the hardest trials,
My family has ever had.
Take ALS away from us!!
Give me back my dad.

When Toil and Trouble Meeting

"Help me, Lord, when toil and trouble meeting,
E'er to take as from the Father's hand.
One by one, the days, the moments fleeting,

'Til I reach the Promised Land"

Walking through the "valley of the shadow of death" with someone you love tremendously is one of the hardest things we do in this life. As a person of faith, you work hard to believe that there could be a miracle waiting in the wings. As a human being, you are acutely aware of what the words 'fatal disease' mean. 

This song, "Day by Day" (by A.L. Skoog), speaks to the believer's heart like few others. In fact, it can minister to the soul better than a sermon on the right days. Today is one such day. These lines in particular tug at my heartstrings because it seems like so many of my prayers for my dad have flooded from my heart in paragraphs innumerable. Yet, when it comes to my lips, I have simply been reduced to, "God, help!"

I do still manage long prayers regularly. They are just disjointed and sloppy. It is like when I talk to my friends. When I am asked how we are doing, everything comes out in a jumble. My emotions, thoughts, fears, concerns, and efforts to piece these all together come bubbling out in a myriad of expressions that feels like the emotional aftermath of a trauma. The only thing is, we are not in the aftermath yet. We are in the present and the trials are at hand.

...when toil and trouble meeting...

We are in the midst of trouble. We are toiling to get through it. My dad is the one who has a terminal illness but it feels to all of us as though we are all dying. Grief is like that, I think. There is a living grief and a death grief. We are right now in the living grief.

This song reminds me to keep looking up. It reminds me that when I cannot feel strong enough to have hope or faith, I don't actually have to have those things. God has those things for me. He is the interceder. He is making prayers on my behalf when I cannot speak the words from my own lips. 

I think of my little koala. She is getting so big but is yet just a tiny person. I think of the way she longs to spend her day on my lap or in my arms. Every time her eyes meet mine, she smiles. She has that innocent trust that everything is better just because she has looked up and found me looking back. Oh, to always look at God like that! *tears*

That is how it is, you know, this valley of the shadow of death. We are constantly hanging onto one another, yes, but we are also constantly looking up. Is God still there? Yes. Does He still feel this? Yes. Does He see the pain? Yes. Is this situation truly in His hands? Yes!

The answer is a million times "YES!" because things this big cannot be taken from the hands of God. 

"One by one, the days, the moments fleeting,
'Til I reach the Promised Land."

We are walking a horrible road right now. All of the faith in the world cannot erase the fact that this is very painful. Holding onto one another helps. Looking to God and seeing that He is still looking back. The promise - that eternal promise that we will see one another again someday, no matter who goes first - helps. Time is short. Days, moments are precious. Time is a currency. Spend it where it matters.

Fears in the Night - Part 2

Today I ran across an old blog post from my previous blog that blogger will not let me back into. (Grr) It was long but I read through to the end. I do not just relate to it because it happened to me (of course). This journey with my dad suddenly declining into a disease which is fatal has brought up his immortality all over again in a much-too-real way. My thoughts on the matter have not changed. I will *always* need my daddy to pray with me in the middle of the night when I wake up afraid. 

---------------------------Fears in the Night - January 12, 2011---------------------

Fears in the night

Life is so tricky, isn't it? The way we experience rises and falls in circumstance. Tonight, in part due to a bad dream I had earlier in the week, finds me revisiting the events of last November, and where I am emotionally at this moment because of them. 

The bad dream I had was directly related to my dad's heart condition and the fact that he is most decidedly not immortal. I have never thought seriously that any of us live forever, but there is a veil of immortality that surrounds our parents, so long as we do not have to see them in weakened condition. When my dad first went into the hospital it was all about being in survival mode. Matter of fact dealing with it. However, the Monday morning he had the heart cath procedure done to determine blockage in his heart and kidneys (he has both but not high enough to require immediate surgery) that veil fell completely off of my eyes and I was truly afraid. 

It has been around six or seven weeks since then, and most of the time I do not even think about dad's heart condition, beyond the immediate concerns of taking his medication and how he is feeling/doing whenever we call. This week has been different, thanks to that bad dream. It was a short one, but it was my mom calling to tell us that dad had passed in a heart attack. She sounded better than I knew she was doing and said not to worry about dad being in pain because he was ready to go and went quickly. He had been standing one minute and simply fallen over, already in Heaven the next.

That was it. No long dream about what happens next, just that. It was enough, though, and thoroughly rattled me. I got up and called my parents, feeling a little leftover terrified from the dream and needing reassurance, but also feeling guilty. I did not want to tell them why I was calling; I especially did not want to tell my dad why I was calling. It seemed an awkward thing to open with, you know? Both of them answered, though, on speaker phone, as is their custom of late. I usually really enjoy that, b/c it is great to talk to both of them, but of course, it startled me a little bit that morning. 

I tried to sound casual and asked how they were doing, but of course being raised to be completely honest with my parents and to this day still unable (or unwilling?) to keep any part of my life from them, I did end up mentioning the dream. 

That is what has me writing this blog tonight. I was able, like so many times in the past, to call on my mom and dad for a bad dream and get reassurance. That is what brought me back to the night before his heart procedure... a night when I was unable to sleep, and when I began to cry over the events of the weekend leading up to that night because all of the times in my life when I was deeply upset in the middle of the night - upset enough to need someone to speak to me and pray with me (other than Chris) - I have always, always called my dad. That night while he lay sleeping in the hospital, prepared for anything up to and including meeting his Maker, I was awake in my bed and could not call my daddy to pray with me.

Tonight I spoke with my mom. She mentioned that dad now has a crease in his ear. I did not know what that meant, so she explained that they had checked his ears at the hospital because a crease can be a visible precursor to a heart attack or something like that. I looked it up online and learned that some recent study (after years of it being a thought but not fact) links the crease in the earlobe 'alarmingly' to the sudden death of the patients, regardless of age, obesity, or even being skinny.

I know in my rational mind that this does not mean my dad will be dropping dead tonight or tomorrow. He may not go to Heaven for weeks, months or even more likely, years. This fact does not change the realization (all over again) that as normal as life gets, as hard as I try to erase a dream, my daddy is not immortal. I cannot reconcile that and I will spend every minute after posting this blog not thinking about it, but there it is. For this moment in this day, I am grieving just a little. There will come another night in the future when I will need my dad to calm my fears and he will not be there. 

Who in your life is immortal? Who do you take for granted every day? Do you sometimes leave "I love you" unsaid, or spoken as a hurried goodbye? The Bible says that none of us are guaranteed tomorrow. So right now, right this minute or as soon after this as you are able, call that person. Call them or go to them and let them know what a valuable part of your life they are. 

If my hunch is correct, each of us will also be making that same call via prayer to our Heavenly Father. Because come the night when there is no one there to solace our hearts, He is the father who will always still be there. Fears in the night are real, whether you are a child or have the occasional one as an adult. The unchanging factor of comfort to calm those fears is Jesus Christ, our Heavenly Father.