Tears

Happy Father's Day Kevin,

 Witnessing your delight in your children, watching you love them profoundly well, and seeing you find joy and strength for each day from being with them, has been for me the greatest silver lining this awful season could offer. God has gifted you with a Father's heart filled with gifts and tools that He is now asking you to use in earnest, and you are. You might be too close to recognize the tremendous father that you are, but we see it so very clearly. 

If you aren't yet subscribed to Kevin's blog, please go read his. His latest post had me in tears for the third time, yesterday. I am so grateful for Heidi's choice in a husband and father of her children. 

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Yesterday morning, I sat on the floor of the oldest girls' room and cried. We spent Christmas break '22 repainting and furnishing that former guest room for the girls and they moved in just days before Christmas. I showed it to Heidi on Christmas Day, not knowing that 9 days later her oldest daughter would also sleep there for 24 days. Christmas Day - our last talk, last smile, last hug goodbye.

I did a lot of crying yesterday, my heart still thawing from January. The permanence of loss is settling in, painfully shoving out the hope that God could still raise her from the dead, daydreaming that I'll get a baffled call from Kevin that she had just showed up at home, perfectly whole and alive. "When Jesus arrived, He found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days..." (John 11:17) Could He do it? Yes. Have I stepped out in faith and begged Him to? Yes. His answer seems clear.

A line in the Canticle of Zechariah has been tumbling through my heart: In the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace. (Luke 1:78-79)  I cling to these promises.

She's gone before me and now dwells in the light of infinite Love, so I want to know Him like I've never known Him before. What better way than to plumb the depths of His Word? I've begun in Genesis - searching the Scriptures to know more deeply the God of Love who desires relationship with his people. He is there on every page: compassion, forbearance, mercy, reaching out for the heart of His people over and over again, "Adam where are you?" a lamentation for the wounded creature made in the image of Love Himself. Those same words echo to each of us over and over again, "Where are you?"

He is reaching for my wounded heart with tender compassion as I sit on the floor in my girls' room and allow myself to recall and see: the opening of that room as the door of Heidi's life was about to close, the dried funeral flowers, her memorial card, the many books she gifted over the years, and even the dulled decades-old glow-in-the-dark star stickers on the ceiling that each of the girls attested shone with an unfamiliar brilliance the night she died. 

To whom else shall we go?