maybe because the end of the year is quickly approaching, maybe it's because of everything that tony and i are facing...
maybe it's because He wants my eyes to be turned towards Him...
i keep coming back to the word "abide".
i remember the week leading up to losing dad - i was so frazzled, so stressed, so overwhelmed with everything. the everything that was so very unimportant.
the grief that met me at the close of one year and the beginning of another is one that i have tried to embrace wholeheartedly. i felt the presence of my heavenly Father so near as we, in our shock and pain, said goodbye to our earthly one.
maybe it was easier to embrace the grief and find myself abiding in Him because He made Himself known in the midst of confusion in tangible and obvious ways.
i'm finding myself facing a different type of grief. one that is private and lonely. a grief that has isolated me and the one i love here on earth more than any other. this grief is hard to bear...this grief is thick and heavy like the fog that rolled in on sunday morning.
i feel broken and shattered - and in saying this i'm not trying to minimize the pain that i feel over losing such a precious father figure in my life. no. in the all-encompassing pain of losing dad, i gained an eternal perspective on the word "hope", i discovered what it meant to cling to Jesus and see Him wade through this uncharted territory with me, holding me, lifting my head above the water when i thought i would drown. to me, the pain that He entrusted to us was hiding something precious, something beautiful. and while i would give anything to know that dad was alive and well here on earth, i am grateful for what i am learning.
instead, this new road i'm being led on is one that is void of any hope that i can see. when one grieves openly over the loss of a loved one, they are surrounded. they are encouraged and lifted up in prayer. i knew when i was experiencing that, i was experiencing something holy and precious and i clung to that. i just wish now i had clung tighter, because now...now.
now, there's just me...and Him.
i'm sorry. i need to pause here a minute.
who am i to write that sentence and not see the truth behind it?
now? as though the tangible and the obvious were proof that the previous experience of grief was holy and the lack of them proof of less?
oh, Jesus, forgive my foolishness.
to be honest, i'm tired of grieving. it hurts. it gets ugly...it feels as though it's never, ever, ever going to end. and so to find myself grieving two completely different situations in two completely different ways, i'm finding that i want to look up at the grey cloudly skies and scream my head off to the One Who sees it all and ask Him to stop.
please, please stop.
stop the pain, the hurt. stop winter from coming. give me spring. anything but the winter...
and in this holy space, because yes, yes, it is incredibly holy, where the cold is descending, where i feel so very alone; my heart hears His whisper, "I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. but if it dies, it produces many seeds." john 12:24
i'm learning that sometimes abiding means leaning into cold, harsh wind. sometimes it means facing what you don't want to. sometimes the climate can be biting, it can be dark and unyielding...
but,
because i've been abiding in the spring, the summer and the fall i have a seed. a seed that is ready to fall into the cold ground and wait...and die. certain dreams, certain hopes have come crashing down around my feet. hope has died. and yet, is a seed ever really dead as it waits for the warmth of the new season?
yes, winter is coming, it made it's presence very known on the ground this morning...but so is spring.
so is spring...
