warm the water, sprinkle the yeast and set my kitchen aid to knead.
i make bread.
and the aroma fills these rooms and i sit in the warmth and wait for the heat to do what only heat can and little ones press noses against oven glass.
and as the day wore on, i felt it,
a sadness i couldn't place.
couldn't shake it until we sat reading in the evening light.
and can i bring it up again in this space that has recorded my many words of missing him?
does grief ever become something that one needs to hide away?
it's been 23 months since he walked out that door,
that father who wasn't mine by blood, but mine by love.
23 months that i wish i could rewind for just one moment so i could tell him, one last time, how much i loved him. how much we needed him.
to beg him not to leave.
i forgot that grief can follow one anywhere.
but it found me here this evening.
we had errands to run this evening, drove us all over town...
and christmas has descended and the lights i found so fascinating just 2 short days ago seemed wrong somehow.
i whispered it to him this evening, in the dark on the freeway; i wondered aloud if christmas will be forever ruined.
even in his own pain, he's tender. as we both wrestle with different forms of the same hurt, he says it to me gentle,
we can't let it, kimberley. we can't let dad's decision ruin what this season means.
and it's true, we can't.
the three behind us are reason enough to keep hoping in Jesus when the questions and grief come swooping in.
that song played on the radio just before we reached home, the words swirling around my mind in the hours since we walked in the door,
dad took his life in the middle of one of the most joyous times of the year.
he briefly lost hope and made a heart breaking decision.
but we are choosing to pick up what he laid down and carry it on for him...
and i give thanks on this twenty-ninth day of this month that finds me here...and for Hope that can be clung to in grief.
