3 am
Spring water and Orion’s Belt
Shooting stars
Winding roads through ponderosa pines
Doe eyes glow
A perfectly crescent moon hung from her shadow
A lantern through the Arizona desert
Cacti inky black along the empty, open road
Cliff ledges leading
cut the sky sharply
Gray-purple cloud clusters
dancing across the velvet-navy night
Dawn
Life. Light. Hope.
Rising
Song lyrics find me in the moment
So does He
Sleepy, teary eyes
Sunrise
Red rocks
Wonder
Feeling so small
Grand
Grateful
Well, it's been a real long while since I've taken the time to write a blog.
But I suppose transition always brings it out of me.
I've been married for just a little less than a year now, and truly it’s my favorite and the most fun thing I've ever done. Of course it comes with challenging moments but overall it's a huge win for me. One thing l love in particular is the way it makes you realize things about yourself that you just never had in all the years you spent alone. Sometimes that's more fun and comfortable than others.
As the weather has warmed up in Seattle and the days have grown longer and longer, we’ve started to take more evening walks. Mostly so Lincoln, our high maintenance old man pup will go to sleep at night. But we've also tried to make it intentional time to be away from screens and to get fresh air and just to simply talk to each other.
On one of our walks last week, V was teasing me about now excited I am for summer to get here and now annoyed I had been that the weather was still so cold and rainy and that they still hadn't finished getting the pool ready to open at our apartment complex. I laughed with him because I have been really eager for summer this year, and that made me stop and think. I mean, I kept walking, just shifted to thinking about my eagerness for summer.
Listen. I am not one of those people who says "I don't know" when asked my favorite of just about anything.
Favorite color, favorite animal, favorite ice cream... so it’s no surprise that I absolutely have a favorite season. Without a doubt there is a hierarchy, and summer has just never been at the top.
It's always been autumn for this October baby.
We kept walking and then I realized that though I don't love any season quite as much as fall, I do still very much anticipate all of them. Maybe because I grew up with them? Perhaps because I love change and newness and don't love sameness? I remember that one thing I struggled with a lot while living in MX was the endless summer.
So many people- especially foreigners- loved the heat and sun and palm tress all year round. And of course I loved that too at first, but I soon found that the months and years felt like forever to me because not much around me was changing.
I realized that my soul longed for the changing and shifting of seasons.
So back to our walk last Thursday.
It suddenly clicked for me. While summer is not my season, my soul was anticipating a shift and feeling ready for some change. A change in temperature, in wardrobe, in scenery and activities and in-season fruit. Maybe even a change in myself? And so for these reasons I welcome each new season and was feeling particularly excited about summer this turn around the sun.
A lot has changed for me this past year.
Like a lot a lot.
More than I even realize until I really sit down and think through each transition.
A lot of people I love dearly moved really far away, my work team reset and reshaped a total of six times- no joke- I got married and moved across town and started sharing a new space with a boy and even had to completely shift my diet due to some health issues I started addressing.
Yeah, it’s been a lot.
Most recently a work/ job transition. My role as kids director at my church became part time. That one l didn't really see coming and certainly didn't welcome at first. And all of this got me thinking, why on earth world I want anything else to change right now? Even something as simple as the season? I found myself clinging so tightly to this job at this church I love so dearly and deeply and really struggling to loosen my grip. Even though I knew it was the right next thing and actually felt a lot of peace about it.
Still so much had changed so quickly and suddenly I found myself longing for that eternal and unchanging endless Mexican summer. I guess I just didn't want one more thing to change. Especially not this one thing that I had grown so attached to and truly found so much joy in doing on the daily.
That job had truly been such an aligning of the stars and I felt so lucky and honored that I got to do it It was a dream. Exactly what I love to do in the heart of the city I love most paying a salary I could actually live on (which is pretty spectacular on its own if you know anything at all about ministry) and I got to do it with a team of my very best friends.
It found me at just the right time and in just the right place,
or rather,
God let me be there just for that time and place.
And it was so perfect.
For that season.
But as I began to get really honest with myself and to really hear from people around me who have loved me well and walked with me through so many of these changes, something became really clear. Yes this job had been a dream job and it was absolutely perfect for the season that it found me in, but I am also and absolutely no longer in that season.
And that was maybe the hardest thing for me to accept.
Because I loved that season so much. It had been one of my favorite seasons and I just didn't feel ready to step into a new one. This particular season was one l wanted to last forever.
Okay, back to our Thursday walk just one more time.
To the "everything clicking" part.
When I realized that even though summer is not my favorite season, I'm still really looking forward to it.
When I remembered that even though winter is my least favorite season, there are still things I love about it.
And that's the thing!
I’ve come to love the shifting and changing of seasons so much because I've learned to love and embrace things about all of them and because as we pass through them, I’m always looking forward to and anticipating my favorite season to come around and find me once again.
I've learned to love the chaos of Christmas shopping and the creativity in gift wrapping and fresh fallen snow-but seriously-only the fresh stuff. I love being that dog mom and putting Lincoln in lots of Christmas sweaters and sending out cards with Lincoln pictured in those sweaters of course. No other season brings better music or movies and I adore the nostalgia followed along by a new start to everything. And then in spring life seems to start all over once again and everything is in bloom and there are always fresh tulips on the table and it’s V’s birthday and I feel all inspired (even more than usual) to clean and tidy and organize everything. And just when I’m sick of stepping in soppy grass and bathing Lincoln for the 3rd time in one week because I own a white dog in the pnw, just then the clouds break and the sun bursts through and I break out the barely used bottle of sunscreen that I hope hasn't already expired and I go outside. As much as possible. The 7 in me lives for long bright days and all of the possibility you can pack into them. Waking up to sunlight in your eyes and throwing up all the blinds to let the sunshine stream in. Days near the water and free of layers and bare feet in the grass and writing on whatever patio situation I’m blessed to have at the time and the smell on your skin after you’ve been in the sun for a long time and the sunscreen is soaked in and fres nectarines and how much more you can fit in a suitcase and now my wedding anniversary. And then comes fall my favorite of all and all its coziness and warm scents and pumpkin everything and my birthday and my favorite day (they're different, don't ask, or just read the blog I wrote about it) and the crisp air and Thanksgiving.
And so I realize that this last season was one of the greats.
It was one of my autumns and I’ll forever cherish it as such.
But I know now that every autumn has to end and that every season must come between in order for autumn to be everything it is and all the things I love about it.
And I can either grit my teeth and endure all the seasons in between just waiting for autumn to come around again, or I can embrace all of the beauty that can be found in the others.
So to that girl whose soul longs for the changing of seasons and the newness and beauty of each one, here you are again.
Autumn is ending and you're sad, but remember there is so much joy and growth and beauty and life to be lived between autumns.
And autumn, your most favorite season, is in the end all about letting go.
Be gentle with yourself, sweet girl.
Summer is here and autumn is not far behind her.
Just like every year on January 7th, I'm not quite sure where to start.
I sit down to the blank white screen and I trust that the words will come. It feels like at some point I'll run out of them. Like there won't be anything left to say. But for whatever reason, I feel like I should just keep creating the space and see what happens. Trust what comes.
Grief is such a funny thing. A thing I've been learning and relearning for the last ten years. A thing I've never been any good at honestly.
And so that's why I come here and I write. Because this seems to be the only place that I've ever known what to do with grief.
I've imagined this date--this year--for such a long time. What it would feel like to have lived an entire decade without my dad. It's felt like a lifetime and like a couple of blinks all at the same time.
I remember once when I lived in Mexico, on a regular day, I was just putting some things away in my makeshift pantry. I glanced to the left and noticed my wall of pictures strung on the wall--the photo wall I have strung up in every apartment I've ever lived in. And my eyes filled with tears as one thought struck me.
My dad didn't know anyone in those pictures with me. That much life had happened since I lost him, and so much of it that he would never know. People that had become like family to me, moments that had defined me, places that were second homes--entire chapters of my life that he would never know. And I just cried.
And that is grief. As real and raw as it can be. It never shows up when you expect it or when you make room for it or even when you sort of want it to. Sometimes when I want to grieve I feel nothing at all and sometimes when I'm trying to just get up and get ready for work, I can't stop the tears from streaming down my face. Sometimes I see the mountains on a clear Seattle day and I'm overwhelmed with sadness that my daddy will never see them. Sometimes his birthday rolls around and I make plans to let myself be sad, and instead the day passes by before I even realize what it was. And then I fell guilty about that.
That is grief.
So here we are, ten years later. All the time I spent imagining what today might be like. What I might feel. How I might respond. And you know. After all this time all I know is that with grief you can't know anything at all. You can't know when it's coming or how it will show up or what it will do to you.
So as this day comes to a close. As I sit yet again in front of this white screen and allow the words to just come, Here's what I'll say.
Somehow ten years is the hardest yet. Of course time has healed the wound in many regards--it allows you to pick yourself up and go on with your life, and not be overwhelmed and held back by the grief on the daily.
That's all true.
But this is also true.
I don't remember much about the days right after. It's really blurry with a few very clear and sharp memories flashing through. But I do remember one conversation from that Friday night. Our house filled with people and plants and so much pasta (Youngstown, OH is way more Italian than you might realize.) I remember exactly where we were standing, me and a lifelong friend of my family. And I said through tears...this isn't even the hardest part. What am I going to do on my wedding day? When I have a kid? How will I face those things without him there.
And while time and a lot of God's grace has been kind to let me move forward and keep living just like my daddy would want, it also gets harder as the years pass and life happens and there is so much I don't get to share with him. Advice I need from him and won't ever have. Moments that won't ever be the same without him there.
He'll never see Seattle. This city I know I love so much because of him. His love for trees and nature. His retirement dreams of taking a train all the way across the country with my mom just to see it. He'll never know the way that I love it and the way that it became home to me. The family I found here. That I became a nanny, a God mother, a church planter, a pastor, a recruiter. He'll never know my little dog Lincoln who is almost as old as he's been gone. I'll never see them wrestle and my dad make fun of his underbite and act like he doesn't like him when we all know he secretly adores him.
I missed my dad at my college graduation. When I know he would have been front and center in his CBC hat or t-shirt or something--scratch that--my mom would have made him wear a tie to the ceremony and he would have been annoyed about that and immediately changed afterwards to rep my school again. But he would have been in all the most obnoxious places with the most obnoxious camera taking endless amounts of photos and embarrassing me like usual. He would have been so proud that I got that degree and that I did the thing that I loved even though so many people didn't understand it.
I wish he could have been there for that quarter life crisis of mine. When I was dumped right before moving my life to a new state and somehow ended up back in my bedroom in Boardman, OH working at the Southern Park Mall at 25. I wish he could have been there to remind me that it wasn't me--there was nothing wrong with me--and maybe just maybe to chew out that boy. I wish he could have helped me make sense of things when I felt so lost and so stuck all at the same time. But at the same time, I wonder if I would have ended up in Mexico had I not felt so lost back then.
I wish I could have seen him in his high socks and his t-shirt from somewhere we'd been and his ball cap trapsing all over Mexico with me probably trying to speak Spanish and laughing at himself while he did. I wish I could have seen him try authentic tacos for the first time and how proud he was of my mom for getting her passport and going so far out of her comfort zone. I wish I could have heard him laugh when I told him stories from that first year of teaching. I needed him to make me laugh and to look on the bright side.
I wish he could have seen my mom. How much she's grown. How brave and strong she's become. How much she fought for herself and for me to be okay again. How far she has come. How far her and I have come and how close we are now.
I wonder what he would have thought about me coming back to Seattle. Working for Microsoft. I know he would have kept the company store in business buying every t-shirt, hat, and mouse pad they had. I'm sure he would have committed to purchasing only Microsoft products by now and he would for sure finally ditch the Browns to be a Seahawks fan (even though my mom doesn't believe that.)
I'm sure he would have sent every possible field guide photo and article on butterflies and rocks of the Pacific Northwest that I should be looking out for with specific instructions of when and where and how to find them.
I wish I could see my dad with an iPhone. We were just breaking into camera phones when he passed and I was teaching him how to text. Him and my mom were way too into Farmville, so I can't imagine what he could have done with a smart phone. I wish I had a text chain with my dad. I know it would make me laugh several times a day.
And now for the hardest things of all. This year I will get married. To a wonderful man who reminds me so much of my dad in so many ways. But I will get married knowing that my dad will never know who that man is. Never having his blessing or assurance or guidance in that space. I'll walk down the aisle alone without him to steady me and remind me that I'm doing the right thing and making a great choice. Without him hugging V and giving him my hand.
So this is ten.
A decade of life lived without my dad.
And I know I say this every year, but as much as I miss him and wish he were here with us, I learned a hard and really beautiful lesson a while ago.
I wouldn't be me and I wouldn't be here if I hadn't lost him.
It's true that our people shape us and make us who we are while they're here with us. It's also true that we are shaped and remade when we lose them and learn to live without them.
We think things and go places and make choices that we may not have had life stayed the same.
And so while we can look back and think of all the moments and chapters we missed them in, we have to recognize that those moments and chapters may not have even happened if they were still here.
And gosh I miss my dad, but I cannot imagine life without the people and the places and the experiences and the lessons learned and all of the becoming since he left. The person I might not be today if he were still here.
So as hard as this is to say--and sort of shocking to myself even--I wouldn't trade it. I wouldn't trade that all in to have my dad back. He wouldn't want me to. He would have wanted us to keep living and laughing and learning and loving.
So we did.
Because God is good. Oh He is so good. He is kind and He is gracious and He is present and personal and He is so wise and sovereign. He knows exactly what we need and when we need it and just how to weave it all together. He knows what is best for His children. He sees the bigger picture when we so often can't. And while we are kicking and screaming and shouting whys at the sky, he is so near reaching for our hand and just waiting for us to look up and let him talk and let Him show us what He's doing. He's always waiting for us to let Him in and let Him show us His heart that is full of love for us and that never wants anything less than the very best for us even when that might hurt. He wants us to know that it breaks His heart to see us hurt or to question His intentions towards us, but He's so patient and tender through our grief and our anger. He remains just as close. He remains the same through all of the changing and grieving and letting go.
And that is how I can say that. That is the only way that I've survived ten years without my dad. Ten years of unanswered questions. Ten years of whys.
Because God is only love. Nothing else. Because I can trust that whatever comes from His hand--whatever He gives or takes--is only ever from a heart full of love and a wisdom beyond what I could ever understand.
So here's to ten more years of missing my daddy in all of life's moments. But also to ten more years of growing and learning and loving and becoming in ways I never could if my story were any different.
