Subscription Lists

I am not good at remembering birthdays. I always forget and totally need reminders. It’s ironic to me therefore how I remember the date of my father’s death.  I never remembered his birthday; I didn’t even know when it was until I saw it on the death certificate.  We were never close, I hadn't seen him in six years, and yet the one year of his death is less then a month away and I keep thinking about it.  The most morbid thing I have had to do so far in my life has been to go through my father’s things after his death.  To fly down and meet his third wife for the first time, go through his apartment that I had never been in or seen, to go through boxes of random stuff and figure out what was ok to trash and what should be kept or sent on to family.  It’s been over a year since our last email conversation, three months before his death. Time is a strange thing isn’t it? The dates, moments, conversations we remember and when.

This experience has helped me to better understand the open endedness of God as well as His grace.  This story doesn’t have a happy ending of how I got resolved with my father, or how I think he is happy or in a better place. This reflection comes from a different place – a place of faith and trust in God with the things that are to hard or complex to understand.  I was not the ideal daughter nor was he the ideal father.  My father committed suicide last summer and didn’t leave a note, there was speculation to the fact if he really did indeed intend on killing himself.  I share this and connect it to how my view of God has expanded. There are people in my life I have hurt, on purpose, and yet God shows grace and continues to love me even when I am rebelling. There are people in my life who I chose to let go of because it was too hard to love them, or took too much effort and yet God still loves me even when I am hard to love and has never let me go. There are people who I will never forget and those who I wish I could. God knows them each by name and every hair on their head.

The biggest act of faith for me is not accepting the answers it’s accepting where there are none yet. It is accepting that things happen for a reason even if that reason is unknown to me, that people can love you one minute and be indifferent to you the next and you may never know why. I made a decision to attempt to give and love to the fullest of my ability after my father died because it was that very love that I held back from him in order to hurt him and prevent him from hurting me. I have given my heart since then and it has gotten a little tussled but the people in my life can never doubt what they mean to me as a result. Since this is my unique experience I can not expect for people to love the way I chose to. I can only share where I am coming from.

I think it’s easier some times for people to preach a message of loving others like Jesus loved us, but it doesn’t always resonate because we hear it so often or because we think, “its Jesus, I’m not Jesus give me a break!” But for every sin in the bible that God lists there is a deeper motive that comes right back to protecting us and really sparing us pain.  I have learned that to withhold love and never have the opportunity to express it can hurt a lot more then risking giving it in the first place. Holding back because you think it is the best thing for you or even best for the other person can only lead to asking, “what if ?”some day. Jesus loved us completely even though he knew he would get hurt in the end. He knew he would get rejected and we would turn our backs on him, as we can still do daily, even as Christians. And yet, when we are called to love we will not always get rejected or hurt, in fact we may receive a multitude of love in return.  Either way, if we give in hope as an act of faith we will never have to question and we can be assured that God will always meet our needs, sooth our wounds, and protect us in the end.

1John4:8 (The Message) The person who refuses to love doesn't know the first thing about God, because God is love--so you can't know him if you don't love.

"Point of Reference" from Fred Price

Called To Brokenness