Broken

10 years ago today, my dad had been dead for 7 years. So, officially, today, I have lived longer without him than I did with him. That’s pretty surreal. But 10 years ago, as I was closing in on year 7, Mike was just getting into month 7 after his dad’s death. We hadn’t been dating for long when he asked me one night, “Does it get easier?” I was at a loss. Should I answer this boy honestly? This boy that I dared to call my boyfriend after just a few dates. This boy with the blue eyes and sweet smile whose heart was so big I could feel it every time he was near me. This boy whose grief was so fresh I could sense the cracks from his loss in that very same heart.  

“No.”

That’s what I said. Because it was the truth. Because it IS the truth. Because I wanted him to know something bigger than that. Something I sensed but didn’t quite have the words for 10 years ago.

Each year on this day, I, of course, remember my sweet dad. The man who laughed at his own jokes, who turned anything into a song, who made us pancakes in the shape of our initials, who repeatedly drove 16 hour round trips just to spend time with us. And I remember, on this day, that my grandma walked into my dorm room to tell me he had died. I remember being confused because I didn’t even know he was in the hospital (more on why that is some other day). I remember feeling raw and weird and shocked. I remember driving to Louisiana for his funeral, determined to be strong, to help pick out songs for the mass, to let others know how he was brave in the face of cancer and how I, too, would be brave because God was in control.

I cried like a normal person. I looked at his dead body in his casket and wondered how it was that this body looked so much like my dad. Like any second it would stand up and sing, “Whatever…melts your butter…whatever…peels your banana…whatever…whatever, whatever, whatever.” I talked like a normal person. I talked about what a great dad he was. I grieved like a normal person. But I wasn’t normal.

I was strong. Really, really strong. I was so proud of my abnormal strength. Even though I had prayed and prayed and prayed for him to be healed, God had let my daddy die. Still, I held strong to my faith. I had read the promise in the Bible about asking and receiving and I had asked and God had said, “NO.” So, I was strong some more. I built a shell of armor around the brokenness that was me. I built a shell so that I wouldn’t fall apart. And all of my broken pieces moved inside of that shell for a lot of years. I prided myself on my strength, on that beautiful shell I had built around the pieces that used to be me.  

I thought that I was being a good daughter. A good daughter to my dad. A good daughter to God. Both had left me and I was being so very, very strong.

One night, many years later, after I’d graduated college and had my very first apartment, I was going through a box of old photos. I rifled through dozens of pictures of my sister, Michelle, and me as we were growing up and lots of pictures with my dad. I came across a photo of my dad and my sister. It’s a profile shot of him sitting in a chair and the two of them leaning toward each other giving a kiss. She’s probably 3 or 4 in the picture. And I took one look at that photo and my shell cracked. Seemingly out of nowhere.  All of my broken pieces came tumbling out. They came out in tears and sobbing and gulps of air. They came out in an epic Ugly Cry. And with all of my broken pieces laid out in front of me, I finally started to heal.

17 years after my dad’s death, here’s what I realize about that moment: until then, I hadn’t been a good daughter. Not to my dad and not to God. I had put up a front of being brave thinking I was going it alone. I hadn’t allowed myself to heal or be healed. I hadn’t allowed myself to see that neither God nor my dad left me after all. And it wasn’t until I was broken on the floor of that first apartment that I realized that God was there and had been all those years.

Jesus, it turns out, is in the broken. He resides in the parts of us we may not want to face. He resides in our fears and our anger and our sorrow. He does not watch from afar as we work out our problems. He doesn’t sit on his throne watching us scratch and crawl our way back to him. He is the Savior who came down and got dirty with us so that we could spend eternity with him.

That’s the other thing I started to realize that night that I broke. My dad’s death had nothing to do with me or God’s broken promises to me. His death had everything to do with HIM. My dad’s journey was about him and God. I was a bystander to that. I was a witness to watching my dad transform into God’s good and faithful servant as he made his journey home. Being strong hadn’t honored his life. Being strong had made it all about me.

God knew that I was hurt and angry and confused and that I felt betrayed. He knew because THAT’S WHERE HE LIVES—in all of my broken places.

As I get older, I feel as though I add more and more people to my prayer list and lately I feel as though I’ve added many as they’ve grieved the loss of a loved one. And if you are one of those people, you may be grieving and broken as I was. You may feel that God let you down and you may be seeking answers from him. Because no matter how many generations pass, our flesh still empathizes with Adam and Eve and their desire to eat from the tree. We want to KNOW.  

We want to know, we DEMAND to know, WHY and what is next and how each happening in our life fits into the bigger picture and where it’s all headed. We want to know what He has up his sleeve because we need to prepare ourselves. We NEED to know.

But all of this being strong and questioning is not how we honor the lives of those we lost here on earth.

We honor them by LIVING. We honor them by embracing the broken and the ugly and the every day struggles and we give it all over to God, who is ALREADY RIGHT BESIDE US, and we LIVE. We get up each day and we take THAT day. That one day and we kick butt and take names. We love the crap out of our spouses and our kids and our families ONE DAY AT A TIME. We sing silly songs about melting butter and peeling bananas and we make pancakes in the shape of our kids’ initials. We do everything we do with love and zeal and with a smile on our face. Even the little stuff like making the bed or taking the kids to school or work or making dinner. Because THAT is where we see them—in the every day. That is where we honor them. Where we remember their lives and how they were and we celebrate that. It is all of these day to day REAL moments that I sense my dad and I know he didn’t really go far after all. And I sense my God who never left me but waited for me to stop being so strong so he could heal my heart. He waited right beside me for my shell to break so that he could fix what I never wanted anyone to see.

17 years later, it’s not easier. It’s different. It’s learning and growing and knowing God is in all things. It is celebrating a life lived instead of mourning a life lost. Some days it is crying and missing my dad and wishing he could meet the little girl who challenged me and pushed me out of my comfort zone and the little boy who has softened me. Some days it is laughing about the time he slept on the hood of the car because he couldn’t stand to hear my sister and me fight anymore. There are even some days that are hard and that’s okay too. But each day is another opportunity to live joyfully through this incredible journey. Every day is different but I know that God is in all of these days.

This year, today is one of those days where I know my dad is nearby. Several months ago, Oli told me that sometimes she says hi to Papa Bill and sometimes William smiles at nothing as though my dad (and probably Mike’s dad) is right there making the same silly faces that always brought a smile to my face. I don’t feel sad today. I just feel lucky that I got to be a part of the journey of an incredible man.  

Who knew that I would feel the most whole, the most at peace, after being broken…

And, oh yeah, it looks like maybe I’m blogging again…cue the circus music…