| | I know now that there is real hope, and that it isn't "looking at the world through rose-colored glasses." It actually tends to come up when you are facing, even allowing yourself to feel what is most hopeless and painful for you.
At least for me. It's been a little over two years, but sometimes the pain of not having my Dad still wells up fresh, as though I only lost him yesterday. My boss from camp told me last summer that the death of a parent never goes away, and even though that seems pretty obvious, considering the finality of death, it's not so obvious in my heart. There are times when I can forget, and remembering again is harder, it seems, each time.
I think about it a lot now. I'm not sure why; it just seems to come up. And there is something hopeless about feeling pain that can't be comforted by the thought, "It'll only be for a little while, and then it'll be over." My friend Mel said that it is weird to her to think that she didn't even live half her life with her Dad, and she wonders what she will remember about him when she is 60. It is weird and difficult to think that ever major event of my life, from high school graduation on, will be without him.
And I don't think I would really know how to deal with it, except to cry every morning that I wake up and remember, unless I had comfort that is just as eternal, and even moreso, than death. I have comfort from a living God, who works among us, and that is probably the one thing stronger than the pain of seeing a father go, whether mine or my closest friends'. His comfort shows itself in many ways. Listening to Mel talk at camp about her father's last days and how, when it all came down to it, what was left for him was love. Telling 14 fifteen-year-old girls about my Dad, and how I really believed that God saved him through cancer, and how they should take comfort that God does work good through the bad things. Finding pictures of us in the drawer in my room, and finally feeling ready to take them out and frame them. Hearing my step-mother say that she loves me, and that she is so glad to have me back, and that she never lost me in her heart. Laying down next to my brother, feeling his tears on my cheek, and telling him that there is something to live for here without Dad. And being able to trust that that is true.
To be alive here when such things as cancer happen, and to have hope, I think, is kind of a miracle. Maybe a small one. But one still.
Mel always was better at articulation:
So it's got me thinking…maybe the miracle is
something different. Maybe the miracle is that people still believe in
them. That the human spirit is broken but not destroyed. That people
care enough to pray for something seemingly hopeless. That I am not
alone. That a man with a brain tumor can still speak with clarity and
wisdom on God's presence and take care of his family. Beth Moore
perhaps puts it best when she says, Perhaps the most profound miracle of all is living through something we thought would kill us."
There are those moments in life that are, at least for me, a
seemingly random smattering of split-second confirmations that
everything really is going to be ok. No matter what I'm doing or where
I am, I occasionally get that euphoric feeling that all is right with
the world, to use a cliché. And then it passes. There is no rhyme or
reason, they just come and go. CS Lewis calls these moments joy. This
past year, when those moments show up it feels a whole lot like hope.
Maybe sometimes joy shows up as hope.
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| | Posted 9/13/2007 9:17 AM - 58 Views - 6 eProps - 4 comments
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