It’s a fine line to walk. One moment you’re on top of the world. You can see everything surrounding you clearly and without fail. The sky is wide and bright. The sounds around you are crisp and clear. You have your senses about you. Nothing could possibly go wrong.
And then, you misstep. You misjudge. You make one tiny mistake, one wrong assumption, and you lose your footing. You fall, careen off the edge into darkness. You are falling off the rope into oblivion.
This is grief. Grief is cruel and unforgiving. You can go from a moment of elation and euphoria. Happiness exudes from your face and your core. Top of the world.
One. Tiny. Reminder. That is all it takes to watch the cracks begin in the facade. A smell. A memory. A conversation. A vision of his smile. A label from his favorite beer. A picture on a Facebook On This Day memory. And you’re brought to your knees with the searing pain that is grief. The physical ache. The feeling that your heart is going to tear through your chest, only to explode in a million pieces. The drive to run away as far and as fast as your can go. The yearning to walk away from everything and leave it all behind, letting the fragments of your life ride away on the next breeze.
Grief is awful enough when you are an adult. But what happens when you have to watch your child go through grief? I have been blessed with two of the best little people in the entire universe. They still want to talk and share with me. We have very deep, very serious, sometimes very macabre conversations in our household. We joke about things that others would find morbid in order to keep a semblance of sanity. But sometimes, we reach moments where we are hit with just plain, raw grief. And it comes unfairly out of nowhere.
Like on Emerson Jane’s birthday. We had just had a lovely evening, such a fun night filled with family and friends and food. Ice cream cake even! We laughed and loved and looked around a table filled with people who care for us. We smiled and shared stories of Emerson as a baby and a little girl that quickly wove her way into our hearts. Emerson had the time of her life! It was magical.
And then, the car ride home, Emerson gets very quiet and from the back seat in a mousy voice I hear my baby girl: “Mommy?”
“Yes, Em?”
“Did daddy ever go to any of my birthday parties?”
“No sweetheart. He didn’t.”
And then, the sound of stifled sobs. I looked in the rear view mirror at my new eight-year-old with tears gushing down her cheeks.
“Oh honey. What’s wrong?”
“It’s just not fair! All of my friends have their daddies. Why did daddy die? Why couldn’t he wait to die so he could come to my birthday party?”
Ugh. It cuts you to your core knowing that your kid is hurting. That grief has entered their heart and their soul. Sitting in the front seat of that car, begging for it to be magically transported to the driveway so I could crawl into the back seat and hold my sobbing baby in my arms, I instead reached back and grabbed her little hand. Amelia’s hand snaked its way into the mix and, adjusting the mirror, I see her tear-drenched face too. And I feel my own eyes welling up with tears. My heart breaks for them, for us. Emerson is right. It’s so unfair.
I finally got home and parked the car. I ushered them inside where we started bath and bed routines. I cradled Emerson in my lap as we read A Pocket for Corduroy and practiced her spelling words. Then, a trade in girls led me to snuggling up beside my Amelia as we read another chapter in The Hunger Games and shared a little more about our day apart. And then, Father God spoke to my heart. I knew I couldn’t let them go to bed without processing together. Without talking about stuff.
A quick google search uncovered a devotion on God being a father to the fatherless. I read it to them. Explaining that God would be their Father. That He wanted nothing more than to be their dad, to guard and guide and protect them. And that I know it feels like it’s not the same, and how they long and yearn for the daddy they deserve. A flesh and blood human daddy to hug and snuggle and play with. But that God is a father to the fatherless. That He is there always and will scoop them up and be there for them. And then I encouraged them to think about dinner. To close their eyes and visualize the people that were sitting around the table at Emerson’s birthday dinner. The Perry’s who love them so very much. Dina who has loved them always and spends one day a week with us. MomMom and Pa and how much they love them and how much they do for all of us. And then I asked them to think of all the people that weren’t at that table. And how much they are loved by all of those people too.
The tears fell again as we talked about Brian. But happy tears mixed in thinking about the love and support so many of you have given us. The cards. The hugs. The cheers and the encouragement. The visits. The help around the house and property. The smiles. The hand-holding. The kisses. The love. The just being. We have been bolstered by our villiage. And that village was gifted to us by Father God, the Father to the fatherless.
So many hurting people exist in this world, my family, my children included in that. But God is our provider. He gifted us with so much, and He does the same for all of us. Close your eyes and picture the people that would be around your table! And picture the people who aren’t at the table, but that would be there to love and support you and bolster you up no matter what. It is for sure a tightrope walk, this thing we call life. And grief suspends that tightrope even higher off the ground sometimes. No net. No room for error. But, luckily, God is there to catch you when you fall. He is the Father to the fatherless. He loves you unconditionally. He will wipe away every tear.
So, all honor and praise to our Heavenly Father for always being there for us in this journey. And also heartfelt thanks to our people, who walk us through this process and remind us just how loved we are. Thanks for being at our table! Thanks for showering my family and my girls with prayer, for we all need that! And thanks for making our tightrope a bit less intimidating and scary. Each step forward is a successful step towards healing. Each step forward is another step towards the safety of the other side. Grief is hard, but our God is bigger and mightier than any of that! He is our Father and He loves us so much! And when grief sneaks in and feels so overwhelming, we fix our eyes on God, the Father to the fatherless, and know that in Him we are safe and healed and loved. And the tightrope is way less scary when we’re in our Heavenly Father’s arms.
