There’s a nakedness you feel when you lose a parent as if now the covering (no matter how thin the sheen or how old your body) between you and the haphazard world around you is gone. You’re exposed to the elements.
As we enter one of Hallmark’s days, I’m reminded again of how the damage the enemy has sought to do in my heart after my dad’s death has been almost equal to my actual loss of Him.
It’s a strange comparison, but years out, I can see it more clearly: there was my dad’s death and all that I felt in his absence … and then there was this barrage of lies from the enemy that filled in the white spaces of my mind. I started to type out some of these lies here, and then I realized that most of you are aware of your false understandings of God, so I don’t need to spell them out.
One of the unexpected ways God is giving me to combat those lies is grief.
Yes, grieving before God is bringing long-needed healing to my mind and heart. That “white space” in my mind that the enemy continues to try to claim may instead be a place that needs to grieve and be comforted (not just “claimed” in a moment).
I know I’m not the only fatherless one today, subtly fogged by low-hanging clouds in my mind and heart. And though my unthinking response is just to keep moving on, I continue to experience that God’s invitation back into ungrieved loss – to stay, to cry, to write out my lament — is also His invitation to rest my little-girl head on His chest and let my tears fall onto His hands.
Grief is powerful, friends, when we cry into Him.
