Some of you may be getting tired of my Daddy and Phillis posts… but we are still trying to muddle through this hurt. Who would have ever thought that seventeen years ago me and this guy would meet and fall in love and get married and then in one month we would both lose two people that helped define who we knew ourselves to be.
There is a hole in our lives that no one else on earth can fill… and I am still waiting for God to step in and fill it with Himself… or perhaps more so God is waiting on me to let Him.
My husband hit it on the head yesterday… I don’t want to NOT HURT. For me, right now, to not hurt is equal to saying they really were not that big of a deal in my life.
I am still working through anger, disappointments, and not saying things I want to say to people who have added insult to this injury. I am still battling it out with my Jehovah-rapha the Lord my Healer. Praising Him and resting in Him in one moment and then pounding my fist into His chest and telling Him to let me go in the next.
It’s hard to mourn for two when the two who are mourning do it so differently. Different moments cause different memories to surface and what I am terming “phantom memories”, the memories that now never will be but you know beyond a shadow of a doubt would have been.
I wish the promise of eternal life was enough of the balm of Gilead to ease the gap of the distance between here and there, but it’s not. Knowing where someone is simply does not make the separation any less painful.
I can’t imagine how someone without the hope of the promise made from the lips that would rise from the dead as the Firstborn of many (Colossians 1:18) could ever survive this hurt and remain mentally and emotionally stable.
The problem with love is that when it is lived the loss of it is ever so much greater. At least that is how it appears from my end at this moment.
Last week was the hardest. Last week was three months to the week that we were given the death sentences. Phillis received her news on April 27th and my Daddy on April 30th. I was sitting with my Daddy as I was texting Phillis while she was at the doctor. I was sitting with my Daddy when my husband called and said Phillis has called a family meeting. I was sitting there trying to encourage my Daddy that he would feel better when they got that tube out of his side…
I keep repeating in my head, the joy of the Lord is my strength…
Then he said to them, “Go, eat of the fat, drink of the sweet, and send portions to him who has nothing prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord. Do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
Nehemiah 8:10
The day that my Daddy and Phillis were set free was holy to the Lord.
Precious in the sight of the Lord Is the death of His godly ones.
Psalm 116:15
It was the day that He got to bring His adopted children home.
We have friends in our church who are anxiously waiting on the home coming of their adopted children. In great anticipation they are looking to the day that those rooms they have prepared for them are filled with their presence.
Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.
John 14:1-2
I imagine that in even greater and deeper anticipation our Father in heaven awaits us. He sent His Son to pay the price and make sure all the legal stuff was covered and the passports sealed, signed, and verified. He fully supports us by His riches (Ephesians 3:15-19) from His home country by which we are now legal citizens and are in the process of being made ready to cross the border (Philippians 3:20-21).
It’s amazing how God turns sorrow into gladness and mourning into dancing. I really do not know how He does it, because I want to be angry with Him. I want to grieve. I want to mourn. I want to shout why at the top of my lungs and fall in a heap on the floor and kick and scream until He brings them back to me… but He simply won’t let me.
He allows me to hurt, but then He reaches into the depths of my soul and that fountain of living water releases and wells up in me as a spring of life… just as He said it would.