sneaky grief.

I’m usually indifferent on Father’s Day. I sat by the pool for a few hours yesterday and around the end of my time there, I found myself a bit melancholy and tried to investigate. I couldn’t pinpoint anything that made sense.

On my walk to grab dinner I had to ask myself, “is it subconscious”? “Am I sad on account of the occasion and not fully aware of it”? I’m not usually affected on Father’s Day so it really wasn’t something I considered but, as I’ve gotten older the effects of fatherlessness have revealed themselves randomly so I had to consider it.

Upon deeper reflection, I was feeling lonely, sad. I wanted a hug but it was upsetting me that my circumstances didn’t seem to warrant that need. The Holy Spirit reminded me that He’s there to hold me in my confusion and that means my feelings didn’t have to make sense to me to feel them. I moved through my evening pretty lazily. As night came, I felt like maybe this is a Father’s Day feeling and I need to address it. Maybe I can just post a picture, that will be cathartic. I spent the next hour or so searching through my phone and FB for a picture to share… I found nothing. My emotions rose as I tore apart my apartment looking for a physical image and found nothing. The realization that the concept of having a father is so far removed from me that I don’t even have a picture of my father and I in my apartment found me sobbing, in a heap of tears on my living room floor.

I don’t know that I have a point but grief exists, it hurts and comes at the most unexpected times. My father died when I was 2 so I don’t remember him at all. I grieve forever the IDEA of a thing I will never have. I hurt at the thought that this gap will always exist. That it’s a hurdle I didn’t create for myself and yet it will continue impact me for the rest of my life.

The Holy Spirit carries us through our grief but it doesn’t get taken away. We see the power gifted in pain demonstrated countless times in scripture and we see the great impact it has on the men and women of the Word from Abraham to David to Jesus to Paul and everyone in between. If I feel this pain, just to point someone back to that fact in their grief, it’s worth it.