September 23, 2014
Shortly after my dad died, my aunt told me that God would always give us reason to celebrate on the hardest days. And every September 23 for the past nine years, that has proven to be true. I’ve celebrated friends’ baby showers. I’ve celebrated cancer survivorship at work (an event literally named Celebrate Life). I’ve celebrated my own pregnancies.
And today when I woke up and remembered the date, I expected nothing less than 10 reasons to celebrate. Instead, I listened to a toddler cry all morning because of the picture day outfit I forced her to wear. I slammed my finger in the house door and thought I might pass our from the pain. I then backed into my garage door, shattering my back windshield and destroying the garage door. This was all before 8:30am.
As I swept up the pieces of glass scattered across my driveway, I laughed. What is reason to celebrate if not the reminder that shattered windshields and broken garage doors might alter plans for my day, but not for my life? What is reason to celebrate if not the reminder of just how little control we have over our days, but we can trust a God who is in control every day? A God who offers a lamp to our feet, not a stadium light to our football fields. What is reason to celebrate if not to surrender all of our carefully laid plans and hopes and dreams to a God who has more beautiful ones than we could even begin to imagine?
But on this afternoon 10 years ago, I was sure I would never have reason to celebrate again. In fact, I was determined not to ever celebrate, as celebrating would somehow make my dad’s actions acceptable.
On this afternoon 10 years ago, I rode in silence in the back of my future in-laws’ Mazda. Driving down I-85, I looked out the window and mentally drafted what I planned to say at my dad’s funeral. On this week 10 years ago, my sister and I stood above our dad’s closed casket and began our new lives.
I am so angry at my dad.
This is a new feeling for me. I’ve never been truly angry with him. He’s too sweet to get mad at, and impossible to stay mad at. And whenever my mom gets mad at him he just starts to laugh, so she can’t help but laugh too and forget why she’s angry. But Daddy, I am so angry.
For those of you who don’t know my dad, and for those of you who do, I’m going to tell you a little bit about him— I could go on and on about how wonderful he is, but I’m just going to share a few things. He’s hilarious. Not in a dry or subtle way, but in a he-cracks-himself-up sort of way so you can’t help but laugh with him, too.
He’s obsessed with the weather. My mom gets so tired of the weather channel being on at our house ad nauseam, but one of his favorite things to do is watch a storm come in on the radar— I’m pretty sure he has at least 4 apps on his iPad that serve only this purpose.
He loves boats. Our Wi-Fi network is named TrueLove after a ship in his favorite series Master and Commander. We went shopping recently and he found this book on how to tie knots that he just had to have. We don’t even own a boat. Of course we told him that was ridiculous, why in the world did he need a book on knots
I think some of the moments when I loved my dad the most were when he and my mom would read the paper together in the morning. He loves to find articles that my mom just has to read, “Wendy! Listen to this!” and she’d do the same. He’s always reading a study or seeing research on the nightly news that he wants to share with us. He would call my sister and I away from whatever we were doing so we could learn more about how sugar is as addictive as cocaine or about America’s need for nurses.
When my parents first started dating, my dad learned that my mom had never seen The Lion King, or any Disney movies for that matter. This was not acceptable, so my dad borrowed Disney VHS tapes from my cousin Lauren, and he educated my mom on the world of Disney. This is how my mom says she knew he had a good heart.
He is so sensitive. He cried in the preview for The Time Traveler's Wife. He cried in Tangled. E. T. is his kryptonite. He would get teary-eyed at sweet commercials.
He is the smartest person I know. Not because he always knows the answer, but because I have never asked him a question he hadn’t already seemed to have spent a lot of time thinking over. Every decision he made was well thought out. Which is what makes this so hard to believe.
I know that he loved me and my mom and my sister more than life. And he didn’t love money. He has never loved money. But money was something that took up a lot of his time and energy. And providing for us was something he always felt he struggled to do.
Just a few months ago he and I were sitting at the table together and he told me how he felt that he could never get ahead. Even though he had just gotten a new job with a higher salary, he just could never get ahead. And it was so frustrating for him. There was so much he wanted to give us, but he just couldn’t do it.
I wish he knew how little we cared about these “things”— because that’s all they are — things.
In fifth grade parents were asked to give words of wisdom. I of course went to the wisest person I knew. He wrote
Try to find what you have a passion for and make that your career choice. If you pick something that you are talented at and suited for, happiness and success will surely follow.
My dad found out that he hadn’t followed his own advice.
I’ve had some time to think about why the hell he did this to us. And I think I’ve found an answer I can live with for now. One that doesn’t make sense, because this will never make sense. And we will never know why. But this is what I do know. My dad was lied to. He was deceived. And he wasn’t himself on Tuesday when he made this decision.
My dad wasn’t depressed or unhappy. He let himself be confused.
He loved us so much. So somehow, in his mind, this was done out of love.
He once told me that taking your own life was the most selfish thing a person could do. And my dad is not selfish. This is how I know that he was sick.
In his confused mind, he believed the lie that my family wanted earthly things— a pool, a study abroad, a Macbook-- more than we wanted him. He was lied to, and he forgot that his value didn’t lie in his work or in his job or in material things, but in Jesus.
So these are the truths I want you to know today— what my dad forgot. You are not your career. You are not your salary. You are not your possessions. You are not others’ expectations. You are enough because Jesus is enough. Jesus is enough and nothing else will ever be enough. No one and no thing can satisfy, but Jesus can. And He will if you let him.
Someone shared this quote by CS Lewis with me—
It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
You are never going to find your fulfillment anywhere but Jesus. And Jesus doesn’t promise happiness or for everything to go well in life. But he does promise joy.
Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls. 1 Peter 1:8-9
The purpose of the body is to serve as a vehicle to carry us from this life to the next. It is a shell housing our souls.
My dad is not in this casket. My dad was a follower of Jesus, so his soul is in heaven now with his brother and his father and his nephew. but that doesn’t make this much easier. I’m going to miss you. There is nothing good about this on this side of heaven.
My dad didn’t die the way he lived. But he was given eternal life. For those of us who are still here— Jesus wants to give us eternal life, too. Please take it.
I have missed my dad every day of every year of the past 10 years. But it is an honor to speak the language of pain: it is universal. None of us come out of this life unscathed, and to bear each other's burdens is a beautiful gift and maybe our highest calling. We are a broken people living in a broken world. And yet this is not where our Savior leaves us. Today we can celebrate. We can take heart. He has overcome the world.
P.S. Clint's response when I called him about the garage door was, "We needed a new one anyway." What is reason to celebrate if not having a husband like that?
Thank you for writing this, living this, and sharing this. You're a gift!