expand.

I sense my dad’s absence deeply this month. I feel it in the pit of my stomach, exactly where grief used to sucker punch me relentlessly every time I thought of him... and I feel it in the deepest part of my chest, heavy, like something sinking and dragging and clawing at my insides. It’s old but not stale anymore. Now it’s old like a crumpled newspaper is old- dry and crusted and flaking. It has become all of the ugly things that make me tempted not to share it, because by now it’s so old that I “should” be moving on from it. Right? I can hear Hannah’s voice in my head telling me not to “should” on myself. I still think that’s so funny...

The thing about writing is that it’s never done. The process of writing does something unique in my soul, and even though I post whatever I’ve been reflecting on, it’s never done working on me. And so the Friday night (more accurately the Saturday morning) after I last posted, I found myself still reflecting on home, and specifically home home. Like where I grew up home. My heart longs for it, sometimes almost more than I can bear. I guess this life gets more normal as time goes on, but it never feels the same. And I don’t think it ever will. There is no normal anymore. There is only normal-er than yesterday. Normal died with my dad two and half years ago, and then it was buried with my dog about a year later. Morbid, maybe, but true. Sometimes reality is ugly. 

My world got exponentially bigger when my dad died. The boundaries of my existence expanded and the future I'd imagined for myself, once so solid and manipulable, took on a fluidity, an uncertainty, that was punctuated by question marks. The protection and safety I'd assumed would always ground me was pulled out from under my feet like a tattered rug, and for the first time in the twenty years I'd been alive, I existed in this world without my dad. That still freaks me out. For a while I had to hang a curtain of feigned reality between me and the rest of that huge world, because living in it was like putting on a pair of pants that were six sizes too big and then trying to run a marathon. My heart was simply too small and agoraphobic to exist in a six-sizes-too-big world.

But even though it's taken me a while, I like to think I'm learning to grow into the size of my world now. I can peek underneath that curtain and breathe the fresh air without feeling so small and inadequate and anxious. And I can observe for a while before tearing that curtain down completely. The "normal-er" doesn't have to fulfill anyone's expectations, least of all mine. There's going to be discomfort, but I can lean into that discomfort because I know that's where I will meet Jesus. 

It doesn’t seem fair that beautiful things can carry grief. But they do now. I’m reminded of my dad in everything that makes me feel most alive- in God’s glory in nature, in deep and intimate friendship, in music that brings me to the feet of Jesus, in witnessing kindness and spiritual submission of others, in receiving love with real and complete gratitude... and every day, part of living normal-er is being willing to feel those things and let them expand my soul to fit the world, even though that process hurts. Joy HURTS. How is that fair? What the heck.

This is my favorite picture of my dad (right). It tells so many stories about who he is. I absolutely adore his contagious laugh and that kind of smile that takes up his whole face and makes his eyes squint like mine do when I smile that hard. I love that I’m like him. I never ever thought I would say that. But it’s true. I love that I laugh embarrassingly longer and harder than everyone else. I love that I’m reflective and want to learn about things that matter and then talk about them with the people that matter to me. He was all of those things, and I am becoming my father’s daughter. Completely. That is becoming my normal. And I’m completely okay with it.

Love you, daddy. You did good.