Invitation

This past Wednesday, we were gathered at Geri and Dave's house for our weekly small group gathering and as we settled in post-dinner in the living room, we started to look at the first chapter of Colossians. I'm not sure how we got on the topic of fatherhood, but Dave started sharing about his children and how he loves when his children come to him to ask him for help or ask him for something. As we all listened to Dave speak, it was pretty obvious that he took fatherhood pretty seriously, and that his heart was one of extravagant love towards his children. I tried to be discreet; I tried to avert my gaze and look down; alas, something in me shifted and I was caught off guard by the influx of emotions and tears that overcame me. Tears started to fall down my face and pretty soon, it was pretty difficult to hide that I was dissolving into a puddle of emotions in my corner of the living room. Geri looked over at me and gently said, "what's going on, Grace?" and I confessed to the group that I was caught off guard by my own physical response. In that moment, there was this realization that dawned on me that I had never seen my dad express that kind of fatherly love towards me. In my life, he remains inaccessible and he is the last person I feel that I can turn to in a moment of need. Instead of being able to depend on my dad, I found myself time and time again disappointed and hurt and what Dave was expressing to the group was something that struck me as foreign in my own relationship with my father. 

As I shared these things to the group, Geri compassionately replied that it wasn't fair that I had never experienced this kind of love from my own father and that it wasn't fair that the world is broken with such broken familial relationships. 

This instance is, among other instances, a reflection of what this season holds for me. There is an invitation from the Lord this season to experience deeper healing and deeper communion with him as things arise to the surface. Indeed, the Lord allows aspects of the past to resurface because he wants to touch those areas and restore those areas of deep woundedness. 

My big ask this season is to experience deep healing and restoration within myself, and to experience the Lord in and through it all.