Quite a while ago I began working on a new writing project in the evenings.
I would write for a few days then take a break. I’d take a month off. Sometimes I could only re-read what I had written before because the subject matter was too challenging for my heart. I was still grieving the loss that created the desire to write this book. Although I started thinking and considering how to formulate this project 8 years ago, I can see a thought-line emerging in the work as I have slowly crept up to it.
Recently I began to write again. I have not shared this project with anyone outside of my immediate family because again, its a painful topic. . . I am working on a pastoral journal about my father, his life, his death, and how that death shaped me. Someday I will be done—just not yet (and not any time soon either I suspect).
Yesterday afternoon I spent some more time while the house was silent to think and put my thoughts onto paper. The gentle blowing and hum of the ceiling fan was the only noise in the house as I typed away on this laptop. It was a beautiful day and I took advantage of the stillness that was presented to me as a gift from God..
As I read my words about my dad’s early life and began to consider the life-changing moments around his seizure, I could feel the emotions become heavy around me. Memories that I didn’t remember came flooding back to my mind as I remembered dad at Akron General in the emergency room. I could see the color of his room. The fear in his eyes. The sadness in my mother as she picked my sister and I up from our Christian school in Ashland, Ohio.
I could only write for a short time before I needed a release from the emotion that changed my family in totality. I decided that I had to get something to drink. Rising from my chair I swung my bare feet out from under the table and crashed them into Luna’s side.
I had no idea that she was there.
A normally boisterous dog, who loves to bring me her favorite rope-toy constantly, snuck up on me in the dinning room. Leaving her toy in the other room, she nestled down next to me, in what I felt, was a sense of solidarity and companionship. She couldn’t possibly know the emotions that were buzzing around my mind at that moment. She didn’t know that I would receive her presence as a gift from God. But it didn’t matter. She was there.
I reached down and rubbed her side as I got a fresh cup of coffee. I walked back over to the table with her following me and asked her how long she’d been laying there. Bobbing her head up and down and side to side she put her head in my lap for a quick ’scratch' and then trotted off. . . I knew where she was going.
I was done writing, she thought, so it was time to play and throw that rope-toy into the next room for her. But it was her presence that caught my mind and has stayed with me all evening and all morning today.
Sometimes we don’t know who has snuck up next to us, nestled down beside us, in those moments of pain. We didn’t hear them coming and we didn’t ask for their support. But they gave it to us because they were being obedient to God. I wonder who could God be putting next to you today that you might be able to sit with?
Blessings
Rev. Derek
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