Happy Birthday, Dad.

I dialed you about 4 times in the last 3 months, your number is no longer in service, but the hope my core feels to hear you say " Lucy, have faith " one more time tears me up when I realize a stone with your name is the only thing I have left of you.

I just want to sit on your feet, while you rock back and forth on your recliner, while drinking, eating or just watching baseball on a tiny TV...I just want to feel your presence, even when we didn't even speak, the silence would fill up my heart with everything I didn't even know I needed.

I guess what I mean is I miss you, dad.

I've felt my loneliest in the past 3 months, unable or maybe unwilling to accept the truths around me, and I am so sensitive, too fragile to even feel the void growing inside of me, the water pouring pointlessly at the ground beneath me. There is so much I want to say, maybe words aren't the best way, maybe screaming the pain out would be more helpful.

I wake up and like a robot, I go through my day, smiling and wishing I was feeling the happy I give; life has been too dark to see, too cold to feel and too hard to breathe. Sometimes I feel nothingness, while I drive and I hear the sounds, I want to stop and cry at loud maybe God would then allow me one more minute with you.

Healing is an onion, I am at my core.

Change that broke me, an accident that marked my oldest and myself and news that devastated my family, where do I find the strength to hide the tears, to patch the pain, to go on and pretend that I am ok? I am not. I feel like falling on the ground 90% of the day, when I look in the mirror all I do is try to find power in the doubts that submerge my brain on the daily.

I found my heart gasping for air, so I did CPR, I went to church, from the songs to the preacher, I heard my God speak, I felt my God touching my core, I felt like I was drinking water after years on the desert.

I decided to date God, I decided to trust that his healing is the quench my thirst, the food for my hunger, and the light for my path. I can no longer manage the wheel and so I am trusting that God leads me to all he has promised me. In midst of almost giving up, I cried to him, all night, for answers for direction for healing... I was at the cliff of a mountain, ready to jump and release my heart from this headache, but then I heard him call me to a picnic.

I've struggled more than what I'd like to admit these last 3 months, I've cried, I've silenced myself and removed myself searching for distance, distance that only made the pain more unbearable.

As I drove to work today, I thought of how beautiful it is to be ready to come back to God and finding him waiting, then my co-worker confirmed that he will always wait; he will wait for you to come to him, to heal, to be loved, to be comforted, to be supported, to be guided, to be his child: on the way home I was scared of the dark and the rain, and so I began to praise him, I began to trust that he was the driver, and before I knew it, I was parking. I broke down for about 15 minutes, thank him for all he has done in my life, for all he plans on doing and for all the love that he is so eager to pour into me.

I am grateful to have had the guidance to find him again, I am so thankful to have had the promise of healing awaiting me, and it moves me how deeply I am forever indebted to the vessels he used to illuminate my path to him.