The month of May has always been the hardest for me. It brings back the immeasurable, heartbreaking loss of my dad and leaves me searching for memories to hold onto. As I reflect, one memory continues to stand out above all the rest & it was the last night we spent together as a family of four.
If you knew my family, you knew we were never still. We were always moving . Whether it was sports practices late into the night, work, school, or anything else that filled our schedules. Sitting down together for dinner wasn’t something we did often back then. It was rare for all of us to gather around the table at the same time.
But on that last night, that is exactly what we did.
We sat. We ate. We talked.
I will never forget the picture burned into my mind of my dad sitting at our dinner table. Without any of us knowing it, that would become my last memory of him before he passed away.
Now, 10 years later, I often think there is a reason that is the memory that stayed with me. Out of all the moments I could have remembered, it was something so simple, just being together.
As I have grown up and continue to navigate who I am. In all of that, I have fallen in love with Jesus.
Despite my confusion and frustration through the loss of my dad, the Lord drew near to me.
It is and was simple.
Not the loss, not the grief, and not the questions that followed. Those things felt anything but simple. But the way the Lord met me in it was.
He was present.
In the memories I clung to, in the nights that felt unimaginably heavy, and in the quiet moments where I did not have the words to pray, He was there. Over time, I began to realize that maybe the reason that final memory stayed so deeply rooted in my heart was because it reflected something eternal. That love is often found in the simplest moments.
A family around a dinner table.
A conversation no one knew would be the last.
Just being together.
And somehow, through all of the heartbreak, God used even that memory to show me what it means to be known, loved, and never truly alone.
May 24th marks 10 years without my beloved father. My dad was fiercely loyal, someone who loved everyone with such sincerity and lived on purpose for a purpose.
Oh, how I miss him.
BUT in all of this, there is good news!
While I did lose my earthy father, in that I gained the perspective to properly see my eternal father. Jesus has bridged a gap in my life, I never knew he or anyone else could.
And although there will always be a part of me that aches for one more conversation, one more dinner, or one more moment with my dad, I can now look back and see the faithfulness of God through it all.
Ten years later, that memory around the dinner table still lives so vividly in my mind.
We sat. We ate. We talked.
And somehow, God has used that simple memory to remind me that love, presence, and faithfulness never truly leave us.
As I walk into a new decade without my dad, I feel heavy. Knowing that I have done more life without him, than with him. But what I know is true is that, God has good plans and can turn any hard thing into good, in His timing.
This will be my testimony.
