One Year

One year ago today, I stood next to my father’s bedside in the Intensive Care Unit. As a machine kept him breathing, I knew I was saying my final goodbyes.

The past few weeks I’ve wondered what today would look like. How I would feel, where I would go, and how would I take time to remember him.

As I think back on this time last year, there was a lot of pain and sadness. But it was also a time where I felt the Lord’s presence so strongly, and started to really realize what it meant to know that true joy is found in God.

“You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Psalm 16:11

Just a few hours before my dad took his final breaths, as people were sharing memories, my aunt mentioned a conversation she had with my dad. He told her of the encouragements I wrote on Facebook, proclaiming my faith in the Lord, how they moved him in his faith. He told her that he hoped I would never stop writing those, because you never know who needed to hear it.

So that’s how I want to remember him today. By sharing a testimony of last year, and how the Lord worked in my relationship with my dad, to bring the both of us closer to Him.

While I’m not going to share the full details, my dad and I didn’t always have the easiest of relationships. Growing up there were long periods of time I didn’t see him, and when we did it was every other weekend. On those weekends we always had fun though, and made some good memories.

Around the time I was 16 years old, my dad broke the news that he had been diagnosed with ALS, and was given up to 5 years to live. Our adventures together started to change, as he started to need a cane to walk. A year later it was a wheelchair.

In those times fear began to build up in me, although I didn’t know it at the time. From that fear I let anger and bitterness grow, as I thought on the years I missed out on with him. The times I wanted him to be there, and he wasn’t. I pushed those feelings away most of my childhood, because I always hoped one day he would make it up in the years to come. But then all of a sudden the hope of those years were no longer there.

At the beginning of 2020, it had been about 3 months since I had seen my dad. I sent him the occasional text, but my heart was consumed with many negative feelings.

Around this same time, we were going through the book of Jonah at my church. One Wednesday night, I sat there listening to the pastor talk about Jonah not wanting to obey the Lord’s calling to Nineveh. Instead Jonah fled towards the city of Tarshish. As I took my notes, I all of a sudden felt it so strongly put it on my heart to go see my father.

Now at first I tried to brush it off, it was just a random thought in my head. But through out the sermon, it became clearer and clearer, the Lord was putting this on my heart and mind. When the sermon ended, I went up to my pastor, and he prayed with me. For my fleeing to come to an end, but to step in to where God was calling me to go.

“For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me. Then I said ‘I am driven away from your sight; yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.’ The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped around my head at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God.” Jonah 2:3-6

While it may not have been a giant fish swallowing me whole, it did take a heart change. Which did not come all at once either, quite honestly it’s still ongoing.

That night I texted my dad that I was coming over to visit the next day. And so I did. Nothing crazy happened, we caught up for about half an hour, and then I went home. It was then I started to realize I had been carrying around those negative feelings of anger, bitterness, and some sadness too.

After going to see my dad, our communication began to open up more. I went to visit him more often, and I texted him more frequently. I also began to send him the online livestreams of the sermons at my church.

A few months later, I was driving to work one morning, when I decided to call my dad. I didn’t have any reasoning why, I just did it. I think that was one of the most real conversations my dad and I ever had. As we discussed the fact that I was driving (something I had struggled with a lot of anxiety about), I got to share how I really had to give the Lord my fear with that. That opened up more discussions with my dad about his life, and his relationship with the Lord.

A little after that I invited my dad to come to church with me at one of our outdoor services. He said yes, but in my heart I held on to all those other times he’d told me yes, and never showed up. This time he did though. Even though at that point, getting out of the house was a struggle for him. Even though he needed an oxygen mask to help him breathe, and barely had the strength at some points to keep his eyelids open on his own, he came and listened to the Lord’s word with me.

The last few times I visited my dad were mainly sitting in silence. Listening to machines, and shallow breaths. Helping move him from a bed to a chair, or holding a straw to his lips, so he could try and take a drink. Those last few visits were filled with a softness and compassion laid upon my heart.

One year ago today, as I sat in the Intensive Care Unit, watching my father die, I realized the bitterness and anger I held was gone. As I stood there with tears, I rejoiced in prayer that I was not saying goodbye with negative feelings. That the last year I had with my dad, the Lord used to grow me in my faith, and I believe my dad as well.

When my dad took his final breath, and his heartbeat stopped, I knew I didn’t want to be at the hospital anymore. I went to my church, and I remembered college weekend was happening that day. My community was there in that moment, praying over me and speaking truth. And I saw the beauty of the Lord through them in that moment, and the all powerfulness of God, as He knew exactly what I needed in that moment.

I sit here writing this in the exact coffee shop, that I wrote what I read at my dad’s funeral. I sit here now in awe of God, and the work He does in every single moment. How He took a heart full of troubled feelings, and softened it to love deeper. How in remembering my dad today, I can be full of joy and praise the Lord, for I know He is good through it all.

“The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; He knows those who take refuge in Him.” Nahum 1:7

-Ellie Marie