How to Be Grateful for What You Do Not Know
Tomorrow—August 16, 2024—would have been my father’s 83rd birthday. Instead, it’s the fourth birthday of his that I’ll spend reminding myself there’s no need to pick up the phone or to bake a butterscotch pie.
I last gave him a hug a few months after his 78th birthday. Of course, I didn’t know that was the final time. We so rarely recognize last times when they come. Which is good, I think. Dad’s progressing Parkinson’s made me keenly aware that every hug might be the last. And so I always hugged him and told him I loved him with that in the back of my mind.
Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.
Prov. 27:1, NIV
Sometimes It’s Good to Not Know
November 21, 2019, was a good day. I was giving a reading and signing books at the Upshur County Public Library in my hometown in West Virginia. Mom and Dad were there along with other friends, family, and readers. We were in the library Dad helped build (his name is on the plaque out front), the one that supplied me with so much reading material over my growing up years. My nine-year-old niece got her first library card in her OWN name that evening. Plus, we had the most amazing cookies.
And when it was all over, I took Dad to his assisted living facility. I hugged him tight not knowing that my next visit would be cancelled due to a pandemic. Not knowing that the resulting loneliness, fear, and isolation would take my father’s life as surely as Parkinson’s disease and a failing heart.
Sometimes it’s good to not know.
A Better Promise
Each missed birthday reminds me that I’m getting further and further away from the last time I saw my father. It’s the sort of thought that can cast a pall over an otherwise pleasant weekend.
But there’s another way of thinking about it. Because even as I get further from the last time, I draw nearer to the next time. This isn’t a wish to die or for the world to end. Rather it’s a blessed awareness that we’re promised more than this world. And while the truly exciting part about getting to heaven is being in the undiluted presence of God, as a fleshly human being I can’t help but think of something I have more experience with—being with my dad.
Because I think the way Dad loved me—wholly, unabashedly, and even when I didn’t deserve it—is a foreshadowing of what it will be like to finally understand how God loves me. And to bask in that glow.
Tomorrow will be the furthest I’ve been from my Dad. And the closest I’ve been to reuniting with him. Which, I think, is the essence of what it is to live this life where joy and sorrow are inextricably bound.
Do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.
1 Thess. 4:13, NIV
Meet Sarah Loudin Thomas
Sarah Loudin Thomas grew up on a 100-acre farm in French Creek, WV, the seventh generation to live there. Her historical fiction is often set in West Virginia and celebrates the people, the land, and the heritage of Appalachia.
Sarah is the director of Jan Karon’s Mitford Museum in Hudson, NC. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Coastal Carolina University and is the author of the acclaimed novels The Right Kind of Fool–winner of the 2021 Selah Book of the Year–and Miracle in a Dry Season–winner of the 2015 Inspy Award. Sarah has also been a finalist for the Christy Award, ACFW Carol Award and the Christian Book of the Year Award. She and her husband live in western North Carolina.
Where to find her . . .
Begin Within is a series to inspire a year-round lifestyle of gratitude that will impact not only your own life, but the lives of your neighbors as well. Gratitude is a theme we talk about often around here because it ties so closely into other missional living rhythms. Practicing gratitude reminds to keep our hearts soft and expectant and our eyes open. Therefore, the more we embrace gratitude, the easier it becomes to truly see our neighbors and where we can join what God is already doing in our neighborhoods.
If you would like to contribute to Begin Within, you can find the submission guidelines here.
