Grief & Loss
He died before I could say the things I needed to say. Now there is a hole where the goodbye should be and I replay it constantly.
“Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.”
David wrote this as a public song for a whole congregation, and in the middle of it he says God has not forgotten what we are made of. It is not offered as an excuse for us; it is a description of how God looks at us. He is not surprised by the phone call you did not make or the conversation you kept postponing because you assumed there would be time.
“For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.”
John is writing to Christians whose own hearts were busy condemning them, and his answer is strange and specific: God is greater than your heart, and he knows everything. John does not tell them their self accusation is accurate, and he does not tell them it is groundless. He tells them there is a larger verdict than the one running in their head at two in the morning.
A path forward
Write the letter you never got to say. Put all of it in, including the parts that are not flattering, then read it aloud somewhere private.
Name the specific regret in prayer and ask God to carry that one thing, by name, rather than as a general cloud of guilt. Vague guilt cannot be handed over; a named one can.
Ask someone who knew him well what he thought of you. People carry pieces of the answer you are looking for and usually never think to offer them.
Closing verse
“He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.”
- Micah 7:19
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