A missed call read “OJ Zerbin” on my phone recently and I froze.

What I would give for one heavenly phone call with that comforting, reassuring voice!

Somehow my contacts were synching with my husband’s and an old contact for my parents’ home phone appeared under that startling label.

It has been three years now.

Three years of missing, longing, grieving, wishing, hoping, retelling, imagining, believing—and healing.

Spring and Easter hold the bittersweet messages of death and life. A tragically beautiful reality I experienced with the death of my beloved dad on Good Friday, and the brilliant hope of resurrection life celebrated each Easter morning.

Chapter three of grief means I still ache when I recall hospital scenes and conversations from that final week, or when I reflect on the events surrounding my dad’s beautiful Celebration of Life.

Our six children were so much younger and smaller, and we've lived so much precious life since then…

After meeting forum posts and reflection and research paper word counts for my recent seminary course I wondered if I had any words left.

But thoughts and tears came pouring in like the tide.

As I reflect on the last three years, I am comforted by an image God gave me last fall during a time of prayer for deeper inner healing.

I was laying flat on a surfboard, guided over waves by my heavenly father. There was joy in this space of deep trust and surrender.

It wasn’t about navigating waves; it was about knowing that God was carrying me through waters that my earthly father—who was very cautious around water—never could.

It was an invitation to grow in a relationship with a part of the Trinity I hadn’t felt much need for because of my amazing dad.

That healing image from the fall connected to a more recent discovering.

I came across an old book at the Hodge Podge Lodge, a small building at a large recycling center in a town nearby. People can pick out items for free, and record the weight to celebrate all that is being recycled

I had heard of the AA program concept from a distance, and more recently was curious how its principles might apply to areas of life that were different from alcoholism.

When I came across The 12 Steps to Happiness: A practical handbook for understanding and working the Twelve Step Programs for alcoholism, codependency, eating disorders and other addictions, my curiosity grew.

I brought home the unassuming book, an odd addition to my morning reading—right alongside the book of Judges and How to Teach Your Children to Spell.

Its message resonated deeply with me. It was about surrender, and how naming our struggles can be the first step in healing.

So many areas of life could sink us—relationships, politics, addictions, stressors, complicated stories that have no erase or restart button.

Where do we go?

Where do we begin?

The first three steps struck me:

We admit that we are powerless and our lives have become unmanagable.
We believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity.
We make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand him.

Growing up in church culture I love encountering new language and a framework that points towards the amazing message of Jesus.

As we name each reality or struggle in our lives, we give them up to the One who is in control, the One who is holding it all together.

In February, a few weeks before discovering this book, I was in Mexico with my mom, celebrating her 70th birthday.

I was drawn to the ocean each sunset and after a special dinner, where we toasted and shared memories of my dad, I struggled watching that sun fall off the horizon, that blazing ball of fire leaving me in dusk, soon to be darkness.

But I knew I needed to watch it and absorb the truth of life’s rhythms.

I needed another place for the melody of my soul to lament as tears fell and the ocean washed over the gritty sand between my toes.

The truth is, the beauty I saw in my mom that week showed me how deeply my dad loved her—and all of us—over the years.

It gave me a window into who she is and who she is becoming. It showed me what it could be like to grow a friendship with my mom in this next decade.

During this trip I also received a message from a dear friend that a woman she had journeyed closely in friendship and prayer with had passed away after bravely fighting cancer for too short of a time.

She was a wife, a mom, a child of God. Her faith kept hope burning at the core of her story even as the sun set on her earthly time.

Like that blazing sun falling off the horizon each night, death and loss bring us low, but in the dark night of the ocean, just as on that Good Friday, and silent Saturday, before the sliver of light peaks over the horizon to signal a new day, we are left to wait and trust.

Life is most likely half over for me, maybe a lot more?

Wading into my forties, I am finding that I care less about what people think about me and more about the tender ache and sweet joy in each unique person’s story who crosses my path.

My winter seminary course on Intercultural Competence, focused on loving “the Other.”

At first, this strange language of “other” and “different” made me very uncomfortable.

It felt rude and wrong.

Not Christan or kind.

Through reflection and a survey on my cultural fluency I realized that rather than celebrating differences and becoming more aware of how they impact interactions, I tended to search for similarities, minimizing in hopes of unity.

We are all an “other” to someone.

Over and over, in the Gospels, we see Jesus subverting cultural customs and norms to show us what it looks like to live with a deep awareneses of differences, adapting to all kinds of people and systems while maintaining His own values in a way that created bridges.

Jesus sat at the table with tax collectors and betrayers; he presented so powerfully what it looks like to love the next person in front of us in through The Parable of the Good Samaritan.

There are loving bridges to be found in every conversation and situation.

When I encounter these connecting moments I am brought to my knees, marveling at the mystery and opporunity to reflect how much Christ loves each person!

Like the arms of the cross, the bridge is always and only one of love.

The ocean, the setting sun, anything living or changing in the spring air reminds me of my dad.

Small goodbyes or endings leave me with a visceral feeling, sometimes uncontrollable tears, and other times slow, intentional breaths for my body, mind, and spirit to absorb the reality of the movements and change of life on this broken earth.

Death stabs at the heart, daring to bleed it dry of any life, but instead, the wounded, cracked open heart releases a resurrection power that discovers deeper places of faith, hope, and longing that keep all the parts beating together with a new fleshy kind of passion.

A longing for Jesus’ triumph return and a passion to discover His kingdom here and now.

With my husband and children.

In my cul-de-sac and work.

In my extended and church family.

Chapter three of grief finds me resting on the surfboard a little longer, knowing that whether the sun is rising or setting, God holds it all together!

I will send two special songs that reflect this message in my next seasonal newsletter.

Sign up below!

The next one goes out at the end of April.