[This blog post is part of a series called 'Hard' truth]

In June, we flew to France to spend two weeks saying goodbye to my dad.  In those weeks, we had 8-12 people in the house at all times.  Some of them were family, some of them were more precious than the dearest friend, and some of them were strangers.

My sisters both became chain smokers because they so desperately needed an excuse for alone time.  My coping mechanism was equally as disgusting.  Each day I would go for a jog.  Ugh.

On my run, I would yell out loud at the sky, (which I’m sure was disturbing to the french farmers).  I would inform God of all the ways that He wasn’t acting in the way I wanted Him too and I would give Him a to-do list to fix everything.

Then I would come back to the house.  Everything was still awful, but somehow things seemed better.  I knew God loved me, and I knew His love wasn’t like any other love I had ever known.

I saw this quote the other day on a Christian twitter stream:

Love is a condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.

Gosh, I’m so glad that isn’t true.  That is our version of love.  It’s our limited people version.  It’s the version I saw play out every day in France.

Just a few short months ago, in early June, I sat at a table and started to write the series you are about to read.  It’s crazy to me that between June and October your whole world can get flipped on its head.

I wrote most of what you’re going to read today sitting at a table three feet away from my dad.  I wrote most of this when I was still learning to lose something that wasn’t quite lost.

I wanted to wait to share all this until I was sure that it is actually truth that is catching me and not just denial.  But, each day it’s more and more clear that the glorious anesthetic of denial is gone.  I am sad and a mess and the whole world feels terrifying and confusing.

And somehow in the middle of all that there’s me and God and a foundation of truth that I never knew would be so solid.  While this overwhelming flood wraps around me He’s really real and He’s really there.

More than ever I agree with all that I wrote below.  The deep truths of God revealed in His Word really are a lamp for our feet.  They make it possible to see even in the blackest night.