You’re not ‘just’ anything.

I am a single dad. My wife passed away from melanoma in May of 2018, leaving me to raise our two incredible preteen daughters. The hard work of healing is relentless, but we have each other, our faith, and a fantastic support system around us.

Each new day brings some reminder of our new circumstances… updating contact information at school, being the only dad at dance class, and the almost constant feeling that I need to be in two places at once.

Back when we were a family of four, we would make an annual pilgrimage to Pensacola Beach. We stayed at the same condo every year… being lazy, swimming the days away, and eating at our favorite restaurants each evening. These cheesy joints ring the Gulf Coast – loud live music, overpriced kids meals, and peppy waitstaff in gaudy shirts and short shorts who make small talk about the seaweed.

Sometimes, life adds. Sometimes, life subtracts. Once there were four, but now there are three.

The summer after Melanie died, I wasn’t ready to face Pensacola. Instead, we escaped the heat of another Arkansas August and fled to the Pacific Northwest. Miabeth ordered a bucket of Frappucino at the original Starbucks. We rode a ferry in Puget Sound and drove out to Mt. Rainier. The Space Needle, the aquarium, the giant wheel, Beecher’s in the market… all the things. Riley Cate tossed a few bucks into the open guitar case of a busker who looked and sounded just like Jimi Hendrix, down to the dangling cigarette and scarves. That wasn’t coffee in his Starbucks cup, but I digress. We drove to Vancouver and ate lunch, just to say we did.

Seattle ’18 was a great trip, but by the summer of ’19 the girls were homesick for Pensacola. I struggled with the decision but eventually decided that we should go back. I didn’t want cancer to take Pensacola Beach.

The Happy Hostesses

I braced myself as we walked up to one of our favorite restaurants for the first time. The chipper hostess in the gaudy shirt met me with a peppy: “Just the three of you tonight?” Just three of us. [You just don’t realize how family-centric these places are, until your family doesn’t look just like the rest.] You can’t throw a Salt Life sticker in these places without hitting a couple and their kids. But she was right. It was just the three of us.

I shook it off. It wasn’t personal. And it didn’t get inside my head that much… until 24 hours later at our other favorite restaurant three miles away. It was like Groundhog Day, beach edition. That hostess met us with the same drippy greeting: “Just the three of you tonight?” I just wanted to go back to the room.

Two weeks later I took some art for framing. A polite lady was trying to help me choose color combinations. I’m sure she thought she was saying: “Do you want this to be more masculine, or more neutral?”

But she actually said: “So who lives in the house? Is it just you and the kids, or…” I don’t even remember the rest of her question. It was surreal, because I was looking down at a watercolor of the beach restaurant where the hostess had basically asked the same question two weeks before.  I mentally exited the conversation, and quickly found a reason to exit the store. It’s harder to just shake things off than it should be, I guess.

Maybe I’m just overreacting. I am unusually sensitive these days, even for an enneagram four. Still though, have you ever felt that way, like you were ‘just’ something? Living through grief is like walking around with exposed nerves. The unintentional jabs of life just make it worse. Even if you’ve not experienced that sort of grief, most folks walk around with something they’d rather not be carrying.

What’s your just?

“For 30 years I worked in ____ , but now I’m just retired.” “We were married for a long time, but he left and now I’m just single.” “The kids are gone, so we’re just empty nesters now.” “I never went to college… I just started working instead.” Does life (or some peppy hostess) ever make you feel like you’re just something? Maybe nobody even has to say a word. You just feel it in your bones. I’m just something now.

Do you base your identity in your relationships? That’s risky. For lots of reasons, both medical and relational, people aren’t always going to be here. Find your identity in your job? Factories close. Voters don’t turn out. Downsizing is real. Identifying yourself through what you produce or create? Eventually, your ability to do those things will wane. Depressing, huh? It doesn’t have to be.

You will fail sometimes. Anything that you love, you can also lose. Even so. Live, love, create, and accomplish.

Everyone must find their way through the maze of life somehow. Eventually those questions of identity will confront each of us. Several years ago, even though I knew better, I had unintentionally grown to base my identity in my ministry. I was writing, speaking, and traveling. With Melanie’s diagnosis in the fall of 2017, I walked away from all but the essential work tasks and overnight I became a caregiver. When she slipped away so rapidly in 2018, in one breath I was no longer a caregiver, but a single dad.

Over the course of six months, my identity had a very high turnover rate. Among other things, I diagnosed myself with emotional whiplash. I don’t think you’ll find that in the DSM, but you get me.

I was just a lot of things, and it messed with my head. I spent way too much time on the couch in the dark, until I finally dragged myself back to the woods and the water, back to my own office, and to the office of a wonderful therapist down the road.

A Better Way

Our current Wednesday night series is about identity, and I was struck by the great truths of I John 3:1-2:

“How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”

You’re not just anything. You are loved beyond measure in Christ. In Christ, you’re God’s kid right now, with the full assurance that one day, you will be like Him. You will see Him as He is. Even if everyone deserts you, and you lose everything that has defined you up until this moment, you can still know that you are loved.

To my fellow tired, sad friends: Behold the love of God, for it tells you that you’re never ‘just’ anything.