In the Giving and the Taking

There is a song we sing in church from time to time. It's called Blessed Be Your Name and talks about being able to praise God no matter what our circumstances. I remember the first day I was back in our church after my mother's death and sobbing through the whole thing.

Blessed Be Your Name

In the land that is plentiful

Where Your streams of abundance flow

Blessed be Your name

Blessed Be Your name

When I'm found in the desert place

Though I walk through the wilderness

Blessed Be Your name

Every blessing You pour out

I'll turn back to praise

When the darkness closes in, Lord

Still I will say

Blessed be the name of the Lord

Blessed be Your name

Blessed be Your name

When the sun's shining down on me

When the world's 'all as it should be'

Blessed be Your name

Blessed be Your name

On the road marked with suffering

Though there's pain in the offering

Blessed be Your name

Every blessing You pour out

I'll turn back to praise

When the darkness closes in, Lord

Still I will say

Blessed be the name of the Lord

Blessed be Your name

You give and take away

You give and take away

My heart will choose to say

Lord, blessed be Your name

It's easy to praise God when things are going well and it feels many blessings are being poured out on me. It's harder when I experience suffering or loss, but I think it's also a sign that I'm fully trusting Him when I can do that.

It's a choice no matter if God gives or God takes away.

God gave my family a wonderful man to love when I was in my teens. He was kind and gentle and loved my mother and loved her children. He treated us as his own. His love showed me what a father's love should look like. When he and my mother married when I was in seminary I was thrilled.

My relationship with my stepdad was a good one. He would often tell me he was proud of me. He was moved to tears when he expressed emotion. I love this picture below because he had just read a message I wrote to him in a card and got emotional. He was exactly what our family needed.

My sister and I received word yesterday that he passed away in his sleep. He was in a nursing home and had advanced Alzheimer's. I feel like some of our connection was broken when my mother died because he went to live with his family, and mostly because the past few years he didn't know who we were. But I still feel loss and sadness. And in a complicated way, I'm grieving my mother all over again.

God gave him to us and God has taken him home. I'm sad, but thankful he didn't suffer. I'm thankful that he had wonderful children and was well cared for the past 5 years. I'm thankful he is whole and healed. 

I went for a walk yesterday in my favorite spot and was thankful it was isolated. I was able to pray, weep and think. As I did that, the song Blessed Be Your Name popped in my head. I sang it quietly as I walked and felt an immediate peace as I sang the line, You give and take away, my heart will choose to say, "Lord, blessed be Your name."

I'm looking forward to the day when I will be reunited. In the meantime, blessed be the name of the Lord.