The Fishing Rod Still Leaning in the Corner of My Garage
The Fishing Rod Still Leaning in the Corner of My Garage
My father's old rod has leaned in the same corner of my garage for three years now, right where I set it the week we cleaned out his house, and I have moved almost everything else in that garage at least once since then. The lawn chairs got rotated. The paint cans got stacked somewhere else twice. That rod has not moved an inch. I have caught myself, more than once, reaching past it for a rake and letting my hand rest on the cork handle a second longer than reaching past something requires, the worn grip still shaped a little like his hand instead of mine. I have not used it, not given it away, not even taken it down to see if the line still holds. It just leans there, and some part of me needs it to keep leaning there exactly like that.
I am twelve years sober, and for most of those years I believed I had already done my grieving, the heavy kind, back when I first got clean and had to mourn the version of myself I used to be and everything that version had cost me. I assumed that round had used up whatever capacity I had for loss. My father's rod in that corner has quietly corrected me. Grief does not spend down a lifetime allowance and leave you alone. It waits for the next true loss and shows up fresh, as if it had never been through this with you before, over a fishing rod you cannot explain to anyone who did not know him.
Scripture never asks me to explain it either, which is its own kind of mercy I did not expect to find there. David does not describe grief as a failure of faith. He describes it as the exact place God moves closest. "The LORD is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a contrite spirit" (Psalm 34:18, NKJV). Near, not distant and waiting for me to finish feeling it first. Jesus Himself did not manage His grief at a friend's grave from a safe emotional distance either. He stood at Lazarus's tomb, surrounded by people weeping, and the record does not soften what happened in Him. "Therefore, when Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her weeping, He groaned in the spirit and was troubled" (John 11:33, NKJV), and then, with no explanation attached, two words that have done more for me standing in that garage than any sermon on grief I have ever sat through. "Jesus wept" (John 11:35, NKJV). If grief was beneath Him, He would not have done it standing in front of a grave He was about to empty.
Here is where my own reasoning has never once gotten me past that corner of the garage. I can remind myself accurately that he lived a long life, that we said what needed saying before the end, that keeping a rod I never use is just a habit dressed up as devotion. Every sentence is true, and none of them has ever loosened my hand off that cork grip any faster. Grief was never a logic problem waiting on a better argument. Paul does not tell the Thessalonians to stop grieving either. He tells them what makes their grief different from the only kind the world has access to. "But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope" (1 Thessalonians 4:13, NKJV). Not sorrow replaced by hope. Sorrow carried alongside it, a weight my own thinking was never strong enough to hold by itself.
This is exactly what abiding in the Spirit gives that my own management of this grief never could. Isaiah describes the Spirit's actual assignment toward people standing where I am standing, and it was never to talk us out of the ache. "The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon Me, because the LORD has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted" (Isaiah 61:1, NKJV), sent "to console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning" (Isaiah 61:3, NKJV). Beauty for ashes is not the ashes pretending to be something else. It is an actual exchange, made by Someone with the authority to make it. Paul calls God by a name I needed standing in that garage more than any other name I know. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation" (2 Corinthians 1:3-4, NKJV). And Jesus told His own grieving disciples who would carry that comfort into them permanently, not a memory, a Person who stays. "And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever" (John 14:16, NKJV), and then the promise underneath all of it. "I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you" (John 14:18, NKJV).
I still have not moved the rod. I went out last night, though, and stood in front of it for a while without reaching past it for anything, and let myself actually feel what was there instead of dusting around it one more time, and something in my chest loosened that no clean explanation ever managed to touch. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which corner of which garage holds the thing you cannot throw away and cannot use either. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on you finishing your grief on a schedule, and He has told you Himself that He will never leave you alone standing in front of it.
Scriptures used (NKJV): Psalm 34:18; John 11:33; John 11:35; 1 Thessalonians 4:13; Isaiah 61:1; Isaiah 61:3; 2 Corinthians 1:3-4; John 14:16; John 14:18.
My father's old rod has leaned in the same corner of my garage for three years now, right where I set it the week we cleaned out his house, and I have moved almost everything else in that garage at least once since then. The lawn chairs got rotated. The paint cans got stacked somewhere else twice. That rod has not moved an inch. I have caught myself, more than once, reaching past it for a rake and letting my hand rest on the cork handle a second longer than reaching past something requires, the worn grip still shaped a little like his hand instead of mine. I have not used it, not given it away, not even taken it down to see if the line still holds. It just leans there, and some part of me needs it to keep leaning there exactly like that.
I am twelve years sober, and for most of those years I believed I had already done my grieving, the heavy kind, back when I first got clean and had to mourn the version of myself I used to be and everything that version had cost me. I assumed that round had used up whatever capacity I had for loss. My father's rod in that corner has quietly corrected me. Grief does not spend down a lifetime allowance and leave you alone. It waits for the next true loss and shows up fresh, as if it had never been through this with you before, over a fishing rod you cannot explain to anyone who did not know him.
Scripture never asks me to explain it either, which is its own kind of mercy I did not expect to find there. David does not describe grief as a failure of faith. He describes it as the exact place God moves closest. "The LORD is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a contrite spirit" (Psalm 34:18, NKJV). Near, not distant and waiting for me to finish feeling it first. Jesus Himself did not manage His grief at a friend's grave from a safe emotional distance either. He stood at Lazarus's tomb, surrounded by people weeping, and the record does not soften what happened in Him. "Therefore, when Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her weeping, He groaned in the spirit and was troubled" (John 11:33, NKJV), and then, with no explanation attached, two words that have done more for me standing in that garage than any sermon on grief I have ever sat through. "Jesus wept" (John 11:35, NKJV). If grief was beneath Him, He would not have done it standing in front of a grave He was about to empty.
Here is where my own reasoning has never once gotten me past that corner of the garage. I can remind myself accurately that he lived a long life, that we said what needed saying before the end, that keeping a rod I never use is just a habit dressed up as devotion. Every sentence is true, and none of them has ever loosened my hand off that cork grip any faster. Grief was never a logic problem waiting on a better argument. Paul does not tell the Thessalonians to stop grieving either. He tells them what makes their grief different from the only kind the world has access to. "But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope" (1 Thessalonians 4:13, NKJV). Not sorrow replaced by hope. Sorrow carried alongside it, a weight my own thinking was never strong enough to hold by itself.
This is exactly what abiding in the Spirit gives that my own management of this grief never could. Isaiah describes the Spirit's actual assignment toward people standing where I am standing, and it was never to talk us out of the ache. "The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon Me, because the LORD has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted" (Isaiah 61:1, NKJV), sent "to console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning" (Isaiah 61:3, NKJV). Beauty for ashes is not the ashes pretending to be something else. It is an actual exchange, made by Someone with the authority to make it. Paul calls God by a name I needed standing in that garage more than any other name I know. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation" (2 Corinthians 1:3-4, NKJV). And Jesus told His own grieving disciples who would carry that comfort into them permanently, not a memory, a Person who stays. "And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever" (John 14:16, NKJV), and then the promise underneath all of it. "I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you" (John 14:18, NKJV).
I still have not moved the rod. I went out last night, though, and stood in front of it for a while without reaching past it for anything, and let myself actually feel what was there instead of dusting around it one more time, and something in my chest loosened that no clean explanation ever managed to touch. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which corner of which garage holds the thing you cannot throw away and cannot use either. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on you finishing your grief on a schedule, and He has told you Himself that He will never leave you alone standing in front of it.
Scriptures used (NKJV): Psalm 34:18; John 11:33; John 11:35; 1 Thessalonians 4:13; Isaiah 61:1; Isaiah 61:3; 2 Corinthians 1:3-4; John 14:16; John 14:18.
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