The Unworn Work Boots Still by My Father's Back Door
The Unworn Work Boots Still by My Father's Back Door
My father died eight months ago, and I ended up with his house, which means I walk past his work boots every time I go in through the back. They sit exactly where he left them the last morning he was well enough to wear them, caked with dried mud from a garden he never got to plant that spring. I have painted two rooms and cleared three closets of his clothes since he passed. I cannot move those boots. I have reached for them twice, meaning to finally carry them to my truck for the donation bin, and both times my hand stopped an inch above the leather like something physical was holding it back.
I am sixteen years sober, and I used to believe grief was one of the few things recovery could not touch, that I would simply have to white-knuckle my way through losing my father the way I white-knuckled everything else before I got help. Those boots have taught me instead that grief does not answer to willpower any better than addiction did. I have tried reasoning with it, telling myself he lived a long full life, that he died without much suffering, that I said everything I needed to say before the end. All of that is true, and none of it has moved those boots one inch closer to that bin.
Scripture never promises a man that grief stays small if his faith is strong enough. Jesus stood outside a tomb that held a friend He loved, already knowing He was about to raise him within minutes, and He wept first. "Jesus wept" (John 11:35, NKJV). Two words, and I lean on them harder than I expected to. He was not short on faith in that moment. He grieved anyway, before the miracle and not instead of it. I had quietly assumed real trust in God would make this hurt less by now. Jesus at Lazarus's tomb tells me that assumption was wrong from the start.
David wrote from inside exile and danger, a man running for his life, and he still believed his sorrow was being recorded rather than simply evaporating into nothing. "You number my wanderings; Put my tears into Your bottle; Are they not in Your book?" (Psalm 56:8, NKJV). I keep returning to that image of a bottle, something specific and kept, not vague sympathy from a distance. Jesus named this exact ache a blessing rather than a weakness to outgrow quickly. "Blessed are those who mourn, For they shall be comforted" (Matthew 5:4, NKJV). Not blessed are those who mourn on a reasonable timeline. Blessed simply in the mourning itself, with comfort promised rather than demanded on my schedule.
Paul wrote to a church grieving people they had genuinely lost, and he did not tell them to stop feeling the loss. He told them where to stand while they felt it. "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). The difference he draws is not between grieving and not grieving. It is between a sorrow with nowhere to go and a sorrow held inside a hope that outlasts it.
Here is where my own reasoning has never once gotten those boots into my truck. I can tell myself accurately that my father would want that garden tended by someone, that an old pair of boots will not bring him back, that holding an object is not the same as holding him. Every sentence is true, and none of it has loosened my grip, because grief was never a facts problem waiting on a better argument. It is a wound that reasoning can describe accurately from the outside without ever closing it, the way a man can diagnose a break in his own leg correctly and still not walk on it by thinking harder about the diagnosis.
This is exactly what abiding in the Spirit offers that sixteen years of knowing the right verses could never finish producing by itself. Paul tells the Romans that the Spirit does not wait for me to find the right words before He gets to work on my behalf. "Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered" (Romans 8:26, NKJV). Most evenings by that back door, I do not have a prayer in me more articulate than a groan, and this verse tells me that groan was never a failed prayer at all. It was the exact kind the Spirit was built to carry. Isaiah promises something stranger still, an actual exchange, one thing taken and something else placed in its spot. "To console those who mourn in Zion, To give them beauty for ashes, The oil of joy for mourning, The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness" (Isaiah 61:3, NKJV). I am not there yet with my father's boots. I believe the exchange is real anyway, because the peace I feel some mornings at that door was never manufactured by my own understanding finally catching up to the loss. It arrived ahead of the understanding, the way it always does when it is genuinely His.
I still have not moved those boots, and I have stopped being ashamed of that. Some Sundays I walk past them on my way out the back and say good morning to my father out loud, which probably looks strange to no one but matters to me more than looking normal does. God is alive today, and He already knows exactly whose empty chair, whose unworn boots, whose silence you are still standing beside tonight. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on your grief resolving on a tidy schedule, and He has promised a day when He will wipe away every tear with His own hand. "And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away" (Revelation 21:4, NKJV). He will never leave you alone at that back door, whatever you cannot yet bring yourself to move.
Scriptures used (NKJV): John 11:35; Psalm 56:8; Matthew 5:4; 1 Thessalonians 4:13; Romans 8:26; Isaiah 61:3; Revelation 21:4.
My father died eight months ago, and I ended up with his house, which means I walk past his work boots every time I go in through the back. They sit exactly where he left them the last morning he was well enough to wear them, caked with dried mud from a garden he never got to plant that spring. I have painted two rooms and cleared three closets of his clothes since he passed. I cannot move those boots. I have reached for them twice, meaning to finally carry them to my truck for the donation bin, and both times my hand stopped an inch above the leather like something physical was holding it back.
I am sixteen years sober, and I used to believe grief was one of the few things recovery could not touch, that I would simply have to white-knuckle my way through losing my father the way I white-knuckled everything else before I got help. Those boots have taught me instead that grief does not answer to willpower any better than addiction did. I have tried reasoning with it, telling myself he lived a long full life, that he died without much suffering, that I said everything I needed to say before the end. All of that is true, and none of it has moved those boots one inch closer to that bin.
Scripture never promises a man that grief stays small if his faith is strong enough. Jesus stood outside a tomb that held a friend He loved, already knowing He was about to raise him within minutes, and He wept first. "Jesus wept" (John 11:35, NKJV). Two words, and I lean on them harder than I expected to. He was not short on faith in that moment. He grieved anyway, before the miracle and not instead of it. I had quietly assumed real trust in God would make this hurt less by now. Jesus at Lazarus's tomb tells me that assumption was wrong from the start.
David wrote from inside exile and danger, a man running for his life, and he still believed his sorrow was being recorded rather than simply evaporating into nothing. "You number my wanderings; Put my tears into Your bottle; Are they not in Your book?" (Psalm 56:8, NKJV). I keep returning to that image of a bottle, something specific and kept, not vague sympathy from a distance. Jesus named this exact ache a blessing rather than a weakness to outgrow quickly. "Blessed are those who mourn, For they shall be comforted" (Matthew 5:4, NKJV). Not blessed are those who mourn on a reasonable timeline. Blessed simply in the mourning itself, with comfort promised rather than demanded on my schedule.
Paul wrote to a church grieving people they had genuinely lost, and he did not tell them to stop feeling the loss. He told them where to stand while they felt it. "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). The difference he draws is not between grieving and not grieving. It is between a sorrow with nowhere to go and a sorrow held inside a hope that outlasts it.
Here is where my own reasoning has never once gotten those boots into my truck. I can tell myself accurately that my father would want that garden tended by someone, that an old pair of boots will not bring him back, that holding an object is not the same as holding him. Every sentence is true, and none of it has loosened my grip, because grief was never a facts problem waiting on a better argument. It is a wound that reasoning can describe accurately from the outside without ever closing it, the way a man can diagnose a break in his own leg correctly and still not walk on it by thinking harder about the diagnosis.
This is exactly what abiding in the Spirit offers that sixteen years of knowing the right verses could never finish producing by itself. Paul tells the Romans that the Spirit does not wait for me to find the right words before He gets to work on my behalf. "Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered" (Romans 8:26, NKJV). Most evenings by that back door, I do not have a prayer in me more articulate than a groan, and this verse tells me that groan was never a failed prayer at all. It was the exact kind the Spirit was built to carry. Isaiah promises something stranger still, an actual exchange, one thing taken and something else placed in its spot. "To console those who mourn in Zion, To give them beauty for ashes, The oil of joy for mourning, The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness" (Isaiah 61:3, NKJV). I am not there yet with my father's boots. I believe the exchange is real anyway, because the peace I feel some mornings at that door was never manufactured by my own understanding finally catching up to the loss. It arrived ahead of the understanding, the way it always does when it is genuinely His.
I still have not moved those boots, and I have stopped being ashamed of that. Some Sundays I walk past them on my way out the back and say good morning to my father out loud, which probably looks strange to no one but matters to me more than looking normal does. God is alive today, and He already knows exactly whose empty chair, whose unworn boots, whose silence you are still standing beside tonight. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on your grief resolving on a tidy schedule, and He has promised a day when He will wipe away every tear with His own hand. "And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away" (Revelation 21:4, NKJV). He will never leave you alone at that back door, whatever you cannot yet bring yourself to move.
Scriptures used (NKJV): John 11:35; Psalm 56:8; Matthew 5:4; 1 Thessalonians 4:13; Romans 8:26; Isaiah 61:3; Revelation 21:4.
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