Daily Lesson for July 23, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Psalm 90 verse 12:

"Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom."

Last night was a hard night. Irie and I leave for England later this morning, and as we were packing our bags with all the last minute things it really fell on us all that we are leaving and that our kids are not.

As our daughter Gabby laid on the bed with big tears filling the corners of my eyes, I thought back to another time, the first time, when the thought of our departing set in on her.

A few years back, when she was about 5, Gabby walked in to the bathroom while I was shaving. She had never seen me with shaving cream on my face. "What's that?" she asked.  "That's shaving cream."  "Oh," she said, "I thought your beard was grey."  "It is," I said -- not adding that that's the main reason I shave it.  In fact I could not have added that, because I saw the look in her eyes when she heard those two words, "It is," and I knew deep within myself that something had just happened in Gabby that could never be taken back undone. That look, with all its primordial power, was an eternal look -- one fathers at one time or another all have to see in their daughters' eyes.  She began to tear up, but having seen the look and felt it deep within me I was not surprised. Nor was I surprised by what she said next. "But I don't want you to die."

What Gabby and I both experienced that morning in the bathroom and what she, Irie and I experienced again last night is a kind of anticipatory grief -- grief before departure. It is a sad and even heartbreaking pain, and yet it is a necessary one. It is the way God teaches about our own mortality and that of those we love.  A little grey in the beard, the final zipping of a bag before a trip, and the refusal to say, "It's alright; I'll be back," but instead the reaching for something deeper and always truer, "You know I love you, and that the good LORD is with us no matter what, right?"

These are the ways God teaches us to learn to say goodbye -- the ways God teaches us to number our days and gain the heart for wisdom.