As many (most or maybe all) of you know, my father had a stroke almost two months ago. Recently, when I was driving my mom home from the rehabilitation hospital, she asked me if I still thought about the morning of my dad’s stroke. I didn’t even have to reflect before responding,”I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.”

On September 16, my wife, Tracy, and I were getting ready to go on a run with our dog. Tracy looked at my phone and said, “Oh, your mom tried calling you.” I personally didn’t think much of it and even said something like, “If she needs me, she’ll call back.” Within seconds, my mom was calling Tracy’s phone. I picked up and jovially said, “This is your son, Timothy, answering on Tracy’s phone.” I then heard the panic in her voice:

“Timothy, something’s wrong with dad! He can’t get up. I don’t know what to do! Come here now.”

Tracy and I quickly got in the van and went to the house. My mom, who was understandably crying, met us as we walked in the door. I rushed into my parent’s bedroom. My dad was still on the floor. He couldn’t move. He was talking, but it was slurred. As I tried to get my dad up and back onto the bed, Tracy called 911. His whole left side refused to move; but, with my mom’s help, we got him into the bed and then prepared him for the ambulance. I tried to lay him down in his bed, but his breathing sounded too labored. To add to this, he also began vomiting once he was off the floor. I sat him up and held him.

In the midst of all of this chaos, while he was laying down, my dad called my name: “Timothy, look at me.” I looked at him and he raised his pointer finger and waved it. That probably wouldn’t mean anything to you, but it means so much to me. You see, when I was a little boy, my dad often told me I was his #1 son. Now, of course, I was his only son, but it has always had a special meaning just the same. One way he told me I was #1 was by waving to me with just his pointer finger raised. I still remember when I was about 10 years old, playing in a friend’s driveway, and dad drove by on his way home. He looked at me with his pointer finger waving. Now, decades later, as I’m looking at my helpless father, he’s waving that pointer finger at me. Neither he nor I knew what was going to happen in the moments or days ahead, but he wanted me to know I was still his #1.

All of this happened within five minutes. The ambulance arrived. Questions were asked. Dad and mom were rushed to the hospital. I broke down. But we had to keep moving. We gathered a few of mom and dad’s things and locked up the house. We went to get our daughter from pre-school and were trying to decide what to do about taking her to the hospital or not, but as only God could plan, good friends were staying with us that week! They watched her and they also watched our other kids after they got home from school. (Praise the Lord!) After dropping our daughter back off at home, we headed to Holland Hospital. I briefly spoke to a friend was at the church, asking him to pray. I then tried to contact other family members, and I also called David Pollard. Immediately he said, “I’ll meet you at the hospital.” He was waiting for us when we arrived. I needed that. He did not say much, but his presence was a balm to my sorrow.

From Holland, my dad was moved to Spectrum Hospital in Grand Rapids. In the ER, they asked questions and I was grateful that, although his speech was slow, my dad could talk. However, I was sad because he did not recognize his left arm or leg as his own. He also did not understand why he couldn’t recognize his entire left side. His vision was blurred and he could not decipher certain things. This didn’t seem real or possible. My dad, who in many was a rock to me, was suddenly so weak. What was going to happen? My dad was my greatest example of loving God, being vigilant in prayer, loving his wife, serving others with joy, evangelism, sacrificial love with a local church and so many other things. In my mind, I was thinking, “This isn’t supposed to happen to him!” But there were two stubborn truths that came to me. First was the message I preached from Ecclesiastes the Sunday before the stroke. The initial verses from the text I was preaching say this:

But all this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. Whether it is love or hate, man does not know; both are before him. It is the same for all, since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the sinner, and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath. This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. – Ecclesiastes 1:1-3 (ESV)

In this world, we will have trials. And I remember that when I was preaching on this text, I said something like, “And when trials come, they come suddenly. You don’t expect them to happen to you!” You can see how this was a stubborn truth because I had just preached this and now this sudden event was happening to my dad. Was I going to embrace this or not?

The second stubborn truth was that two days before my dad’s stroke, I was praying with him and David Pollard for our regular Wednesday morning prayer time, and during the prayer time, I was praying that God would do whatever it takes to purify us for his glory. Then I said something like, “Even if that means causing us to limp as a reminder for the rest of our days like you did with Jacob, do it.” I recall hearing my dad’s affirmation of that as we were praying together.

I was faced with a decision: would I accept these circumstances? In reality, while I was very sad and I felt the questions arising in my soul, I’m so grateful that God’s faithfulness and truth were (and are) my rock. All of this has been hard to experience, but hard is not bad.

It’s on that note that I want to open up a little more. My dad spent one week in ICU and has now been at an amazing rehabilitation hospital for the past 5 weeks. Over these last six weeks, there has been such an incredible outpouring of love from my extended family, church family, friends, and neighbors – old and new, and I’ve been so encouraged. But at the same time, I have also had certain moments of sorrow. My sorrow does not negate all the blessings, but instead it cries out in recognition of God’s past blessings and God’s future grace.

The Bible tells us that God stores our tears in a bottle, and he also comforts us in our present sorrows. One reason why I’m even writing this post is because something triggered my emotions this morning. I saw a picture of my dad. I opened up my Time Hop app on my phone and saw that I had posted a picture of my dad three years ago. On this day in 2013, he was helping me put up a new ceiling fan. That picture encapsulates so much of my relationship with my dad: my dad who loves me more than I’ll know and who is always ready to serve in whatever way possible. But this picture also calls me to lay my burdens at God’s feet. Whatever God has in store is also gloriously good.

Someday, maybe I’ll specifically recount all the ways that God has revealed his glory through my dad’s new “limp:” the people he’s testified to of God’s faithfulness, the relationships that have continued to develop, the words that have encouraged others, even how God has encouraged him while he’s felt discouraged. But for now, I want to state my gratitude for my dad, acknowledge the sorrow and then also confess that God’s comfort is so good because instead of ignoring my sorrows, he embraces me in the midst of them. Because of his great love for me in Jesus, whether I feel it or not, I know this to be true.