ABSENCE

​Last Saturday, I had to get ready for a solo gig while Mallory, Slater, and her mom went shopping. The silence of the house was deafening. It wasn’t the same as when Slater is asleep and we are quiet to let him rest. I could hear they weren’t here, feel they weren’t here, and I knew they weren’t here.

I started to think about cherishing moments. The absence of my wife and son made me realize that there will come a day where Slater will leave us and start his own life, and it’ll be here before we know it. Thought it will be bittersweet, I smiled knowing that we still have some time with our little guy.

I began to think about the phrase, absence makes the heart grow fonder, and my train of thought expanded to a much larger scale about what we can’t live without.

Today, I was resting thinking about eternal separation from God and two ideas popped in my head. Missing my son and wife is no comparison to the anguish we would feel without God in our lives. Also, even in our worst trial, God is still with us and it doesn’t even come close to how awful it would feel to never see our Creator again. The pain you feel from your worst trial is incomparable to the pain you would feel from eternal separation.

Equating tangible situations with something we haven’t experienced (hopefully we never have to) is flawed in various ways. For example, Mallory and I have so many new emotions and triggers regarding children, and rightly so. Obviously, certain scenarios couldn’t capture us before Slater and the time we have shared with him.

At the very least, we do get a sense or an idea of what could be when we try and empathize by imagining these events through the lens of the things that we value in our lives and our own experiences. Ultimately, unless our situations perfectly parallel each other, it’s simply not as gripping from the outside perspective. To clarify, you definitely feel for them, but you don’t necessarily share the same pain.

The point I’m trying to make is that you can imagine through life experiences, but you can’t know what it’s like to be without God, and I pray none of us ever have to.

If I could wrap this up with a nice bow of a conclusion, I would say cherish every moment you have and remember the moments without, so when emotions try to dictate responses and knee-jerk reactions that you may regret later, you can dilute them with the way you truly feel about God, family, and friends.

“With God life is an endless hope.

Without God, life is a hopeless end.”

- Bill Bright

“The memories we make with our family is everything.”

- Candace Cameron Bure

“Don’t make friends who are comfortable to be with.

Make friends who will force you to lever yourself up.”

– Thomas J. Watson