Sigh

What did Jesus do when the Pharisees started bugging him? 

He "sighed deeply in his spirit." 
Mark 8

I know what that looks like.  It's when your heart drops or your blood pressure rises, but you don't let it show.  You feel the emotion run deep and piercing, but you maintain self-control on the exterior.  I think this past Christmas weekend had me sighing in my spirit more than any I can remember. 

It began with high hopes, as we piled into the mini-van with duffels and gifts and food to share, along with an assortment of cords for the kids' new technology, embarking on a five-and-a-half-hour road trip to Illinois to visit my dad and step-mom. 

When we arrived, there was an immediate spirit of heaviness.  My step-mom's father had been in a terrible car accident three months ago, and she had been on the road many times a week to be with him and her mom at the hospital.  She was weary and tears spilled over many times.  Deep sigh. 

My dad was missing his father, who died in October.  He had been my Opa's caregiver for 6 years as he battled Alzheimer's in a nearby nursing home.  It was grueling and heartbreaking, but his absence seems equally hard and Dad is depressed.  Deep sigh. 

I don't know how to comfort my dad.  I gave my step-mom and him a beautiful stone transformed into an oil lamp, and wrote them a poem about carrying light through the dark times and fanning each other's flames. 

They cried when they read it, and we ate dinner by the light of the rock.  But, still, I don't know how to connect and stay connected to my dad.  I want to give him this hope and faith in Christ that lights my way, but that is not what he wants.  Deep sigh. 

I long for sweet times of connection with my kids and their grandparents.  It's happened in the past while singing and guitar playing and writing silly songs together.  There were a few lighthearted moments as they pulled up funny apps on their iPods and convinced Granny Cathy to download Talking Tom Cat so that they could all play at the same time.  But mostly, they went their own ways, watching football, playing games, acting shy. 

Dad and I usually get to make some music together, but where was I?  On the couch most of the weekend with the stomach flu or food poisoning, trading good conversation for many, many visits to the bathroom. Deep, deep sigh. 

But the soul-deep, guttural groan that I masked with a compassionate smile came when we visited Grandpa Bob in the hospital.  I thought I knew what a person would look like after 3 months in ICU.  I knew he would have a trach and many wires and that he had grown thin.  But he was an unmoving, unwaking, ghostly skeleton of a man, who last Christmas was a friendly, barrel-chested farmer with a big grin and hug for us at the door.  What are they all to do, Lord?  How long can they endure this?

I am glad to be home, nursing my stomach back to health, praying for all this suffering. Praying for:

 ...the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair...
Isaiah 61:3

But on this windy, bleak, mid-winter day, there are just deep sighs.