Janet Benlien Reeves

It’s been six months since my father died. In a way, I am experiencing the grieving process for the first time. Yes. I have grieved for others—grandparents, pets, relationships lost to distance and time. But grieving for my father is different; the pain of his loss cuts deeper. I’ve been writing out this cutting pain through poems, essays, and remembrances. I sometimes feel I’m observing myself from outside of myself, attempting to make sense of what I’m feeling. I’m not yet ready to share most of these thoughts. Just revisiting them in my journal can cause me to close my eyes and shut them out, shut the book, grasp for something, almost anything else. Someday I’ll be ready to face them and to savor their sacred beauty. Encountering them now still takes my breath away. But this most recent observation is ready to be released into the world—or so I believe. If you are experiencing a season of grief, I pray you’ll find some solace here. A few weeks ago, I realized that every death ...

I was just a kid when our country celebrated its bicentennial—a few years older than my oldest grandchildren are now. This means they’ll be almost my current age when our country celebrates its tricentennial. I wonder if they’ll look back on today’s semiquincentennial (half of five hundred years) as something magical in the same way I look back on the bicentennial. I don’t remember how my family celebrated that year. I’m sure there were fireworks, whether we drove twenty minutes to watch them over Disneyland or in the other direction to watch them at the beach. I do remember the bicentennial quarters and two-dollar bills; I still have a few of each, keepsakes more than currency. But our class field trip to Disneyland is my stand-out memory. In honor of the bicentennial, the amusement park invited elementary school students from all over Orange County to spend a school day at Disneyland. This was before Disneyland offered unlimited access to rides with admission. Guests purchased ticket...

I don’t think I understood the assignment. I only wish I could remember the story behind the picture, but I’m guessing my expression is somehow related to the flowery headband. Today’s expression captured in pictures or forced frills will be the same. What’s a girl to do on Father’s Day when she no longer has a living dad? One clear snapshot has impressed itself on my mind today, one that now only exists in my mind. I wonder if Dad carried the memory, too—he and I were the only ones in the foreground of this image, a moment that only belonged to us. I don’t know how old I was—older than three because we lived on Gamma Street. Not so old as five. I suspect events leading up to this moment had something to do with sibling jealousy over my brother’s arrival and the resulting demands on my mother’s time, but that is unclear. I was going through a mommy phase. I wanted Mommy to tuck me in at night. I wanted Mommy to carry me around. I wanted Mommy, just Mommy. I wanted nothing to do wit...

At Christmastime, we celebrate Jesus’ birth— as we live the life made possible through His death and resurrection— while we look forward with hope to His return. We focus on His Nativity, but we know that event has already happened. Christ’s birth is in the past, not something we hope for now. We celebrate Jesus’ birth at Christmas the way we celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, adoptions, and other annual celebrations of one-time events. But Christmas is more than a birthday celebration. Christmas is a remembrance of hope. We no longer hope for the promised Christ child. He has already come. Instead, we hope—look forward to—the second coming of our grown-up, mission-fulfilled, crucified, resurrected, and glorified Savior and King for eternity. The remembrance and reality of the first event is our hope for the second. We live in this hope every day. Just as God was and is and is to come (Revelation 1:8), through Advent, we celebrate what happened in the past, what is happening...