Space For Something New
“Dad, I’m not a Detroit Lions fan anymore.”
Now before you ask why anyone would be a Lions fan in the first place, let me give a little context about why this statement from my 13-year-old hurt so much. Spending nearly my entire life in Michigan, I was destined to be a Lions fan. When my oldest daughter Ellary was 4, we moved to Detroit and I discipled her in the ways of a Lions fan, teaching her important lessons like “don’t get your hopes up,” “at least we have snacks,” and “there’s always the draft.”
I have so many memories of Sunday afternoons wearing matching Lions jerseys, sitting on the couch with a bowl of popcorn in my lap and my arm around my daughter. I couldn’t care less about their record, I just enjoyed being with her.
So, when she declared that she was a sell-out…er, I mean, that she was no longer a Lions fan…I stood in the living room with my jaw open, stunned and unexpectedly sad.
It's not about the Lions. It’s that the little girl who used to sit next to me on the couch watching the Lions game is now spending her Sundays texting friends or talking with her mom about skin or hair care. I was warned about mood swings, braces, and distressing whispers about boys. I knew that leaving Detroit would involve a great deal of loss for me. But I didn’t know that my precious daughter growing into a beautiful woman would involve me losing my football buddy.
It’s all surprisingly hard. And, at the same time, I know that losing something opens the space for something new. Fathering with this perspective is a risky place to be, but it’s also the faith heritage we share from the father of nations.
“By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice…Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.”-Hebrews 11:17-19.
Faith to offer a child to God, not sure how God will fill the uncertain and vulnerable space left behind but trusting that God can bring life to dead things.
So, I’m on the lookout now for how God wants to fill the space that the loss of my football buddy has left behind. In the meantime, I already see the space that my wife, Meghan, is being asked to fill by Ellary; my old football buddy is becoming Meghan’s new Starbucks Steamers buddy. Something so sad is also something so good.
It's good I’ve had a teacher in the Detroit Lions, helping me know how to handle loss.
Is there some part of your life where you are resisting God opening up space? Do you see, even if at a distance, what God might want to fill that space with?
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Kevin Armstrong, Director of Legacy Partnerships
