The Hargrove Home

Since having my own children Father's Day has been mostly about Kaleb. He's the father of my babies and the best one at that so I do my best to figure out how to make him feel special on the Father's Days he has experienced. I do that because he deserves it but I also do it because I know he misses his own dad. This fatherless thing isn't quite new to me. I've watched both of my favorite people, my husband and sister, lose their dads and really deal with it. I mean really, really deal with it. I've seen Kaleb break down in a hallway and Charlotte cry on the kitchen floor. I've seen it. I've witnessed it first hand but then my own dad passed away and I wondered why it hadn't hit me the way it did them. I felt mostly numb, I wrestled with my faith a bit, and I just simply missed him. I missed him incredibly much especially during the holidays with family around and definitely when Abigail was born and everyone visited us at the hospital. He wasn't there and it was hard. But I didn't imagine Father's Day being this hard. It's not even here and every time I see another Father's Day gift pop up on Instagram or Amazon telling me "Your dad would love this" I simply feel a bit sick.

I think I need to simply unplug that week from social media lest every dad post make me weep and make me long for my own dad who isn't here. I haven't done much breaking/melting down since he passed away but when I think about not being able to call my own dad on Father's Day, it hurts. It hurts in a new way that it hasn't hurt like this whole time hes been gone.

I just miss him.

I think for now it's ok to be sad.

Last year when I turned 24 I posted a little photo of me, Kaleb, and Elijah with a caption that read-

"I feel like this is the first year that I can confidently say I know who I am. Some people find themselves in high school, some in college but I found myself this last year."

Two days later I miscarried our baby.

While I do believe I found myself that year I also believe that this past year I have found my faith. I've always had such an easy time choosing God. As soon as I was saved any hard time that came it was still so easy for me to choose the Lord. But then we lost a baby and then I lost my dad and somehow choosing God became not so easy. I wrote a post about my dad and shared how I almost walked away from it all. That moment of deciding all of this was still worth it changed my faith and challenged it really to keep growing. I really had to ask myself (and I still do) if I believe that right now God is still who I believe Him to be. Is He a good father? Yes. Is He mighty to save? Yes. Is He my comfort and peace even now? Yes. Is He my teacher and my bridegroom? Yes. Does He love me? YES! Do I love Him? A thousand times, YES! There were moments while I was in the middle of loss where I really thought the Lord didn't love me. But right now seeing that perfect little girl napping so soundly in her swing and that rambunctious, joyous toddler reading books on the floor I know that He does. Look at those two gifts He entrusted me with. Let alone the amazing gift of marrying Kaleb that He entrusted me with as well. All of these things, all of this sequence of events carried out goodness in the end because that's what He promised back in Romans 8. We know two things for sure: that there will be trouble in this life but that He is the giver of peace. He has overcome the world! While He didn't cause these things He can and He does weave them together and makes something incredibly beautiful out of them because He is Father who loves His children deeply. It doesn't always come in the form of an actual gift like a home or a child. Sometimes it comes in the form of things you've never experienced before like peace that you can't explain or value that you never realized you had before. That tough season or hard moment you find yourself in? Just hold tight to Elohim. There is something great coming for you.

"Yes, my soul, find rest in God; my hope comes from him. Truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken." Psalm 62:5-6

I've never walked such a hard road in the (almost) 6 years I've been saved than I have in these last 6 months. Death can really take a toll on you and your faith. My grandmother, my miscarriage, and then my dad. It's all too much heartache at one time to even bare most days. In my quest of "why" I've found that I just wanted to walk away from this whole thing. Salvation, Jesus, God, church, Christianity....all of it. I just wanted out. If this was what was going to happen, God would take people from me...then I wanted out. That's what I've thought these last two weeks more than ever. I just. Want. Out. I could scream it to the top of my lungs and probably still not believe it though. I don't walk this road with the Lord because it's easy or comfortable. It's the exact opposite. C.S. Lewis said "I didn't go to religion to make me 'happy'. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don't recommend Christianity." Nothing ever really shook my faith before this. I've honestly stood on solid ground through the entirety of these last 6 years. Even with minor hurt and questions and seasons, I've just stood on solid ground. So, when the ground started breaking beneath me I thought about running. It would feel better to run than it would to stand here while it shakes.

But I can't walk away. I never could and I never will. That doesn't speak on what an amazing Christian I am or how big my faith is. It speaks on how amazing my God is and how He is ALWAYS faithful even when I'm faithless. There was a time when I lived without God and it was the worst time of my life. And still while I ignored Him and turned my back on His face, He relentlessly pursued me. He didn't stop because I made it hard. He kept on pushing and whispering and loving me. He didn't give up and I can't give up now. Because even while this whole ordeal hurts like hell I've still never known peace like this. A peace that flows in and out of my soul even in the midst of pain. I still have hope. I still have a Kingdom I'll be in one day where I will have the most beautiful reunion with my dad and we will hold hands while we worship the Father who so selflessly gave His son for us so that we could be right there in that moment together. And that son who could have walked away just as easily as I could, shed his blood to make a way for me, for my dad, for my husband, and for my children.



Grief and mourning aren't necessarily new to me but losing a parent takes on a whole new form. It's weird and tricky. Even after you're married and start a family of your own, you still lost someone who you saw day in and day out for so many years. Majority of those years were spent in attitude and teen angst; disliking all of the times he said no and begging him to say yes. Never understanding that he was trying to protect me. And without God we wouldn't have been able to restore our relationship. I wouldn't have been able to experience a father/daughter relationship the way it was meant to be if He hadn't wrecked me and gave me new life. While I will never understand why that exact moment was the time the Lord chose to call my dad Home, I am so thankful that He called him to a Home that I will one day share with him. I am thankful for 5 years of restoration. I am thankful he walked me down the aisle and gave me away to another man who now protects me. I am thankful he spent 2 years loving his first grand baby. I am thankful he loved my mom and gave me Charlotte as a sister when she was just 4 years old. I am thankful he always helped me move to a new apartment even though he was tired and his body was weak. I am thankful for small moments spent out in the garage together just talking about nothing and everything. I am thankful for the time and space he allowed me to have when I went away to college. I am thankful for the countless years he loved me even when I was rebellious and wild. I am thankful he never gave up on me.



He spent more years wrapped in addiction than he did walking with the Lord but the biggest picture I see is the VICTORY his story tells. His testimony colors the picture of perseverance so perfectly. It shows that he struggled and sinned but that God can change any life, at any age, and at any season.  His story reminds me why I can't give up and walk away. My dad's life will be a reminder always of the purpose the pain has. The Lord loves my dad so much that He saw his broken body and chose to take him to a place where his body is whole and his pain is completely wiped away. He gives and takes away and while he takes away He still remains good and He still remains God.

Three years.

I am learning so much about hardships lately. Not even just my own but hardships as a whole and how we deal with them as a result of the growth that springs forth from it. I press my face against the cold floor and my head spins with all of the hardships that people around me are facing. Barren women longing to hold life in their womb, single women longing to be held by a husband. Sick family members and friends needing healing, others who are in desperate need of deliverance from addictions. People who are close to living on the street, others who are trying to provide for babies who are low on diapers. It's so much and it's all around us and I'm learning that walking through hardships with the smile and the positivity is not what saves you from them.

There are many times that choosing joy and holding your head up is an answer but honestly I believe that majority of the time we will see the roots grow the deepest in our faith when we allow ourselves to be wracked with emotions and grieve our hardships. I truly believe that it's easy to look up and choose the joy, pressing forward and walking along. What I believe is the hardest thing is to allow the waves to crash over you. To allow yourself to be tossed around through the waters, barely breathing, angry and fighting, gasping for air until you give up and push your hand through the troubled waters, waiting for His hand to intertwine with yours. "He will never give you more than you can handle" is such a silly phrase. Of course He will. If it was easy and you could handle it and being positive was enough to get you through it then you would never need Him.

"For You, God, tested us;
You refined us as silver is refined. 
You lured us into a trap;
You placed burdens on our  backs.
You let men ride over our heads;
we went through fire and water,..."

Yep. That fire you're walking through, it's hot. And those waters are falling so hard you feel like you can't breathe. But wait, friends. Just wait and read this last verse.

"But you brought us out to ABUNDANCE."

He brought us out and into abundance nonetheless. He doesn't just pull us out from our hardships and then let us lay there...He pulls us out and then gives us the abundance. The abundance doesn't always look the way we think it should but it looks exactly how He knows it should. Maybe He brought you out of your financial struggles through the help of paying off your debt instead of handing you a job with a $50,000 salary. Maybe instead of giving life to a baby He fills your home with 7 or 8 adopted children. Maybe instead of your own house to live in, He gives you a room in someone else's home to call your own.

Life is hard, y'all. I don't care how good you have it with your perfect family and your perfect home. Life. Is. Hard. He even tells us in John 16:33 that the troubles will come. They will come over and over again. It will be hard but the good thing is-we can do hard things and the reason we can do hard things is because in that moment of fighting when we decide we're to weak and we give up...He gives us His strength. What a great trade off that is. When we're weak He's strong and so that mountain you're facing can and will be leveled out for you (Isaiah 45:2). You won't do it by yourself and that's ok because that's the point. He goes before us and knows whats ahead. He allows us to keep walking down the horrible path we've put ourselves on. He lets us feel the heat from the fire. He lets the waves crash over us. But we're never burned and we never drown. We never stay on the same path we start out on. Because He brings us out and He brings us to abundance.

Always.