After Distance, Still Love
Before this weekend, I wrote about choosing distance - not because I stopped loving, but because loving myself finally required it.
(When Love Requires Distance)
What I didn’t fully name then was the grief that comes with that choice. Not the kind that follows a funeral, but the kind that lives and breathes and stands inches from you, silent.
I went into a weekend with family knowing they love and support me, and also knowing my resolve would probably be tested. I tried not to overthink it. I told myself to stay present, to focus on the kids, to let the weekend be what it was. The house filled up the way familiar places always do. Kids laughing, doors opening and closing, Nerf bullets flying, memories layered into the walls. I didn’t take many pictures. I was too busy watching them, soaking them in, letting their joy anchor me to the moment. And still, I felt a quiet awareness underneath it all.
There was a moment when we stood just inches apart, and I paused. Lingering longer than I needed to, allowing space, just in case.
Nothing came.
There is a particular kind of grief that exists only when someone is still alive. When the person you long for is right there, but the relationship you need isn’t. There’s no moment that marks the loss, no clear ending - just the slow understanding that this may be who they are choosing to be, even now. This weekend reminded me how heavy that grief feels when it lives inside a father–daughter relationship. When we pulled away, the weight finally caught up to me. I cried the whole drive home. I cried until I had no more tears. I’m in my thirties, but grief doesn’t age. That little girl still lives in me. The one who keeps wondering why she was never enough to make someone stay, speak, try. Before the weekend, I had written something down for myself. Not to rehearse or convince myself of anything - just something to come back to if I needed it.
Father, help me respond without abandoning myself.
I kept returning to that line, especially in the quiet moments. Especially when every instinct in me wanted to smooth things over, to reach, to pretend. For so long, I thought responding “well” meant staying quiet, absorbing hurt, calling endurance love. But standing there this weekend, something finally shifted. I’m learning that restraint isn’t weakness. Choosing not to reach for someone who has never reached back isn’t cruelty or punishment.
Sometimes, I think, it’s faithfulness.
I don’t struggle with forgiveness the way I once did. What I still struggle with is the expectation that forgiveness means pretending nothing happened - that it requires access, that it asks me to reopen wounds that were never acknowledged in the first place.
So I forgive, and I still keep my distance.
That combination used to confuse me. It doesn’t as much anymore. I used to believe boundaries meant hardness. Now I see them more like care. Like walls around something rebuilt after too many breaches, not to keep love out, but to protect what’s finally growing inside. Even Jesus lived this way. He loved fully, but He didn’t entrust Himself to everyone. That realization didn’t come to me all at once or through clarity; it came quietly, almost like relief. Love and access aren’t always the same thing, and I didn’t understand that for a long time.
And peace - real peace - doesn’t ask us to pretend.
I’ve lived too much of my life performing peace while bleeding underneath it. Smiling, minimizing, convincing myself that if I just stayed quiet everything would eventually settle. But false peace still hurts. It still leaks. It still costs you yourself. Naming the wound doesn’t feel unfaithful anymore. It feels honest. Still, kindness matters to me. It always has. But kindness doesn’t require closeness. It doesn’t require emotional intimacy or private conversations or pretending trust exists where it hasn’t been rebuilt. Kindness is a posture, not proximity.
This weekend also required a tough conversation. Before we went, I sat my kids down and told them something important: my hurt does not have to be theirs. If they wanted to approach him, they could. If they wanted to hug him or talk to him or be curious, they were free to do so. I never want them to carry what I’ve had to carry. I never want my boundaries to become their burden. Still, kids know more than we think. At one point, my sweet girl looked at me with tears in her eyes and asked, “Are you okay?” And in that moment, I realized that even when I try to hide it. Even when I think I’m protecting them - they feel it. They see it. They sense when something is tender.
And maybe that’s not something to be afraid of.
Because what they’re learning isn’t resentment. It’s empathy.
They’re learning that love can exist alongside boundaries, that honesty matters, that pain can be acknowledged without letting it harden you, that compassion doesn’t require disappearing. I pray they carry that into the world - the ability to feel deeply without losing themselves, the wisdom to love without abandoning their own needs, the courage to tell the truth with gentleness.
If this is the legacy that comes from my grief, then maybe it isn’t wasted.
This weekend reminded me of something tender and hard at the same time: I can love, I can grieve, I can show up with grace, and I can still protect the parts of me that were never protected before.
Distance didn’t fail this weekend. It did exactly what it was meant to do.
It kept me intact.
And that is the story I’m still learning how to tell - first to myself, and then, gently, to my children.
These were the verses I kept returning to:
Luke 17:3–4 (NIV)
“If they repent, forgive them.”
Proverbs 25:28 (NIV)
“Like a city whose walls are broken through is a person who lacks self-control.”
John 2:24–25 (NIV)
“But Jesus would not entrust himself to them…”
Jeremiah 6:14 (NIV)
“‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.”
Romans 12:20–21 (NIV)
“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
