Central Lutheran Church - Elk River

#110 - What I Learned When my Dad Died {Reflections}

• Central Lutheran Church

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The moment that voicemail played in the dark car, everything we’d been holding back broke open. Grief hit like weather—sudden, total, impossible to outthink—and what followed became a lesson we didn’t know we needed about how to let emotions move without letting them take the wheel. We walk through the days around losing a beloved stepfather, from sleepless nights on a pull-out couch to a birthday that didn’t quite fit, and the strange clarity that arrives when you’re hungry, angry, lonely, or tired.

We talk about the thin veil that fatigue creates and why HALT isn’t just a recovery saying but a practical compass for emotional honesty. The heart of the conversation is a simple image: your life as a road you value, you as the driver, and your emotions as passengers asking for a seat. When you refuse them—especially sorrow, fear, and regret—they block your lane and push you into the weeds where frustration, numbness, and collateral damage grow. When you let them board, they can speak, settle, and ride along while you keep steering toward the person you want to become.

You’ll hear a real-time account of tears that arrived uninvited, why that release mattered, and how to find places and people who can hold space with you. We name the tension of being public-facing yet human, and we offer practical ways to feel safely: time-bound permission, grounding, and asking for help from those who love you. If you’ve ever been told to be strong at the cost of your inner life, this conversation reframes strength as presence, not performance, and invites you to grieve in a way that keeps you on the path of right living.

If this resonates, share it with someone who needs permission to feel. Subscribe for more reflective conversations, and leave a review with one takeaway—what emotion needs a seat on your bus today?

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SPEAKER_00:

Hey, what is up everybody? Ryan here, and welcome to our Reflections podcast. Hey, I wanted to kind of share something that I have, I don't know, gone through recently and then something that I had learned that I just remembered it was super helpful for me, and maybe maybe it'd be helpful for helpful for you too. I don't know. But so um yeah, a couple weeks ago, actually two weeks ago on Tuesday night, my dad died. And um, he's my stepdad who was probably the most significant man of my life. Yeah, I knew him since I was six years old. My mom and him started to date when I was six years old, and he was very present and prominent in my life and in many, many ways. And uh the point of this podcast is not to go into all that, but but uh it was it was deeply impactful, and actually what's surprising is um it was way more impactful than I even thought. Well, I was with him with my sister and my brother, and uh he's actually my stepbrother and my sister, and we were there the last few days. We flew down to Texas to be with him, and it was very emotional, moving, meaningful. You know, he was when I got there, he was um he was deeply medicated and and asleep. And so, but we spent many days with him and praying over him, talking with him, watching football with him, and my mom on her feet, I swear, and not sleeping for like several straight days was really strange, but you know how how we get. And uh, but here's what happened. So I flew home, uh, you know, he died on the Tuesday night. I flew home Thursday, and when I got home, and I'd been sleeping on my my parents' pull-out couch, and it was like the worst bed I've ever slept on, and not the worst, but one of the top. And so none of us had slept really well, and just out of sorts, out of our schedules, weird, you know, and obviously with him dying, it was just very and I, you know, it's hard to know how to process all of this stuff when it's happening. And even later, it's like, what what what is this? What was it? And and um, and sometimes I would argue we humans don't do the best job at like letting our emotions kind of in or letting them out. And no one's taught us, and if you're a especially if you're a man, sometimes generally the culture doesn't do a good job of allowing men to to express their emotions or feel them or know how to do that. No one knows, you know. I feel like men have two emotions, anger or nothing. Like they're just either like chill or they're angry. And reality, there's like way more than just those two. I mean, we this seems like intuitive, but but we generally only see or feel or think of zero or angry. And so anyway, here's what happened. So on uh I came back on Thursday, and then my birthday was on Friday, which also made it kind of weird. And then me and Katie celebrated, and we got a hotel downtown, and then on Sunday, Katie flew down to Texas to be with my mom to help with logistics and some other organizational things. And so she was gone for a few days, and then the following Wednesday, she flew home late at night. I'm driving down to the airport to pick her up in Minneapolis, and and to be frank, uh like earlier in the day at 8 o'clock, I I fell asleep. I never fall asleep this early, but I was tired and you know, I was tired for all kinds of reasons. One, it's fall here in Minnesota, and you know, the days get shorter pretty quickly, and it gets darker pretty early. And and so I generally in the fall I start getting tired earlier. It's like 5 30, 6 o'clock, and I'm like, what time is it? Is it midnight? What's going on? I'm so tired. And that doesn't last for long, but then your body adjusts. But anyway, so it was that, and then I don't know, probably all the things I've been going through. And so at eight o'clock, I laid down and closed my eyes and fell asleep and woke up an hour later. I'm like, ah, I need to go get Katie from the airport, so I boogied down there and got her. And so I had slept for an hour and I was like in this fog. And sometimes when you're tired or just waking up, it's like the there's a very thin veil between you and reality and your emotions, and it's all kind of right there bubbling on the surface. And um, this is why you know, addicts or alcoholics are told to be careful when you're tired. It's uh hungry, angry, lonely, or tired of the four halt, H A L T. So be careful when you're any one of those four things because you're vulnerable. And but also it's a good, it's a those are decent times to kind of like begin to ask good questions. And um anyway, so I'm tired. Um pick her up and we're driving back together, and it was we had some great conversation about my dad and my mom, and Katie loved my dad, my stepdad, because he was so good to her, and he called her his uh his favorite daughter-in-law. And he he would say the Spanish phrase for it because he loved to talk Spanish, so he would always call her that. And and uh she loved him because she tells me that she felt like he loved her unconditionally, and uh that's a gift, you know, if you have that. Anyway, so she started playing these voice messages from him that she had saved on her phone. And here I am driving home from Minneapolis in the car in the dark with my wife, and I just started like crying, and then it got like really intense crying, like I mean like crying, crying, you know, like I wasn't just tearing up and I wasn't just dropping a few tears, I started like crying. And uh Katie was like, Are you all right? You know, and and um I was not alright, and I don't think I knew it, and I started like crying even more intensely to the point where I thought I'm gonna have to pull over. Like I legit almost pulled over, and then Katie goes, Hey, do you want to pull over? And I almost did, but I kind of like I didn't, and I, you know, it's sort of the moment came and then it it went. And then several more times on the way home, I cried again, not as intense as that one time. And then the next day at work, I was at work and sitting at my desk, and I just was like overwhelmed with emotion and just started crying in my office again. And uh, it was as though like I had this cavern of emotions deep down in my body or something, and this my my dad dying was like um like someone kicking me off into off the cliff into this big cavern of like sadness and sorrow, but all these emotions, and and I was like plunging headfirst into them. And so anyway, here's what it reminded me of because uh here's what you do in those moments, what I would argue you know, as a pastor, as a man, here's what you gotta do. You gotta let them come, you know, and uh whatever the emotion is, you you gotta let it come. And they don't last forever, you know. I'm not gonna cry forever, but um we we do a terrible job at this. We usually try to stuff it or get our you know stuff together and wipe our eyes and try to be strong and be courageous. Um and uh I think I've been doing that for a couple of weeks, trying to do that. But but you've got to let them come and let them let them take over and and for a moment anyway, you know, and and if you're around somebody that can hold that space for you, better, that's all the better, you know. Because I I learned this, like you know, imagine you're you're driving a big bus on a road, and that road is like your life and the life you want to live, and and the the things you value and like the life of righteousness. And by that I mean like just like right living. If you're like, here's how I want to live my life, I want to be this kind of person, and and uh here's how I want to, you know, spend my days, and that's the road you're on. You drive on that road, and that'll lead you to the kind of you know, this right way of living. And and every everything on the side is kind of like off the path, you know, and destruction and hurt and pain, whatever. Well, your emotions will uh they show up on occasion, if you can imagine this, and they're like little passengers for your bus, and they want to get on the bus, and they're like knocking on the door, you can imagine them knocking on the door and asking for a ride, and many of us are like, nah, I don't have time for you, or I'm a man, I can't handle you know like sadness. I you don't I'm you I have no seats for you in the bus, sadness, or uh sadness is weakness, or whatever. And so we don't let these emotions in the bus. And um well, here's what happens generally, the emotions they they want to ride, they need a ride, and because they're a part of you, they're they're they're they're down there and they're they're a part of your your life and your being and your experience of life. Life with no emotions is not life, it's something strangely bizarre. And um so they gotta get on. And so if you don't let them on, they tend to get kind of like upset about that, you know. And if you can imagine like these these picketers that you see on these uh these highways where they picket and they link arms and they go across the road blocking the road, and it's sort of annoying in these these cars like what do we do, you know? And they get angry and they honk and they drive around them and it can get kind of ugly, but but yeah, your emotions will kind of link arms and they will block the path of the bus that you're driving. And so what you're forced to do is like, forget this. And you if you if you double down, like I'm not letting you on, you veer off the path. And then now you're off the path, and you're down in the weeds, and your bus can't drive in the weeds, and you're living this life that was not the one you wanted, you know what I mean? And and so you become somebody you're not, or or live in a way you didn't want to live, and and um because the emotions don't go away. This is like the obviously the old saying, you if you stuff them, they'll just come out some other way. And this is why people kick the dog when they come home from work. They're they're deeply sad because maybe they're at work and they're living a life that is utterly boring or not what they want to, or they're unhappy with their marriage, or they're um they regret things from their past, or they long for something more, or they, you know, the their boss is just a jerk and it just it kills their soul. These kinds of things, and and if you don't let those emotions in and experience them and go into this cavern, then you come home and you kick the dog, or you yell at the kids, or you, you know, uh you take out on your wife, or whatever your things are, and um, and you veer off the path. And uh you don't live the life that you were supposed to live or meant to live. And and so what I want to say is however you can today and in the weeks ahead is let those emotions come. And uh, if you can do it with people that love you and that you love that can hold space for you, then do that. I mean, there's obviously not appropriate there's appropriate times and inappropriate times. I mean, as a pastor, I'm not gonna get up on Sunday morning and like lose it. I mean, some in some cases maybe I should, and it would be good for the people to see that, but some folks can't handle that or carry that for you. But find friends that can and and you know, you can you can do your thing in front of them, and you can cry and weep or yell and scream or shake your fist at the at the moon or at the clouds or pound sand or whatever you gotta do. But let them out because if you don't let them out, they'll come out another way, they'll come out sideways, um, or they'll uh they'll block the pathway and you wind up driving off the path. So, anyhow, uh love you guys and um talk to you soon. Peace. Hey, if you enjoy this show, I'd love to have you share it with some friends. And don't forget you are always welcome to join us in person at Central in Elk River at 8 30, which is our liturgical gathering, or at 10 o'clock, our modern gathering. Or you can check us out online at clcelkriver.org. Peace.

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Ryan Braley

Host