dad | Elaine Olsen

Will I See You in the Morning?

July 17, 2026

Granny Camp ended on Tuesday when her parents came to pick her up after their four-day getaway to celebrate their anniversary.

What a time we had – Granny, Poppy, Aunt Mimi and our grand-girl, Finley. As a six-year-old, she has turned a corner on former interests. Gone is Paw Patrol. Come is Super Smash Brothers. It’s a joy to enter into and to be a part of her shifting season, even if it means accepting the reality of a clock that never stops.

Time.

It spends easily. It passes quickly. It leaves a mark. It writes a memory.

And she left me with one – a mark. A memory.

On Monday evening, while putting her to bed, Finley asked me a question that has been echoing in my spirit ever since. Knowing that she was leaving the next morning and that I had to go to work prior to her departure, she threw her hands around my neck and softly whispered in my ear,

I knew what she was asking. I knew why she was asking.

Granny Camp, by all accounts, was a success – a time of championing and lifting up a little girl who relished the attention and who celebrated each moment, even the little ones. Finley didn’t want Granny Camp to end, but Finley knew that the end was coming. She simply wanted to get a final look at her granny on her final day of feasting.

Time.

It spends easily. It passes quickly. It leaves a mark. It writes a memory.

As I’ve pondered Finley’s question this week, my heart remains tenderly tied to another time-sensitive memory – a recent wound that remains open despite the finality of the carnage.

My daddy died a month ago. His departure was expected. Still and yet, I hold my grief as if I imagined it never being mine. Ten years of watching daddy’s decline did not fully prepare me for death’s ugly entrance.

Real. Raw. Unfiltered. Layered. Full in moments; partial in others. Occasionally it is hidden, but it is always here … simmering in the soul … yearning for discovery.

I have not walked with this grief before. It is new to me. Willingly, I hold it; reluctantly, I allow it to mess with me.

And in the messing – in all the questions and the tears and remembrances leading up to his closing moments on this earth – the messiness comes clean and is more defined with the innocence and earnestness of a grand-girl’s question…

By all accounts, my life with dad was a huge success – 60 years of being championed and lifted up by a father who delighted in spending time with his daughter. I didn’t want our time together to end, but I knew that the end was coming. However, unlike Finley and her recent time at Granny Camp, I received no verbal assurances from my daddy that I would, in fact, see him in the morning. Instead, he slipped from my sight during the night with unrecognizable groans that only assured me of his struggle, not his gain.

And here I am, on the other side of that “letting go,” and the only solid answer I have regarding the morning and the visioning therein is my faith. Not my feelings. Heavens no – not my feelings. My feelings leave me mired in the questions. My feelings rob me of truth. My feelings aren’t reliable when juxtaposed next to my faith. My feelings DO write a witness all their own – sometimes lovely, sometimes tinged with nastiness, but they are not the fullness of all that is me.

They cannot reign in this messiness named Grief because the pain requires a salve that has the capacity to heal deeply, not just to cover temporarily.

My faith tells me “Yes;” mostly, my feelings echo similarly. But every now and again, grief’s wound is just big enough to allow in a few niggling questions, ones whose answers seem purposefully just out of reach.

Maybe that’s the deal, this eternal yearning for understanding attached to a question that speaks of the morning – the brilliant dawn after the darkened night.

When all is said and done in this tenure we call life (when the closing lines of Granny Camp are written) the question won’t necessarily be about where we’ve been or what we’ve done but, instead, will be a question about when we get to do this again.

Will you be with me when I arrive at the glorious dawn of the new day? Will we be together again – to laugh, to love, to do life side-by-side when time doesn’t spend easily or pass quickly but, instead, lives endlessly? Will you hold my hand, hold me in your arms, point me further down the road, make sure I get there safely? What light lies beyond the night? What promise holds despite the questions?

There is something so very calming and beautiful when resting in this question … to park a heart amid such love and reassurance. To know that you are wanted in the morning, that your presence has been requested … expected … almost as if there is nothing more natural than having you there with the ones that you love, continuing the party and deepening the bond.

Friends, there are chapters to be written into our stories – mornings that will come to us after the messiness of our nights. I could write so much more about it and my feelings therein. But you deserve better than my feelings, thoughts more solid than what I can give you in a few paragraphs. I am not an expert on grief; I have few tips therein. But what I do have is a memory, a very special moment between a grand-girl’s heart and her granny’s.

Whatever questions shadow your steps today, whatever loss lingers closely and tethers tightly to your feelings, may this single question marinate in and around your heart to do the soul-work that God desires.

I hope so.

I really do.

Peace for the journey,

Father’s Day with Chuck and Francis Asbury

June 17, 2025

I thought about my dad this morning while listening to Jeffrey Rickman’s podcast. Rickman referenced this quote attributed to Francis Asbury (a pioneer in American Methodism) – thoughts about the holy and sacred privilege of preaching. On limited occasions when Asbury’s name is referenced, my mind always trails back to my dad. He wrote a play about Asbury’s life and presented it at Asbury Seminary and other locations on multiple occasions; the play was the outgrowth of one of dad’s sabbatical seasons while teaching at the seminary.

Fast forward a few years to 2002 when I was 7 ½ months pregnant with Amelia. Dad and mom took me, Nick and Colton, on a trip to Washington D.C. It was June, and it was hot. We did a lot of walking on that trip, saw a lot of historical markers, and collected treasured memories. One of those memories included my father’s relentless quest to find Francis Asbury’s statue in the heart of D.C. Dad had few details about its location, only that it was somewhere in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood near 16th Street. The only saving grace about that quest (did I mention we had done a lot of walking in high heat) is that dad rented an air-conditioned taxi. The five of us crammed into the taxi, and our driver began the search. After several unsuccessful pass-throughs of the neighborhood, we had almost given up when Colton looked out the window and said, “Is that it?” He pointed to an obscure, easy to miss, statue that was shrouded in tall grass across the street from our vehicle. Francis had been found!

We piled out of the taxi to take a picture and to survey Henry Augustus Lukeman’s work from 1921. Our visit was brief (the taxi meter was running), far shorter than our quest to get there. The box was checked. Dad was happy, and two little boys (along with their very pregnant mom) were thrilled that this historical pilgrimage had finally come to an end.

The “finding” of the statue, no doubt, fueled dad’s celebration of the life and witness of Francis Asbury, a preacher who, over the course of 45 years, traveled 275,000 miles over wilderness terrain to bring the good news of heaven down to the ground. Asbury’s faith and his passion rooted his mission. He had “seen heaven” as well as the “bottomless pit” and was determined to preach the truth therein.

As it goes with Asbury, so it goes with my dad, Chuck – a man who has spent his life traveling the wilderness road in search of lost pilgrims who have yet to catch a glimpse of heaven. Dad has seen both – the bottomless despair of the pit and the glorious hope of heaven. He knows the difference between the two. For 87 years, he has lived this difference.

These are hard days for those of us who’ve traveled with him along the way. His words, once so eloquently delivered, have turned into an occasional hum. Every now and again, we hear a chuckle. When we do, we smile because we know the man behind the laughter. Wherever dad was, there was always laughter. And honest conversations. Listening in and leaning in for more. Tears and prayers and generosity. Abundant generosity. If you know Chuck, you are nodding your head right about now. He is all this and so much more.

And so, another Father’s Day is in the record book. It’s been a glorious 59 years of being Chuck Killian’s daughter. I thank him for pointing me to heaven, especially in those seasons of my life when I was determined to wallow in the pit. Because of daddy’s love, I know what it is to be loved by Jesus. He is the tie that binds our hearts together forever – an everlasting future where, together, our mouths will be freed to praise, our feet unshackled to dance, and our lips loosened to laugh.

I love you, daddy. Happy Father’s Day. And remember… the best is yet to be.

On Threading a Needle Toward Holiness

July 5, 2024

Student, Ken Collins and Dad at Baltic Seminary

Holiness.

I’ve been chewing on this one today … gnawing away and swallowing bites of something I don’t fully understand but something, nonetheless, I deeply desire –

to be like Jesus.

Getting there isn’t easy. The way of holiness often includes our weaknesses – the stuff within that needs to be rooted without. Exposure of those weaknesses is sometimes painful but can also be beautiful in ways that we never anticipated on the front side of disclosure.

Let me explain.

I want to thread a needle for you and show you a fascinating, most striking mosaic that is part of my story and that warms my heart deeply today in a space that fully needs the witness of its strength.

Not long ago, Jadon sent me a link to series of Wesleyan Theology lectures given by Dr. Ken Collins at the Baltic Methodist Theological Seminary in Estonia (dated 2019). Dr. Collins is a professor at Asbury Theological Seminary who once shared those hallowed hallways alongside my father-professor, Dr. Chuck Killian – two men linking arms to bear witness to the seminary’s motto “The Whole Bible for the Whole World.”

Ken Collins is now one of Jadon’s professors, along with being his mentor for candidacy in the Global Methodist Church. Ken is a world-renowned scholar in all things Methodism and communicates this passion with clarity and originality. Jadon likes his teaching style and, needing to fill my mind with good, God-thoughts, I decided to listen in.

The connectional thread of Jadon being at Asbury and being mentored by one of my father’s friends from ATS is mosaic enough to make me sit back and admire God’s providence in my family’s lives. But that’s not the thread that had me leaning in for a closer look today. Instead, and more deeply, the realization hit me about the lectern from which Ken taught – a classroom in Estonia in a seminary that my father helped establish.

In August 1994, my daddy taught the very first class at the Baltic Methodist Theological Seminary on the subject of “practical theology” to fifty-four eager students, hungry to fulfill their part in the Great Commission.

From the website:

The more I listened to Dr. Collins speak about John Wesley and holiness, set against backdrop of the Baltic Methodist Theological Seminary, the more deeply my spirit was enlivened to the Spirit of God. A day that (for me) began in darkness suddenly shifted to a day full of light.

A day full of remembering my legacy. A day full of cultivating hope. A day of forgetting the hard purge of holiness and, instead, a day of relinquishing to its flames. Why?

Because there’s too much on the line by not submitting my life to Christ’s crucible.

What my daddy has left behind and what Ken Collins continues to do through his teaching and with my son is, indeed, a needle worth threading. I cannot fully put my finger on it, but my pulsing heart tells me that I’m on to something.

Daddy has long since left the hallways of Asbury Seminary and the Baltic Seminary. But there’s a piece of him still there in both places. Jadon in the former and Ken Collins in the latter. The echoes from both spaces deafen my ears with a ring of the eternal and paint a mosaic worthy of the throne room of heaven. Heaven, alone, counts the lives transformed by the faithfulness of a few willing servants.

What has happened in the past and what is happening in the present is, indeed, holy. From the inside out and the outside in, God makes himself known to his children. He shows up, sometimes unexpectedly, sometimes on a day when the darkness threatens to snuff out the light, and challenges us to go deeper with him toward a better life of freedom and understanding.

Oh yes, I want to be like Jesus, even when getting there is hard. Today, I think I moved a little closer in that direction. Today I traded in my vain imaginations for better thinking – a mind fixed on Jesus and what he wants me to know rather than on how the world and its people make me feel.

So, thanks be to God, to my daddy, to Jadon and to Ken Collins. Their work toward holiness has offered me a way forward toward mine.

The Whole Bible for the Whole World. Right here where I am. Right there where you are. May the kindness of God, the truth of his Son Jesus Christ, and the strength of his Holy Spirit rest on us all and pull us closer to his image this day. As always…

Peace for the journey,

Wes and Joy Griffin, along with my parents at 1st Baltic Seminary graduation

[accessed 7-05-2024, https://www.emkts.ee/index.php/en/general/history]

a walk with dad

March 5, 2021

What do you do on the day after the most painful day of your life?

I’ll tell you what I did. I drove thirty miles down the road to Lake Benson Park by myself. I walked that familiar trail, over and over again, soaking in the sights and sounds and warmth of the sun. Why?

Because it’s all I knew to do – the closest way I could think of to get to the man I am now separated from…

My dad.

We used to walk that trail together – too many times to count. That trail is Garner, NC – it’s where I fell in love with the town that my mother and dad called home for many years. Whenever I round that familiar bend and spy that weathered red barn set against the backdrop of that sparkling lake, well, my soul breathes better. It feels like home … like mom and dad. Like I could hop in the car and be around their kitchen table in under three minutes.

Mom and dad don’t live in Garner anymore. They moved to Raleigh at the end of 2019 to a senior living community. And then 2020 happened. And then a continuing series of events that could not be helped that have finally culminated in the event that has caused us all great heartache and sorrow.

Yesterday, my mom walked dad down to a different wing of their senior retirement community where some assessing will be done regarding my dad’s care going forward. Accordingly, my mother (along with the rest of us) are separated from my father for the first time in our lives and for a time yet-to-be-determined.

I hope it’s not for long; my spirit tells me it will be longer than any of us would like.

And because of COVID restrictions, visits are limited to one person, one hour a week. To hell with it – really. It’s time for COVID and all its wretchedness to move back to the place from whence it came – to the bowels of hell.

History will not be kind to COVID-19 and all its separation rules, especially as it pertains to the elderly who aren’t sick and who’ve plunged a needle into their arms in hopes of having any measure of freedom. It will go down as one of the cruelest, most inhumane treatments ever perpetrated on humanity. It is wrong; it is evil; it is not living to live apart from those you love. Woe to the men and women who are arbitrarily making ill-fitted rules that keep loved ones apart at, perhaps, the most vulnerable times in their lives.

I believe this to the core of my being; I’ll preach it until my breath is gone. I’ll die on that hill, friends.

And so tonight, on the night after the most painful day of my life, my dad is sitting alone in a new room, probably wondering where we all went. Maybe not. I hope he’s not fully aware of the separation. But the rest of us are … fully aware of it all.

My hands are tied. Sometimes pain cannot be escaped but only embraced as a consequence of a less-than-desirable solution to a complex problem that really doesn’t have any good answers despite our praying toward that end.

And I have prayed … and prayed. Thought and thought. Rammed my will part-way through an impenetrable wall only to be left bloodied and bruised by good intentions.

The deepest desire of my heart is for my parents to have the best care going forward. It is the most natural impulse of my heart to honor the ones who gave me a good beginning by giving them a spectacular ending to their earthly journey – to hold their hands tightly, securely, courageously. To walk them home to Jesus with dignity. That’s how it should be; however, that may not be how it goes.

Accordingly, to date, the most painful day of my life.

I am in good company. I am moved tonight by a similar scene on a Judean hillside 2000 years ago. Jesus, in one of his final acts of love before his death on a cross, wanted to make sure that his mother had a good ending:

In the middle of his doing the work that he came to, while all the sins of the world (past, present, and future) were being strapped to his back and were ripping his flesh apart from top to bottom, Jesus looked beyond his personal pain and noticed his mother’s. It was the most natural impulse of his heart, to make sure that the woman who gave him his very good earthly beginning would, indeed, have a very good ending of her own.

There’s a kinship there on that soil … between Jesus and me. The love he had for his parents mirrors the love I have for mine. I would trade all of my earthly possessions in this moment to fix the separation that now exists between us all. Worldly things mean nothing compared to the eternal reward of getting home safely … securely … hand-in-hand with the ones given to our charge and keep.

That would be bliss. That would be best. And that is how I will continue to pray… for a better ending for the man and the woman I call mom and dad. What was served up yesterday ain’t it – not even close. Instead, it was wretched, terrible, and everything I had hoped it would not be.

So wherever daddy is tonight, I pray that through the gift of the companioning Holy Spirit’s presence in his life, he’ll know deep down the love we all have for him. I pray that, when he looks at our pictures, he’ll remember that we’re here for him, even though we’re separated from him.

And while I will never again have daddy’s companionship while walking around Lake Benson Park, and though I may not get the privilege of walking him home to Jesus hand in hand, he and I will have the fields of heaven to walk through together.

I know this to be true; our citizenship is certain. Of all the gifts he has ever given to me, this is the best one – the gift of Jesus Christ and my eternal residency therein.

That’s my small sliver of silver lining, friends. The only one I can find tonight. It will pull me through to tomorrow.

For those of you who know my folks and some of our story, we appreciate your prayers for brighter days. Would you speak a little favor on my dad and mom tonight? I do heartily believe in the power of prayer, and I know that God’s peace is available to us all.

I just haven’t been able to take hold of it recently.

#muchlove,

Back in 2014, Mayor Ronnie Williams of Garner interviewed my dad as “one of the great people of Garner.” You’ll enjoy seeing that interview by CLICKING HERE!

Carpe Diem (seizing the day with my dad)

November 7, 2020

Carpe Diem. Seize the Day. It’s one of my daddy’s favorite sayings ever since viewing one of his favorite movies, Dead Poet’s Society. I reminded him of it yesterday in our visit together. I’m not sure if he remembers the movie, but he remembers the shirt. Even more so, he remembers the sentiment; daddy always wants to seize the day even as he struggles to remember what day it actually is.

Dad loved that movie; I think he saw a lot of himself in Robin Williams’s portrayal of John Keating, an unconventional teacher who used poetry to inspire his students to greater heights of expression and creativity.

Like Keating, my daddy is known for his story-telling. “One of the best” they say. Sometimes his stories are hand-made; sometimes, he borrows from others. As a child, I assumed everybody’s dad had that same capacity to spin words into magic. It never occurred to me that his ability was, in fact, a unique gifting from God. Over the years, I’ve come to realize and appreciate that uniqueness about my father, especially now when his words have started to fade.

These days, daddy doesn’t tell me many stories; instead, I’m telling them to him.

“Daddy, remember when …?”

Thankfully, he still does to a degree … remember when. He simply needs a prompt or two or ten therein. Eventually, we get there together, to a memory that brings the old sparkle back to his beautiful blue eyes. And when that happens, the magic returns; for a few minutes, I’m able to set aside my new role as a care-giver in exchange for my old role as simply a child of a story-teller.

Carpe Diem. Seize the day.

Life shifts like seasons.

Winter’s retreat. Spring’s new. Summer’s heat. Fall’s release.

A cycle of transformation. Sometimes swiftly; sometimes more slowly. Almost always, simultaneously.

Moments have the capacity to hold so very much – a full cycle of seasons that grow a heart in all the right ways. And maybe, in the end, that will be the greatest story ever told –

Indeed, very magical.

Carpe Diem. Seize the day.

So…

Thank you, Daddy, for telling me your stories – for capturing shifting seasons with just the right words. For doing so with flare, with imagination, with sparkle, and with understanding. For seizing the day, the moments in so many rich, “Chuck Killian” kinds of ways. You’ve come full cycle, living the words you’ve spoken … a heart transformed in all the right ways.

“One of the best,” they say.

One of the best, I know.

In the end and by God’s grace, I hope to hold one too –

I can’t think of a better legacy for either one of us to leave.

Let’s keep telling stories; let’s keep seizing our moments. Let’s keep walking home together.

The best is yet to be.

I love you,
Lainse

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