Have you ever had those mornings where everything just seems a little off? You missed someone, you didn't sleep, you couldn't eat, you didn't feel right with the world.

That was me this morning. I woke up, and from the start, just felt a little off. Unbalanced. Unsteady. It might have been the lack of sleep, or the dead week stress, or missing my boyfriend or brother or friends.

It could have been anything. But it was my dad. My dad died when I was quite young and I've never really been able to let go of the ideas that I miss without really having reason to miss. The missed lunch dates, the missed hugs, the missed kisses, the missed biological connection. I missed something I had never had. I missed so deeply that I had created a hole, and this morning when I woke up, I felt that hole widening it's grasps and my soul sinking deeper and deeper.

I trudged to my first class, starting to cry, dreading the cold, dreading the class, dreading the loneliness that was creeping into my heart, turning it ice cold like the air I was breathing.

I was literally a zombie this morning. I missed someone I had never really met, and it hurt so much. I couldn't help but notice something out of the corner of my eye. A single red carnation, being slowly buried under the falling snow. I started crying. I quickly picked it up, and brushed it off and immediately said thank you to God.

You see, since I was younger I always begged my mother to tell my things about my dad, any little detail that I could hold on to and piece together a mental image. She told me his favorite flower. Red carnations. I immediately latched on to this, and they are now my favorite flower, 19 years after his death. Every time I visit his grave in Canada, I bring him a bunch of red carnations.

God knew what I was struggling with, even before I voiced my internal pain to anyone. God knew I needed him; He knew just how to make me smile.

1 John 3:1 tells us, "See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him."

God is our Heavenly Father. He wants to fill all of the holes in our empty souls, so that we may know the love that we have. I may have lost my earthly biological father, but God continuously reminds me that He, my Heavenly and forever Father, is always by my side.