Metronome

In a few days it will be two months since Dad died...two months. Every once in a while, it washes over me as if I just got the news and I feel my brain struggling to grasp the thought that he is gone - really gone. And I watch my mother do the same. The other day she washed the clothes he was wearing when he died and it washed over us again. I almost felt a reluctance to have her wash them, not wanting to erase the physical evidence of his being...but I know it is part of staying in the living.

Dad's relationship with Jesus I am not sure of; I wish I could know for sure, but Dad was private about things like that. There were doors that you just didn't open, or when you tried, you found it locked and barred. For now, I will believe that Christ's blood washed him clean and that he is with his Savior, fully understanding the things he struggled with.

I was riding with two of my sons the other night and they were picking my brain, hearing things about me that they didn't ever remember hearing before. As I talked and they exclaimed over things they hadn't known, I realized that those things are almost another person, another life - I didn't remember that I remembered those things. It's odd how many lives I feel like I have lived in this one life.

We are about to enter into another life yet again, a new home in a new setting quite different from where we have been before. I lay awake last night going over things in my mind - what it would be like to live there, where I would put our furniture, wondering if our youngest would find good friends of upstanding character, and anxious to create memories in this new place which is the only thing that ever really makes a house a home. It will not be truly home until every one of our kids has been there to share in making memories, filling the walls with our laughter, sharing, and ghost pictures of our living. May it be a home whose family honors God while loving one another and living in a struggling world.