Prayers to heaven

For those of you who have continued to wonder how Rachel is handling Michell’s death, I have an amazing story to share. It happened tonight at bedtime, and it blew me away.

Rachel had just finished reading me her Bible story – I got her a new Bible just this week that she can read from – and I told her it was her turn to pray tonight. She started with her typical, which usually involves telling Jesus that she hopes He had a good day. In itself, that would be pretty cool to blog about, and could get very deep as we consider what we would have done to give Him a good day, but that was just the beginning.

She went on and said something like this…

“I hope you had a good day, too, mommy, you and Jesus. I hope you have a good time up there until one of us comes to see you. We miss you. We miss you very much.”

Up to this point, any time Rachel talked about missing her mommy, she broke down into tears, but not tonight. She finished with a sad expression on her face, but she went on to bed without any issue. It doesn’t mean that she’s finished with her grief, but it seems like a major step to me, and in more ways than one.

The obvious is that she is slowly moving through her grieving process. Even more important to me, however, is her grasp of the Gospel. She Knows (capital K) about Heaven. She Knows (again, capital K) that those who choose Jesus get to go there. And she Knows (you’ve got it now) that both she and daddy have made that choice, so we get to go someday.

She’s asked before about being baptized, and I’ve always wondered if she was really old enough to understand what she was asking about. She’s told me that she’s asked Jesus into her heart, but part of me wondered if it was truly real. I doubt no longer.

So come, celebrate with me. My Rachel has chosen Jesus, and we will spend eternity together! Then pray for us, that together we can show Zoe the Truth, so that she will also choose to join us on the journey.

Pictures of God's Faithfulness

Finished something that I’ve been working on for a while now – a photo album of 2008. If you live in the Cookeville area, I’ll probably inflict it on you in the near future. As most of you know, Michell was an avid scrapbooker, and while I wanted to continue to take and share pictures, what she did was well beyond me. But I stumbled across the memory books that you can create online, and those I could handle.

After finishing, I’ve gone back through to proofread and to show what I created to a select few. Today, I was thinking about what was in there, and perhaps more importantly, what wasn’t.
I titled the album “2008 – A New Beginning.” The first page has the last (good) family picture from 2007 that included Michell, along with a message about how we miss her. Then you turn that page over, and start into January, where you see pictures of Rachel, Zoe, and I spending time together. As you continue, you see pictures from every month of the year, and every special event you can think of.

So what’s not there? Well, there are no pictures of the days in January I spent laying on the floor, crying uncontrollably. There are no pictures of the nights I lost my temper and threw cups down the hall. Nothing to show how dead to the world I was some days, and nothing to indicate how lonely some days were (and still are sometimes).

What is there is undeniable evidence of God’s faithfulness. How? There are pictures of children laughing, birthday parties, and outdoor fun. There are friends and family who came to visit us here in Cookeville, and those we visited elsewhere. There are messy faces, giggling girls, and a blow-up pool at the bottom of the slide. And, wonder of wonders, a few pictures of Tammy, a wonderful woman I was blessed to have as my girlfriend for a season. (Yes, for those who don’t know, we are still friends, but not dating anymore)

What I see, as I look back, is God carrying me through the darkest chapter in my life. And apparently, I did more than just survive – the pictures show a life full of joy, and they provide evidence of God’s blessings that cannot be denied. I still deal with grief – not so much in overwhelming pain, but in snatches of sadness and moments of emptiness – I expect to deal with that in some ways for the rest of my life. But, as God promised, old things have passed away, and all things have been made new.

The past few months have been frustrating and strange – two surgeries have forced me away from my girls, especially Zoe, for long stretches that I do not like. But, with God’s help, I can do this. With God’s help, I look forward to continuing to heal an move on.