An Unexpected Journey

I picked my sweet Alena up from her final dance rehearsal yesterday.  The big recital is tonight, and we have lived and breathed her dances at our house for the last few weeks.  When I was helping her buckle in she asked, “Mom, it doesn’t have to be perfect does it?  Nothing on earth can really be perfect, right?”  It’s amazing to me how profound questions can come from the mouths of little children who just finished kindergarten.  And there was such earnest seeking in her eyes.  Sometimes you know your kids probably won’t remember what you say but that you have a chance to plant a weighty seed that will burrow deep into their little hearts and bring fruit later… for the good or the bad.  It was one of those moments. After a quick talk- there were  four of them in the car and Eliana was screaming for Dora while Alena herself was actually crying from a fall- we headed home.  While I was walking this morning and praying about a follow up c...

Dearest Makiah, In a few minutes it will be your 11th birthday!  We started celebrating you tonight.  I brought home tiny chocolate cupcakes after work, and we ate them before dinner.  The girls and I decided you would have liked that!  Your sister’s decided they want to send their balloons they got at the Mother Daughter Tea up to heaven to you tomorrow.   It was completely their idea!  Abby wants to tie a french fry on hers because you loved fries.  I guess she thinks you’d like a little french fry snack in heaven! She also told me that a boy at school told her he was in love with her today.  Oh kindergarten!  It reminded me that you came home one day saying your sweet friend Isaiah had asked you to marry him on the playground, and you said yes because you loved him.  It also made me wonder what sort of conversations we would be having now if you were finishing up the fifth grade.  Would we be chatting about boys or s...

I am sitting in a class listening to Danny Silk from Bethel Church in Redding teach about the Father’s love.  At the end he begins to describe a father son athletic team.  The son was born with cystic fibrosis, but together they have competed in 206 triathlons, 20 duathlons, and 26 marathons who.  I know in a second who he is talking about.  I have seen this video twice before, and I contemplate slipping out.  I am not sure I can handle watching it.  Tears slip out before it even begins to play.   The first time I saw it was in an educational setting.  I imagined myself as the father and wondered if I could ever love anyone with that sort of sacrificial love.  The second time I saw the video was  a few weeks after Makiah died.  That time it hit me like a ton of bricks.  I was not the father.  I was the boy.  I was totally incapable of accomplishing anything on my own.  Completely dependent on the love of a f...

There are gifts and then there are GIFTS.  I felt so blessed this Christmas by family and mostly because I was able to see the faces of my little ones glow with the anticipation of Christmas morning.  The excitement of knowing that there are special surprises just for them is a precious thing to watch as it dances in the light of innocent little eyes.  There is a sweetness when their tiny feet are hit with a burst of joyful jumping and their lips with squealing. This fall my heart had it’s own Christmas of sorts.  Two surprise gifts of love whose depth of meaning and kindness still leave me astounded.  And they were both given on October 8th.  Yes, Makiah’s heaven day.  Each year that passes it seems the Lord unwraps more layers of meaning to her life and death. This year there were two very special weddings on her heaven day.  My cousin and his precious wife who are beginning their sweet love story as they dive into their early twenties an...

Four small kids.  A house to clean.  Presents to wrap.  Groceries to buy and food to prepare.  And a facebook friend who reminded me of this old post soooo I think I am going to cheat and post a link to This Post from 2013.  I pray the awe and beauty of Christ and Christmas will never leave you!  Merry Christmas!

Two Sundays ago I was having breakfast with my kids before church and Abby announced that she had figured something out.  In her most serious five year old voice, she told me she knew that I had stolen her from her real mother and made up all these stories about when she was a baby.  I almost spit my coffee out!   I am a huge fan of adoption and the picture it paints of God’s love towards all of us, but ya’ll, this kid ain’t adopted!  Pardon my south Georgia slang!  And child snatching??? I mean, what in the world are they showing on Dora these days?!    So that was last week.  This Sunday my baby girl, who is totally two, insisted that she was not going to wear that cute dress with the turkey on it. Now she doesn’t have many outfits that haven’t been worn by at least three other people first, but this is one that I bought brand new for her (I am a sucker for a sale).  There was weeping and gnashing of teeth, but I was determined she was...

Salt water stings.  It also heals.  I dig my toes a little deeper into the sand almost as if trying to get a grip.  To hang on. But the sand slips through.  The waves roll over.  The hold is lost.  So slippery.  Each moment in this life.  Time and moments roll mysteriously by.  I try to feel deeply, to love deeply in that second.  Because in a minute the wave is gone and another comes along. A few weeks ago our late night drive with the kids to Cape Canaveral landed us at a beachside hotel in Daytona way past Cinderella’s curfew.  It just happened to be where we landed when we  couldn’t drive any further.  The next morning we spent a few hours on a beach I thought I would never return to.  Makiah played the last week of her life there on those same sandy shores.  I felt as if I was in her footsteps.  So close. As if I might turn around and catch sight of her sandy blonde hair flying in the wind.  ...