Remembering 8 Years Ago...

It's Sunday...and the last day for Keyboards at Christmas...and I don't really have time to be blogging...but I can't let this day go by without a remembrance.  So...I'm going to repeat last year's post with a few changes...

Funny how eight years can seem like an eternity and a blink of an eye all at the same time.  December 9, 2004 seems like forever ago and just yesterday all at once.

I've been thinking a lot about my daddy lately...how much he would have LOVED Keyboards at Christmas, how excited he would have been about our new church, how much he would have enjoyed digital photography (and what a great blogger he could have been! :)), what he would have been saying about the recent election and the state of our country (it wouldn't have been pretty...), and mostly, how proud he would have been of his grandchildren.  

Remembering eight years ago...

missing dress rehearsal, friends helping in so many ways,
Isaiah 40:11,

Diet Coke in a bag, 

half the choir showing up at the hospital when dress rehearsal ended, 

just the right people being there at just the right times, 

watching every breath and wondering if it was the last...

until it was, and all the suffering was over, 

and we were left with a great big husband/daddy/father-in-law/Papaw-sized hole in our hearts.

And his funeral a few days later right in the middle of the sets from the musical...which was somehow so fitting, with his great love of all things choir-related...and the choir singing one of his favorite hymns, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross", so beautifully.
 

So thankful for these years he's spent rejoicing and worshiping instead of suffering, and for the certain hope that that night eight years ago was not good-bye.  Almost the last words I heard him say, in the midst of incredible pain, were "God has been so good to me."  So thankful for that memory that challenges me when I get caught up in earthly stuff and forget to see His goodness...

So thankful for my Daddy...