a tribute.

last week we held services to pay tribute to my dad and to celebrate his life. it was amazing. wednesday night we held visiting hours, a time i was dreading... i just didn't know how i would emotionally be able to handle seeing people and hearing how much everyone was going to miss my father. as with everything else, god provided stamina (especially for me and my pregnant sister!) and grace. over three hundred people showed up that night to honor my father. some waited in line for almost two hours... others were turned away at the door due to the large crowd.

like i said, it was amazing.

old teachers, relatives, classmates, friends, fellow church goers and city business men weaved their way through that crowded room to tell my sister, mother and i just how much dad had impacted their lives. the proudest moment i had all night was when an older man came through the line. as he approached nick&i, he introduced himself "i was the janitor that used to clean your dad's old office. i've always missed him since he changed buildings." as he turned to walk away, i looked at nick and started to cry. you see, my dad changed office buildings a few years ago. and still, the man that used to be the janitor there had been touched enough by my dad to come that night to pay his respects.

one of my most proudest moments of my father was right then.

thursday morning was his memorial service. i like to refrain from calling it his "funeral". too depressing. dad would've hated that. all those who attended filled three rooms, one of them showing the service via satellite it was so crowded. together we laughed and cried... which was such an honest account of celebrating dad's life. joy of a blessed life, tinged with the sadness of losing a man too early.

gretchen and i each wrote a piece to honor dad, and our husbands somehow read them through tears of their own. here is what i wrote:

i'm not sure how to even begin trying to capture into words what my dad meant to me, or just how much i loved him. anyone who has spent any significant amount of time with me knows what a special relationship we had and how i respected and valued my father. the older i get, the more and more i realize what a rare and precious gift it is to have a father as wonderful as mine. although in recent days i've struggled with the fact that i was only able to be with him on this earth for thirty years, i thank jesus for blessing me with that season, no matter how short it seems.

my father made being our dad one of his biggest passions in life. i have such great memories of growing up with him… playing wiffle ball in the backyard, building snowmen and going sledding in the winter and shooting hoops in the driveway for many, many years. i can still remember the smell of his long, khaki colored business coat as we would run excitedly to the door and into his arms the minute he got home from work. he would tuck us into bed every single night, even into high school and spend time talking with us, praying for us and sharing things he thought were important. i remember him telling me “megan, life is all about relationships. always take time to invest in others.” this truth he not only imparted to me and my sister, but he made it his way of life. there have been countless people who have told us in the last week “i’m not sure what i’m going to do without gary. he was my rock.” and as my heart aches and tears fall down my face, i think to myself “i know exactly what you mean.” whenever i was upset or had a bad day, i would always feel better after talking with my dad. as i grew into adulthood, there were many a tearful phone call home to him; the constant person in my life i could always talk to and receive wisdom, comfort and encouragement. he would always say to me “it’s all going to work out.” and as i find myself at a loss of how to live the rest of my life without him, i can hear him telling me
these words and somehow it makes it a little bit easier.

most of all what i will always remember about my sweet dad was his faith in jesus. i can still hear his booming, bass voice singing strongly and steadily beside me at church… words of the old hymns that were the anchor of his faith. i remember waking up sometimes in the night to see the shadow of my dad in the doorway, and i knew he was reciting scripture over me, or silently praying. i wouldn’t be able to begin to count the times i saw my dad, kneeling beside his bed in prayer and what inner strength and peace that gave me… he made me always feel safe because i knew he was always talking to the lord, always seeking him in everything. as i grew older, he would tell me that he had been praying for my future husband from the time i was a baby. he poured so much time into prayer over the man i was going to marry and he just glowed with satisfaction at what he saw his prayers accomplish when he met nick. dad has left a tremendous legacy in me, in nick and i and our marriage, in our daughter bella and our baby on the way. though he never got to meet our new little one coming in april, his story will be woven into the threads of our family for years and years to come.

in his last day, we had many sweet moments with my dad. it was unimaginable to me to watch his disease take so much life and vibrancy away from him. someone who used to be so strong, who used to get everyone else through the tough times, who had the biggest hugs and the loudest laugh. god gave us all so much grace as we watched him take our father home. one of my most precious memories was the evidence of his heart for the lord right up until the very end. despite all that he had endured for the past seven years, despite everything that had been taken away from him, he never lost his deep, deep faith in his savior. with gretchen on one side of his hospital bed, and me on the other, we began to hear my fathers voice in a weak shout of words, a joyful smile lit up his face. as i strained into hear what he was saying, i could hear the song “oh how i love jesus, oh how i love jesus, oh how i love jesus because he first loved me.” followed by this line from one of his favorite hymns “his eye is on the sparrow” he sang: “i sing because I’m happy, i sing because i’m free…”

how much peace and joy that memory gives to me. dad’s unending love for jesus was there until the very end, and now he is with him face to face, for all eternity. i know that if his story would move anyone to come to know jesus as their lord and savior, dad would’ve willingly given up his life. that’s how much he loved his lord… that’s how much he loved others.

i love you, dad. i know that “it’s all going to work out.” and i trust that i will be with you again
someday soon… in the blink of an eye. though you will be missed, you will never be forgotten. my life is forever changed because you were my father.

thank you, i love you,
meg

tomorrow nick&i go for our twenty week sonogram to find out if baby #2 is a boy or a girl. dad couldn't wait for this news... he told me the day he passed away how excited he was to find out. i know he'll be rejoicing with us, but it still is hard to know he won't be here... i won't see his face light up with excitement, eyes widen as he lets out an exuberant "yessss!" over hearing the gender of his fourth grandbaby. but i know he'll be doing some fist pumps from heaven, that is for sure :)

i can't think of a better tribute to my father than seeing hundreds of people cry and rejoice over his passing from this earth, onto his heavenly home. i'm such a proud, proud daughter. i always knew my father was loved and respected... seeing the lives impacted by my father was so very moving for me. and somehow it eased a bit of the weight of the grief i've been feeling. although he only lived fifty two years, he touched more lives in his short time on earth than many touch in a lifetime.

and that's what dad thought was the most important.

my dad wasn't esteemed by others exclusively because of his success, his popularity, his earthly accomplishments... he was esteemed by others because he was all about people. he lived his life in a way that the janitor from his old office building several years ago would wait in line for two hours to offer his condolences to my dad's family.

and that is what makes my father so amazing. and nothing--not even death--can ever take that away.

before--or after--you say "i do" (part one).

one thing i'm passionate about (if you haven't figured this out already) is improving marriages in our society. i wrote this article a few years ago when i was working as a counselor on staff at irving bible church. it was for a friend of ours who asked me to create something for his blog and a series he was doing on singleness, dating and marriage. robert asked me to write on three things i thought contributed to hardship in marriage. whether you are single, dating or married i think it's important to challenge ourselves in this area. we can (and should) always be improving ourselves, which in turn, will improve our relationships.

with valentine's day around the corner, i decided to dig out this article and post it in a three part series on my blog. it challenges me to stay proactive in my marriage and i hope that it may encourage and challenge you--whether single or married--to live out what jesus calls us to.

part one.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------as we look around it is impossible to deny the state of marriage today in our society.

divorces are happening at an alarming rate, our society tells us if we're not "happy" to jump ship, and mainstream media seemingly applauds adultery presenting it as a glamorous option within marriage. it would be highly negligent of us as a Church not to examine the cracks in the sanctity of marriage within our culture to see what is at the root of its brokenness. as i have met with countless men and women as a pastoral counselor, i have seen several patterns contributing to such pitfalls within marriage. i'd like to outline three of them in this article--three ways to increase the likelihood of conflict and hardship within your marriage... current or future.

making marriage your everything

this pitfall establishes itself early on... well before marriage in most cases. our hearts begin to long for the love of a person who will live life with us. this desire in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing; however, it can become very harmful if marriage is set as "life's biggest goal". before we know it, we've begun putting our life on hold until "the one" comes and sweeps us off our feet. this is where the danger begins. when this poor person does come, unbeknownst to them, they have all the pressure of the world on their shoulders because we have made them our everything...the fulfillment of all of our dreams, our satisfaction, our first love, our main goal in life.

can you see the danger here? i remember struggling with this so much at times during my singleness. i wanted so badly to have that companion, that best friend, that man i was going to do life with. i had ten... yes, ten... bridesmaids dresses hanging in my closet, one of them i wore in my sister's wedding who is almost four years younger than me. i remember it being a struggle to fully live and enjoy those years being single. and now, as hard and lonely as they were at times, i have moments of missing them because they were some of the sweetest years of my life.

jesus found me in that season and helped me see that it was HIM and me doing life together. i remember my dad telling me "megan, even after you get married, it's always going to be you and jesus." if the lord did have marriage for me, i wanted my husband to be attracted to me because of the way i was running after jesus and making him my life... because that's what i wanted to do together in our marriage.

i have also seen married couples who make marriage their everything and at some point in their journey together, they're bound to be sorely disappointed. god made us for relationship. and that doesn't mean just with our spouse; it means with his people--single, married, old and young. period. once couples return from their honeymoon, there is a temptation to shut others out and just enjoy each other. while this definitely needs to happen at times to grow and enrich a martial relationship, there is so much joy that takes place in reaching out to others, getting involved in ministry, having alone time and time with individual friends (girl time/guy time) that is essential for a healthy, happy marriage. in their book just how married do you want to be?, authors jim and sarah sumner touch on the importance of living in community as a married couple:

"every christian couple needs to be in christian community. couples who get along well need it every bit as much as couples who argue and fight. being active in christ's body is part of what it means to love the church's head, christ jesus. authentic christian community is interpersonal. being in it is not the same as merely attending church. to be in christian community is to be relationally connected with other people who are connected to jesus christ." (just how married do you want to be? p. 156)

this again, is a pattern that begins in a dating relationship; before one even enters marriage. if you're dating, make sure to surround your relationship with community. not only will this help establish a sense of accountability for both you and your partner, but it will also keep your sole focus and attention off of each other and help remind you both that there is a world that exists outside your dating relationship! stay grounded in your church community, in your friendships. don't center your entire life around your romantic relationship. this will only assist in creating a pattern of unhealthiness in your relationship. make sure you're spending time apart and enjoying your own individual friendships, ministries and activities. if you're expecting your spouse to be your everything, you're setting yourself up for disappointment and you're guaranteed to cause your spouse undue frustration. that is *not* the way god designed marriage to be. he wants to be our number one love, passion and desire. no one and nothing else is designed to fulfill that position in our lives, including our spouse.

when my husband and i were first falling in love, he always made a point to tell me that i was his "second love." he told me that i will never be his first, nor should he ever be mine. i found myself getting annoyed when he would tell me that; it sounded so abrasive to me! now, i'm so thankful that my husband reminds me of that because it reminds me of my place in his life, and where his place in mine should be. this order was not instituted after we walked down the aisle; it was established in each of our lives long before we met one another. this only helped us keep god where he needs to be--as number one; not only in our individual lives, but in our life together.

**stay tuned for parts 2 and 3...