One Year

Today is an anniversary.  I looked up the word anniversary, I don't want you to think I've completely lost it,  I do know what it means…  and I wondered if perhaps there was more to the definition than I was aware.  It's basic meaning is what we all think: "a yearly recurrence of the date of a past event." (Dictionary.com)  The second meaning for the word is "the celebration or commemoration or such a date."  When I hear someone use the word anniversary, I realize there is an emotional connection to whatever occurred on that particular day.  My initial assumption is to think of anniversary in a celebratory way just like the definition alludes, and I like the alternate word the definition gives: commemoration.  Perhaps that's the better word for today.

Today marks the one year anniversary of my father's passing.  I have been concerned about my mom as this day has approached.  I knew I would feel sad, revisit the sense of loss, and I figured my mom would feel it more intensely. She now lives alone, and is too many miles from me for me to just jump in my car and spend time with her.  The reactions and flood of emotions I'm experiencing today have caught me a bit off guard:  I've already cried more today before noon than I did a year ago in the whole week after he died.  Perhaps that's because a year ago, I was living how ready he was to be home with Jesus, and I wanted him so desperately to have his heart's desire realized. Perhaps it's because I felt I needed to be "strong" for my mom, and today I'm just home alone.  Perhaps we were too busy with scheduling the funeral, and making arrangements for the family to gather and today my time is filled with just laundry. 

Today, I'm realizing afresh the things I wish I could tell him. I want to tell him about my daughter and how she's working to become a certified teacher.  I want to tell him about my son and that he's a Corporal now in the Marines. I want to share the pictures I took in Yosemite and compare them to the pictures he took years ago. I want the opportunity to hear him speak my name,  to listen to him pray, to see him sitting in his chair with his open Bible on his lap. My inner child wants to race him as we both make our beds, because surely by now I can win.  And yet…  I would never ask him to leave the glory of the presence of God that he now knows. 

I was thumbing through my journal and God gently highlighted a verse I had written down about a week ago.  "Let the peace of Christ [the inner calm of one who walks daily with Him] be the controlling factor in your hearts [deciding and settling questions that arise].  To this peace indeed you were called as members in one body [of believers] and be thankful [to God always]."  Colossians 3:15, Amplified version.    I wish I had the words to describe the peace I feel even as I weep.  Jesus is so very with me today.  My home is thick with the presence and glory of God because He IS my peace.  My heart is overflowing with thanksgiving as I think about the amazing gift God gave me in my dad.  I am truly one of the lucky ones. 

Today is an anniversary of a hard day.  And it is a celebration, not a commemoration.  I celebrate my dad being in the very presence of Jesus and harmonizing with the angels as they sing "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty - the one who always was, who is, and who is still to come!" I can just about pick out his voice.  I celebrate that I was blessed with a Godly father, who loved me to Jesus by raising me with tough boundaries, took me to church, and lived out an example of trusting God even when life didn't go as planned.  I celebrate a childhood with a dad who filled my earliest memories with quirky games, a twinkle in the eye, and a chuckle. I celebrate adventures and travel, trips and excursions that revealed God's world to me, that curiosity is a life-long pleasure, and that special moments are always worth creating.

"Sing the wondrous love of Jesus.  Sing his mercy and his grace.  In the mansions bright and blessed, He'll prepare for us a place.  When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be!  When we all see Jesus, we'll sing and shout the victory!"