Wind Chimes

We have wind chimes now.

The melodic sound is not constant, but when the wind blows my attention is piqued to these new tones.  I mean, I’m not thinking of much and it chimes and then I am.

“The wind blows and we are gone, but the love of the Lord remains forever.”

I’d rather think of love than loss.

You know, when we first had children there was a revelation early on that I had hoped they would know how much they were loved.  I have spent their lifetimes trying to demonstrate this to be true.  For sure, some things may not have looked like love to them.  Some things likely overlooked.  But at the time I remember thinking,  I can’t wait until they have kids to fully know how much I love them.

And then I paused for a humbling thought.

You know, I bet Mom and Dad couldn’t wait until we had kids to know how much they loved us.

And then a bit more seriously,  I thought.  Wait.

I bet their parents couldn’t wait until they had kids to know how much they loved them.

I kept taking it back in part amusement which turned part seriousness. Surely, by God’s original design if you were to continue this trajectory of taking it back you would get to a Father in heaven who sent His Son to show us how much we’re loved.

It may not always look like love and some things are likely overlooked, but the Lord is like a father to his children.  This love extends to the children’s children and remains forever.

It’s how much I know we’re loved

by our Father.

1 John 4: 9-10

Psalm 103

Father’s Whistle

My dad had a whistle.

It was the kind that mattered not what we were doing.  Growing up, our world was to stop when Dad’s positioned fingers on the tip of his tongue and lips gave a forcible expulsion of breath.  It was a call to attention that demanded ours.  It was the kind that drew all six of us back together to the same place at the same time.

The Lord says, “When I whistle to them, they will come running.”

It’s weird that the world kept going round and round on his last day.

To and from I saw people going.

This and that I saw people doing.

But, I was holding tightly.

Both of my hands were holding on to my dad’s right one with dear life.

I watched the monitoring instrument.

It was erratic at first

Until it was too slow.

We watched his oxygen.

We saw his heart rate.

Until there were neither.

Everything stopped.

I know there were still ticks and I know there were still tocks that seemed to matter.

One nurse rushed for another to get the official time.

I didn’t need the other nurse.

It was 5:40 PM.   

I was there.

We all were.

All six of us in the same place at the same time.

For the last time.

It was our Father’s last whistle.

Zechariah 10:8

.

Sustained

Hey, Dad.

I’m not gonna lie.

I thought Comeback Tom had one more in him.

Every last ER trip before this one had my concern heightened. And, you sure had some ER trips!  But, this wasn’t the one.  I still have the hospital bracelet as my bookmark where you wrote a sentimental message,  “Thanks for staying with me,” at the one in 2019.  I mean, we sure had worse trips to the hospital than this one. But with each one, you had a standard line.  And we knew how you were.  Tired and worn out.  We really tried, though. We tried to suggest things like wheelchairs and lifts to make 87 easier, but even so you’d say, “Nope. Not giving up.”

Mom’s not giving up either, Dad.  She says she’s taking it one day at a time.

“What else can you do?” you would always say.  “Day by day.  What other choice you got?”

I’ve seen other choices, Dad.  I’ve seen what give up looks like.  I just never saw it in you.  I’m not seeing it in Mom, either.  Day by day.  She’s the strongest mom I know.

Through all this,  I have been given an unexpected gift.  I’ve experienced what it means to be sustained.  I can’t explain it any other way.  “Cast your burdens on the Lord and He will sustain you.”  I experienced comfort.  I experienced being held up. How can that be at such a time as this?

Jesus says it’s a gift.  “The peace I give is a gift the world cannot give.  So, don’t be troubled. I have told you these things before they happen so that when they do happen, you will believe.”

They happen, Dad.

Day by day.

John 14:27

Psalm 55:22

Be Not Afraid

“Be not afraid. I go before you always.”

I rose before the sun to the chorus of this hymnal playing in my thoughts on the morning following the request to choose songs for my dad’s funeral. In its repetition, there was a familiarity to the repeated verse, though nothing I could think that gave me reason to know it.

“Be not afraid. I go before you always,” it continued.

I didn’t want to forget the line.  I made myself keep saying it until I could search the internet exactly as I was hearing it.   It repeated.

In my curious pursuit, my heart was instantly touched at what the search revealed first. What God must have tucked away in my heart.  “A traditional Catholic hymnal.”   We had been thinking of songs to play, of course.  It had been requested of us.  We had been thinking of many of our songs.  We just couldn’t think of Dad’s.

I was quick to tell Mom my discovery, who assured me Dad loved that song.  He did?  He knew that song? She affirmed they both did.

“You shall see the face of God and live.”

Our family’s legacy of faith began with Dad in the Catholic Church.  As early as an altar boy, he had felt a duty of protection.  A duty that never left him.  The lyrics to this hymnal speaks of our Father in heaven, but what I know to be true is that it speaks of my father on earth.  God has revealed Himself to us in a collage of ways.

I’m confident it was in my father.

I hear him.

Be not afraid.

I go before you.

Always.

Isaiah 43