2/24/08

on my return to Michigan, my home. What a long week. I'm exhausted. But i feel I didn't do anything . . . yet I know that in my heart, a lot went on.

Dad is not looking good. I feel like I'm now witnessing the end of a generation. Never experienced this before and it now offers a sense of temporality. What i mean is that i now feel like I can see what at once seemed forever now compressed into a more comprehensible period of time - a broader sense of the linearlity of time. We all get old and we all are mortal. I will eventual experience the end of my own lifetime.

Mom is struggling with coming to terms with the reality of what it is looking like. Dad may not ever "come home" and function as he had, he will likely not even walk on his own again, feed himself, brush his teeth, go to the bathroom on his own - he may not even live much longer. .What must it be like to see someone you have known for almost 50 yrs. become more or less incompacitated. To start to come to grips that you will now be alone after all this time. Even if he is able to stay alive in this institution for a little longer, mom will be alone. How incredibly sad this realization must be. How incredibly lonely this must begin to feel.

It finally came to me - likely God had me see that we must now enjoy each day, truly as the last. Celebrate each day of life and not mourn what what is to not be. Don't miss out on beauty that is today for the hopes of a yet a better day tomorrow. That day may not ever come.

I have certainly woken up to a whole new realization of a segment of our population - the aged and those reaching the end of their life. How this transition for some can be anything, but a graceful, dignified experience. for some a lonely and torturous affair, and others a diminishment of a quality of life never to be regained, and yet others the feeling like they are now castaways of society. In these men and women i pray that Jesus is comforting them, that they know him and that they can look forward to the end.

So it is this which I may have been sent to my father instead of going to Venezuela. The mission to save can be so close as to be your own family. I really don't know if Dad has yet found Jesus. I really don't know if what I wrote for him to read made any difference, but i did feel God's prompting to write and I pray that God will somehow use my very feable attempt to share the saving grace of Jesus as the seed that He will cultivate. Lord, I pray that you celebrate and take into your arms this child of yours. Comfort him as he finishes his long, often arduous life, full of struggle and pain, and yet always with a desire to do good. Give him the vision of all that was good, all that was sweet, all that was beautiful, all that was dignified, all that was comforting, all that was devine - all that was love. Bless him Lord, for though he may not have walked the straight and narrow, but only through your amazing grace his sins are forgiven that he goes home to you, a life everlasting. Father, I pray that I will be joining him one day in your kingdom with you, and though I know he is not yet with you, through your mercy he is filled with joy when you take him. I pray all this in your son's holy and merciful name . . .