January 9

Can it have been fifteen years already?

Yesterday (which I had incorrectly noted as January 7 as I lost track of days) I stopped by Cracker Barrel for dinner. Near the end of my meal some waitresses came out of the kitchen joyfully with a candle on a desert toward the table next to mine singing a happy birthday song. It brought back some buried memories.

We were going to use hospice at sometime in that preceding year of life-threatening cancer, but the nurturing of our now six-year old daughter instilled more perseverance for life in her mother. The goal, even with crumbling bones in her body, a neck brace in place of pearls and her hospital bed as the center of our family room life, was to survive one more day to celebrate her fiftieth birthday. So that we did: we headed out the door with her walker to take a ride out to her fiftieth dinner celebration at Cracker Barrel.

As God would know a bone inside her crumbled as she merely eased down our front walk. Her pain was excruciating!

Do you want to go to the hospital?

NO! We have to go to Cracker Barrel.

The brief dinner with husband, six-year old daughter and both heart-sick parents showed even those at tables near us how extreme her pain must have been – surely 10 on a scale of 10 (as they always ask).

Can it really have been fifteen years ago today? Although I know that she is with the Lord, as all were confident by her witness of love for the Lord and all others, I could not set foot in a Cracker Barrel for many months after that. Since then her father has died and my mother and numerous others.

What about 15 years from now – January, 2029 – where will you be?

God knows.

I know by my faith in Christ Jesus that God has even more plans for me here and an eternity with Him and all of my beloved believer friends – no we are neither married or are given in marriage in heaven – but our love for Christ and for all is like a loving marriage.

I do pray that the later Blessing of our vows, my wife, will by then be with us all by her repentance and return to the love of Jesus Christ. I pray that ALL of our children will be with the Lord and will not be misled by the false desires of this temporary world and even more crumbling flesh of dust.

I love so many of you in Christ. Won’t you join us, while it is yet today?

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