Friday, March 8, 2013

Quick takes Friday- "I miss you" edition


--- 1 ---
In my dream last night, I spoke to my father in heaven. No, not OUR Father in heaven but MY father whose life we celebrated yesterday in a memorial mass and military ceremony. He called me on the phone and we just chatted. It is surprising me more and more how real the concept of my dad in heaven is becoming. Not real in the sense that I doubted it but real in the sense that I can actually picture it.
--- 2 ---
What a model my dad gave us to follow. Through 14 months of agony, he kept putting my mom and his family first in his concern. It reminded me of the end of the papacy of John Paul II...and of Jesus Himself.
--- 3 ---
Years ago, when I was an angry and bitter adolescent, I uttered which were among the most hate-filled and caustic words of my life- to my mother, yet. I rashly predicted that I would not cry at my father's funeral. Needless to say, I was unable to keep that promise. In fact, I didn't come close to keeping it. Looking back at my father and myself, it is not just hard, but impossible, to reconcile that either of us were the same person in 2013 that we were in 1977. In fact, we weren't. Call it what you want, I know that what happened to us was the Holy Spirit.
--- 4 ---
Want more proof that there is a God? All you have to do is look at the way my father's diagnosis, last days and death united my family. Some say that a world with suffering cannot be a world with a merciful God but how unbearable would this world be without God and the love He inspires?
--- 5 ---
During a video tribute to my dad (made by my nephew), the song Que Sera Sera was played.It was one of my dad's favorites and it rings so true. Whatever will be, will be. We no more control the future than the man on the moon. We do our best and hope for the best and God controls the rest.
--- 6 ---
The Marine ceremony honoring my dad was beautiful. I was struck by one part. Here we are, in this pavilion, the chill in the air, everything around covered in a blanket of snow with these dignified marines before us unfurling Old Glory.  At the very instant they snapped the flag open, there was a sudden, long and unmistakeable gust of the wind. That happens a time or two in Scripture, as I recall, at moments of great significance.
--- 7 --- 
I was the person who gave the Eulogy at my father's funeral yesterday. To my family and friends who don't yet know that there is a God or aren't sure He cares about you, all I can tell you is the truth. If you had visited me in the 1970s from the year 2013 to tell me the future, I would have had an easier time believing that we had taught pigs to fly than to believe that. God can reach you too and you truly can come to know Him but you have to be willing to try. Here is the speech I give. Some found inspiration in it. I humbly submit it if it helps anyone find hope.
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