10.3

It comes around every year, sometimes full of tears and others it simply passes by.  six years. Six years, I have missed you everyday.  It seems much more real this year than ever before.  I always imagined you being there to give me away.  I see the ways you changed others, the ways you changed me more clearly everyday. I heard this morning, the way to honor those who are great leaders is to imitate them, to take on their characteristics.  I'm trying.  I  see the perfection in those 16 years we spent together. It was never enough, but I am so grateful for them.  I wish I had told you that more.  I wish I had seen the value in the things you did then. I do now, I really do.  I see how your love for her, is exactly the kind of love that I want to define my marriage.  [I don't know where I would be without her; thank you for bringing her into our lives. She is the best thing that ever happened to us.] I want to delve into the scriptures everyday as you did, see it as the bread that it is. 

Today was a significant day in that sanctuary I've been in so many times.  My mind wandered to the day you saw me baptized, the day you went to meet Jesus, the day that I joined my life with the man of my dreams.  Distracted, I began to think about the day I will see you again, and there will always be enough time.  It will never run out. I won't be asking how long you are staying as I do in my dreams, but it will feel like just yesterday that I saw you last.

You were right when you said that it is always about Him, absolutely right.  You have never been replaced, but God has richly blessed me with so many who have helped mend those broken places to simply be scars.  Scars that I will use to tell of His goodness through your story for the rest of my life. I want to tell the world of the man you were, the changed life because of Christ's love. Thank you for teaching me, and I am eternally grateful to the one who has used this to make me more like him, to give me a heart for others, and to see Him in everything.  

I will never stop missing you dad, 

I will always be your little al.

It is helpful to write, to release, to breathe.

God is faithful. He is good.

where you go, I'll go

where you stay, I'll stay

when you move, I'll move

I will follow you. 

[less emotional blogs to come]  

with love,

mrs. wilde