What I Said At My Daddy's Funeral

A LIFE WELL LIVED AND A MINISTRY WELL SERVED.

HATE is not a strong enough word for how I feel about dementia.

LOVE is not a strong enough word for how I feel about my daddy.

But oh, how I’ve learned from them both.

I was blessed to have the best father in the world.

He was my hero.

He simply was the best man ever.

His strength tempered by his humanness taught me so much about how to live life

and ultimately, how to face death.

Today is truly a celebration of a life well lived and a ministry well served.

It is a good day for a good man

and he would want nothing less than for me to say, as he would have said,

“I’m thankful it’s as good as it is!”

So I will say it and you can say it with me!  “I am thankful it’s as good as it is.”

Because today, we can CELEBRATE a man, whose heart was so pure and big that, when the doctor was giving me the results of the last test done on his heart just hours before his death, she said that it was sort of like his heart was too strong because one part showed that it was “extra” thick because it was “bulked up by having been worked so hard like a body builder would work his arm muscle.”

I know she was giving me a medical explanation for how the blood flow was actually being constricted by this extra thickness but all I could think in that moment was 

how fittingly that described my father.

Here a doctor was, medically telling me that my daddy had a big and strong heart muscle.

Well, that was something I’ve known my entire lifetime.

And all I could think right then was how his heart was so big and extra strong because he spent his life with his heart getting bigger and bigger with all of the love he felt for everyone he came in contact with and his heart getting stronger and stronger because he spent his lifetime 

working his heart out as a

body of Christ builder

“bulking up” God’s Kingdom!

So what a CELEBRATION of LOVE today should be and is!

And my daddy sure did LOVE!

With unconditional patience and unconditional sacrifice,

my daddy LOVED!

My daddy loved his God – his precious Jesus.

Everything in his life pointed to his love for God.

And his goal in life was to point everyone he met to find this love for Jesus too!

One of my verses for the day that I have emailed to me daily yesterday said,

“God blesses those whose hearts are pure, for they shall see God.”

I can only imagine my daddy’s love and excitement as he saw God because 

I cannot imagine anyone in this world with more of a pure heart!

­My daddy loved his Jackie and his children and his grandchildren.

He was married to his bride, Jackie Sue, for 54 years, 3 months, 1 week, and 5 days.

And in every one of those days, he spoiled her with every fiber of his being because he simply loved her unconditionally with every ounce of energy his heart could ever produce.  I’ve never seen such a pure love than I witnessed over the life of my parents’ marriage.         The day before he died, I promised him I would take care of his Jackie.  He looked at me and, in a lucid moment out of his dementia, replied, “Promise?” to which I said, “I promise!”  

His next words were, “Then leave me alone and let me die.”

He was father to 3 – my sister, Joan, my brother, Jamie, and me.  And he loved us.  He did everything within his power to do everything he ever thought we needed.  He even made us Easter baskets every year until we were well into our 40’s.  And he waited for all 3 of us to be at his side before he passed on to see his Jesus.  I joked with him once that the reason he and Mama named us all with “J’s” was so that we would all be in the same name family as Jesus – the “J” family.   Well, he waited for all of the “J” family to be together one last time as we all, Jimmie, Jackie, Joan, Jamie, and Janna, spent one last night together – one last slumber party sleeping and not sleeping in one room as we loved on him and watched him slip away to his reward.  As hard as it was, it was a blessed and sacred night that I will treasure in my memory for as long as ever I can.

And the grandchildren.  He spoiled them too!  He would push them on swings, play in sandboxes, play ball, and stop everything he was doing to go buy chocolate ice cream after he had only bought vanilla – just because one grandchild only liked chocolate!

My daddy loved his family and friends.

He was part of a big family and he married into a big family.  And he had a multitude of friends from childhood and all parts of his life.  He loved you all!  He would do whatever was needed for every single one of you and I don’t think any one of you ever doubted that!

And my daddy loved his church people, also known as his friends!

You, his church people, were his life’s work.

You were his calling.

You were his life’s blood that kept him going.

But more than all of that,

you were his friends!

And I think every one of you knew that.

As someone recently said to me,

“He could remember my middle brother’s wife’s father’s dog’s name!”

His great memory and attention and care for not only the salvation of his church people but also the daily lives of all of you also made him a friend to you.

He loved all of you dearly!

And thank you for loving him the same!

What a legacy of love we have to CELEBRATE and TREASURE in all that my father has taught us simply by living and by loving his Jesus and loving us all!

We would all do well to follow my daddy’s exemplary lifelong presentation of living out John Wesley’s Rule, which, by the way, he was already doing as a child and young man way before he knew what John Wesley’s Rule even was:

John Wesley’s Rule:

Do all the good you can,

By all the means you can,

In all the ways you can,

In all the places you can,

At all the times you can,

To all the people you can,

As long as ever you can.

I always knew my daddy was brilliant and strong, but as I watched death give way to victory over the last few days and hours of my daddy’s life, I gained an even greater respect for my daddy’s intellect, an even greater perspective on his strength tempered by his humanness, and I was simply in awe of how deeply ingrained the Word of God was into his spirit, heart, and mind – even in his state of dementia.

As I was grasping for anything that might comfort my daddy in his last 2 days, I was reading Scripture to him.  Not knowing if I would get a response or not, I asked him what he wanted to hear.  Without hesitation, he replied Psalm 28.  So, out of the Gideon Bible provided by the hospital b/c the one I brought with me was way too small print for me to see well, I read Psalm 28 not even knowing what it was (b/c I’m not my dad and I sure don’t have the entire Bible memorized!).  If I ever doubted my dad’s ability to know what Scripture was needed in a certain situation, 

that moment forever erased it all.

In the pain of his last days, my daddy would raise his hands and say, “I need help.”

The Scripture he requested in his last 2 days is printed on the back of your bulletin.

I will read 4 of the verses:  Psalm 28: 2, 6, 7, and 8

Hear the voice of my pleas for mercy, when I cry to you for help,

when I lift up my hands toward your most holy sanctuary.

Blessed be the LORD! For He has heard the voice of my pleas for mercy.

The LORD is my strength and my shield; in Him my heart trusts, and I am helped;

my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to Him.

The LORD is the strength of His people;

He is the saving refuge of His anointed.

I was a witness to how God answered my dad’s pleas.

As my daddy got closer to meeting his Jesus and not too long after my mama had arrived to the hospital, my daddy sat up and in his strength tempered by his humanness, he said,

“I don’t have the knowledge to know how to do this.”

To which I immediately replied, “Oh yes you do, Daddy.  You’ve been preaching it your entire lifetime!  You know exactly what to do, how to do it, and where to go and you just keep doing it.  You are doing a great job!  You just keep going to where you know to go.  You are the best man ever and you can do this.  Just keep going, Daddy, just keep going.”

A little while later, he sat back up and said, “Lord, I need your help – just one more time. 
Just one more time, Lord, I need your help.”

A little while later, he sat back up and said, “I’m SO EXCITED! I’m SO EXCITED!”

My personal belief, as I heard my daddy say those words, is that he was getting a glimpse of heaven and what was in store for him in the next hours.  Maybe he was even responding to hearing our God say, “Well done, thy good and faithful servant.  Well done.”

Lastly, I feel sure that my daddy would want nothing less today than for me to tell you that 

he would want you to someday know that excitement too!

In your bulletin, you should find a piece of paper with my daddy’s handwriting on it.  

It is something he made for a revival he preached for my late husband at one of our churches 

over 20 years ago.  I came across it 5 or so years ago and held onto it just for today.

Just as God rescued my daddy from his pain, God can rescue you too!

Whether you need to know more about asking Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior for the very first time or whether you just want encouragement in the things of the Lord, today is your chance!

If you have a need, please fill in my daddy’s paper and give it to one of the Preacher Davids right behind me after the service, to your preacher, or to me and I will find who you need.

I have no doubt that God was near my daddy as he called out to Him.

I have no doubt that God is near to you today and wants to be even closer.

All you have to do is ask.

17

Two days ago,

on April 21st,

my Wesley turned 17 years old.

Wesley is one of the best human beings 

I've ever had known.

I'm so blessed to have had the opportunity of raising him.

My Hero

Today,

we bury my daddy.

He has always been my hero.

And he always will be.

April 5, 2017

At 8:16 a.m. 

on Wednesday, April 5, 2017, 

my daddy slipped peacefully away 

to his Jesus 

and to all of his treasures stored up in Heaven 

and to hear our God say, 

"Well done, thy good and faithful servant,." 

And now, here it is almost exactly 24 hours later,

and I sit here,
in the house where my daddy was born in the front bedroom,
working on his obituary.

And I already miss him beyond measure.

Understatement

My dad has dementia.

He had a very bad day today.

And that is a bold understatement.

My sons spent 10 hours with me 

at the nursing home

trying to calm him

and helping me with all of 

his physical needs too.

I simply have the very best children.

And that is also a bold understatement.

(If you read this on Monday night, please pray he stays asleep.

If you're reading this after that, please pray he will have better days).

  

Repost of "Words From Rob"

Today is Thursday, March 9th, 2017.

There has been so much going on that I literally have not had time to write
on my blog lately but this post popped up in my blogspot file last night

and I decided to repost it for today.

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011 was the start of Lent

and what I am reposting was his letter for the church newsletter that year.

The following blog post was originally written on Sunday, March 8th, 2015.

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Sunday, March 8, 2015

Words From Rob

I typed, printed, and folded the bulletins and newsletters for my late husband at 3 of the 4 of his church appointments.  And as I’ve said somewhere on this blog before, the longest running argument I had with my late husband was the fact that he just couldn’t get his newsletter article to me by the deadline.  He just could not seem to do it – no matter what. Sometimes, he would spend a lot of time writing it and editing it.  Sometimes he wouldn’t.  Sometimes he would ask for my help and we would work from his outline.  Sometimes he would write it and ask me not to change anything.  That just sort of depended on how much time he had that month. 

I came across this email the other day when I was looking for another email from that time period and thought I would share it with all of you.  Rob would email (usually from the church) the letters to me so I could proof and edit and so that I could copy and paste and not have to retype like in the olden days.

This is the letter my Rob wrote for the March 2011 newsletter.  Lent started on March 9^th that year so this is his “Lent” letter – exactly as he sent it to me – in which he is challenging the church members to spend at least 15 minutes a day for the season of Lent memorizing Scripture and why it's important.  

It would be the last season of Lent that he would spend on Earth. 

I know some of you will enjoy reading Rob’s words.

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Date:  Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 5:48 PM

Subject:  I love you Janna. Here is my letter.

I'm sorry it wasn't ready on the 25th. I really like this and you can leave it the way it is.

Thank you for all the awesome work you do with the newsletter - especially all the help through the years with my articles....I love you.

Your Robert

NewsletterMarch2011

Key point: memorizing scripture is very important and a good discipline for us to practice this year during Lent.

     When was the last time you memorized passages from Scripture?  It might have been when you were in 6^th grade preparing for confirmation.  Or maybe earlier still, in Sunday school, when you learned John 3:16 and Psalm 23.  Can you remember when it was exactly?

    Many Christians unselfconsciously learn Scripture by heart. However, what was common several years ago has become less common today for we live in a time when memorization is not given much importance. Often memorization is summed up as “rote learning” void of conscious thought. Memorizing, we are told often, discourages creativity, critical thinking, and conceptual understanding.

    This really doesn’t make sense. After all, training to be a doctor or a lawyer entails memorization-a lot of it. We don’t foolishly assume that the creativity of actors or musicians is crushed by the formidable feats of memory that their art demands. And why is Indianapolis Colts’ quarterback, Peyton Manning, such a dazzlingly great quarterback? Of course he is a gifted athlete but there are many men who are gifted athletes. However, Manning spends countless hours in the film room, studying defenses, looking for patterns to memorize, so that…in the midst of the action, with a 300- pound- lineman who runs like a cheetah and hits like a truck bearing down on him-he will make the optimal decision in a split second. Manning’s greatest strength comes from the fruit of the work of his mind.

   What Manning does when he studies game films and what great actors do when they learn the lines of their roles is illustrative of what we all do from the time we are born- an ongoing work of memorizing AND forgetting, largely conducted without conscious intent or awareness.  “Whenever you read a book or have a conversation,” the prize winning science writer George Johnson reminds us, and I might add, whenever you cross the road, change a diaper, or bake a cake… “the experience causes physical changes in your brain.  In a matter of seconds, new circuits are formed, memories that can change forever the way you think about the world.” Learning is a lifelong process. As I learned recently, our brains are fully formed in size when we are 18 but we spend the rest of our lives learning and maturing. Much of what we learn is through memorization.

     The impact of MOST of what we memorize is not so dramatic as to change forever the way we think about the world but it can be- because it is real, and its consequences accumulate over time. Therefore, the choices we make about what to put in our mind are of lasting importance. “Memorization of Scripture,” Dallas Willard writes, “is one way of ‘taking charge’ of the contents of our conscious thoughts, and of the feelings, beliefs, actions and habits that accompany them.” Recently I came across a little known work entitled Scripture by Heart: Devotional Practices for Memorizing God’s Word . It is written by a Korean Pastor- Joshua Choonming Kang of Los Angeles, California. Pastor Kang emphasizes the importance of the Word of God becoming “part of us.”

    I have been working especially hard in the past few months in memorizing sections of scripture from Paul’s letters (in particular: 1 and 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians) which I have found are extremely helpful in living successfully on a daily basis. I work daily on memorizing these scriptures, i.e. “hiding them in my heart.” Pastor Kang focuses on a highly disciplined daily way of memorizing Scriptures. He writes that in no more than 30 but no less than 15 minutes per day we can study scripture passages in context and through meditating on them and “ingesting” them into our spirits we can actually come to memorize them in a way that we can practically use them in our everyday lives. His point is that we need to meditate on God’s Word the way a cow chews its cud. The cow repeatedly brings its food back up to chew some more before it is “ingested” enough to be ready to be “digested” and become useful for the cow’s health. The Hebrew word for “meditating” on God’s Word in the Bible infers “chewing the cud” as the way we should read, study and learn God’s Word.

   The version of the Bible used to memorize God’s Word is the King James for Pastor Kang. Like me, he believes the King James is especially useful because of its poetical language which lends itself to easier memorization much as we memorize poems or lines from Shakespeare’s writings. Why, you may say, am I harping on memorizing scripture? Well, for one thing because Jesus did. Jesus read Scripture in the synagogue (Luke 4:16); prayed early in the morning (Mark 1:35); prayed on high places (Luke 22:39); and, as a teacher, expounded the Word he knew by heart. Pastor Kang says “when we commit ourselves to memorizing scripture we follow in Jesus’ footsteps. We cultivate his lifestyle. We gather our wits and concentrate.”

    Memorizing Scripture is not an end in itself.  We don’t do it to earn merit badges or points with God. However, Pastor Kang says that when we meditate DEEPLY on the Scriptures we begin to BEAR FRUIT directed by the Holy Spirit. The more we commit God’s Word to memory, the richer our BEING becomes. The melodious concert of His Word will continually echo within us.  Then we’ll encounter the conductor, our Lord Jesus, the Holy Spirit, who helps us remember the Scriptures, and the Father, who’ll receive glory through all of this.”

    For some people, Scripture memorization comes easily because their capacities for memorization is greater, But even if we are not particularly ‘good’ at it, the habit of memorizing Scripture is a good discipline for us as disciples. Through memorization God’s Words reside in our BODY, in our SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT, in the constant orientation of our will and in the depths of our soul. They become a power, a substance that sustains and directs us without our even thinking of them, and they emerge into conscious thought and action as needed. THIS IS WHAT JESUS SPOKE OF AS ABIDING, DWELLING IN HIM.”

      Therefore I challenge everyone to devote at least 15 minutes a day throughout the 40 days of Lent beginning with Ash Wednesday on March 9^th and ending on Easter Sunday. . I promise you it will not be time wasted. We are not just talking about memorizing phone numbers or answers to test questions or work- related facts. We are talking about eternal truths. God promises that His “Word does not return to Him void” i.e. – without accomplishing the purpose for which he intends [to bring fruit in your life and mine]. God promises to bless all those who meditate on His Words and hide them in our hearts. Begin your time by praying for God to bless you during this Lenten season. He will!

Every Year...

...the delicate 

yet hardy 

unfolding of Spring 

brings me 

comfort 

and hope 

and joy.