Family Pictures

Once my siblings arrived last week, we took some family pictures...we set up two different cameras with two very different settings and that is the difference in the photos. Anyway, here they are. Enjoy!

My brother and his family

My sister and family

Silly kids making the others laugh

Sometimes you just have to be silly when you are trying to get the colors right!

For the Africans among us, the belly/booty shot.

Well, it was a long, too short, hard, fun and really enjoyable week. The memorial service went really well and though we cried a lot, it felt good to finally say goodbye. I spent a month pushing all the things I needed to get done out of my head and now that everyone is gone (except my friend Jini), I can't remember what it was I am supposed to do! We are slowly getting back into life and a rhythm but it is hard as my motivation is really lagging.

Anyway, since I know that most of you were unable to make it to the memorial service for my Dad, I thought I would post at least what I said about him. So this is roughly my speech. I hope you enjoy.

As most of you know, my Dad lived with us on our ranch, so I feel like saying all the great stuff without the rest of it doesn’t give the whole picture or the complete look we need to truly honor the totality of all that was Pastor Dave and my Dad. I can’t do it in two minutes either, so I have skipped to my last point and hope you see a small part of the big picture.

Living with Dad was both very challenging and very rewarding. You see, the very things that endeared him to our hearts also made us insane. For example, if you listen to people they will tell you what they loved the most was his willingness to listen, empathize and advise. He loved people and happily spent quality time listening to their hearts. His compassion wouldn’t let him cut someone off and his love didn’t want to. Time was irrelevant compared to someone’s feelings. I got to live with that. But this also made him perpetually late to virtually everything in his life. And, when you are trying to plan your life with him, it was quite infuriating. People have asked my Mom why she wasn’t alarmed sooner by his late arrival on that fateful night and her response is simple: “Well, I assumed he ran into someone and got talking. Then I fell asleep.” Totally true and totally believable. Because it was totally Dad. This was part of what made Dad, Dad and most definitely part of what made Pastor Dave a good shepherd.

Both my Dad and my Pastor were quite the visionaries. At our ranch it made me cringe but at my church it made me dream. At our ranch, if I heard the words, “I was just thinking…” or “Becky, I had an idea…” I tried to run for the hills or at least convince him one of the girls needed me. At the church, however, when I heard those same words, I would willingly let my mind wander down the roads he would take – amazed at the beauty and wonder of it all. He believed God for the moon and the stars because he knew our mighty God. And, because God was the One who would do the hard work, I would happily go along for the ride and dream right alongside him. Dad was an amazing visionary with matching faith. He believed God and he believed in people. He had the ability to communicate his passions and get everyone started on the same path.

Of course the flip side of that is that he rarely finished what he started. Honestly, he was notorious for his inability to finish his awesome plans. I have a perfect example. Four years ago, he found a nice, rather large shed (for free, of course, because he always found stuff for free) and the deal was that if he disassembled it and took it home, it was his. He knew this would make Mom happy as she could store all her seasonal things in it and redecorate every few months like she likes to do. But, he never got around to putting it up. He didn’t take pictures because the plans were in his head and that was good enough. This week, his sons – Andy, Ben and Micah – have been finishing that shed. It is up because they finished it for him. Our church has some buildings slightly larger than a shed. They are unfinished, and though he would have liked to finish this project, I guess we will all have to finish that for him too.

With three type-A’s in his house, it wasn’t always easy for Dad. We put a reign on what he started and actually asked him to finish things all the time. But of all the projects he didn’t get a chance to finish, he certainly finished the work God had for him and he finished it well. He lived a life of one abandoned to his Heavenly Father and the people He had given him. He followed through with people and shepherded his flock with the love of Jesus. At the church, he finished laying a foundation, both literally and figuratively, for the person who is next to come and lead this family. In his children’s lives, he laid the foundation for us to lead our own families in confident love and compassion. He patched up broken pieces and gave us a place to build our own homes. He showed us how to build a foundation for our own kids and helped us get started. God took our starter and used him to get us on our path, to set us on our way, but relieved him of the journey to finish with us and firmly placed that in our laps.
I miss him desperately. But if I can take away anything from what I have heard in the past four weeks, (well, there is more than one thing), but the overarching theme I keep hearing is that he always made people more important than projects and listening more important than speaking. That was hard on my task-oriented side, but in the end, and it will end for each one of us, I need to remember that what will matter the most will be the people we loved and encouraged, not the buildings we left behind.

Thank you for all your prayers! God Bless!