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Friday, September 17, 2010

Happy, 80th Birthday, Daddy

            This morning I had my blog post ready to go when it occurred to me, today was my dad’s birthday. He would have turned 80.  This is poignant to me because he was about my age when he died. A lot has happened since then.

            I would post his photo but he died long before we knew digital photos. (Maybe I need to consider scanning some.)

            Daddy did not see email. Six months after he died, I received a hand-written letter he had sent me, when I was in New Guinea. It had been mistakenly placed on a ship, instead of an airplane. It arrived long after I had left for home; the missionaries kindly mailed it back to me—by air.

            He missed the fall of the Iron Curtain and 9/11. He missed the firing of Tom Landry and wins under Jimmy Johnson.

            When daddy died, we didn’t know who George W. Bush was. Heck, Ronald Reagan was only two and a half years in to his presidency.

            He never knew my wife. He, obviously, did not know his grandchildren. He never saw the adult my sister grew up to be, nor her husband and children.
           
            He never saw the human being that my mother became. Indeed, I think the crises of his illness and death helped make her the woman she became.

            Daddy never saw any of this.

            Yet, because of the work of Jesus, considering Daddy’s place in eternity, maybe he did. 

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