More Than Enough Reasons
It is a little odd that every year we celebrate another anniversary of being married, we also celebrate another year of stroke survival (my stroke occurred on our 21st anniversary). This one was even odder, because we found ourselves invited to someone's 50th anniversary celebration, hosted by a woman who was the flower girl in our wedding. It was being held at the church we got married in ... the one my father-in-law basically built from the ground up when my wife was in middle school. Even odder still, it fell on the same day of the week (a Saturday), and the weather was identical (rainy and overcast).
Kim often tells stories of the times her family was the only group to show up for a work day, so her dad would simply hand her a staple gun and a roll of insulation and tell her to start insulating walls. That is where she learned to paint and insulate walls, pound nails, and many other tasks that are coming in pretty handy with me in the condition I am in! Bob had driven by an old sand-blasting building in the 80s and said, "God gave me a vision of that old sand-blasting building being a church. This place is going to be a church." And he would work from sun-up to sun down fulfilling the vision God gave him, even on days it did not go well, and he was showing up alone to do the work. At his funeral, one guy was able to tell the story of how the carpet layers had shown up before the roofers, and the monsoon-storm-of-the-century was headed right to the church. Kim's dad was acting contractor for the whole project, and all he could imagine was thousands of dollars in new carpeting, completely ruined by water. Bob prayed and had someone go check on things. A dear friend named Gary was checking things out, and he called Bob in disbelief, saying, "Marvel, it is raining everywhere around the entire church, and not a drop is falling on it!"
Anyway, life got really crazy and really difficult, and we had not been in that building since the day we said our vows, and we had not seen many of the people who had been there that day, either. How weird through no orchestration of our own, to be in the same exact spot we were in exactly 34 years prior to that, at the same time, with many of the same people in the same room in which we held our reception ... the room Kim's dad had her stapling insulation into as an 11-year-old girl. Our Master and Mistress of Ceremonies were tucked away in the back, exactly where they had been standing during our reception. We got to re-connect with many people, and it was really nice and really healing time and felt like a big life reset.
What a gift to have a visible reminder of what constant, consistent obedience, even when it was not easy accomplished when one man had a vision he was willing to see to the end. Wow, the thousands and thousands of lives that have been impacted from that. And what an incredible heritage to live and attempt to pass down to the next generations. The generation passing through there now does not even know his name, but his obedience in the 1980s is still having far-reaching effect to this day.
To listen to this song, click below:
