God's Timing

God's timing is pretty amazing...and something I struggle with. A very wise friend told me recently, "There are people who want to know the end of the book when they start the first page." **slowly raises my hand**

Today is special to me because it is the day my dad passed away. Notice I didn't say sad. It was sad for me...for years. And over time it never got easier. Never once. It just became my normal. My normal to not be able to call him or see him. My normal to do a double-take when I saw someone who looked like him, which happened way more often than I ever imagined it would those first 8 years. My normal to laugh and think "Oh I can't wait to tell Daddy this" to only remember, I will have to wait to tell him that. My normal to miss him with every. single. day.

But over time what I did gain was a tiny bit of wisdom. See, Daddy passed away on a leap year. I got a call at school on Valentine's Day 2004 that mom had him rushed to the hospital for being unresponsive after dealing with incurable lung cancer for less than a year. When I got there, my neighbor, who was a nurse, told me his blood pressure was in the single digits. He should have been dead....but he wasn't.

He hung on for 2 more weeks. We all said our goodbyes multiple times in multiple ways. He didn't speak those two weeks except for once. He told us that was going home, but not that day. He needed to wait until tomorrow. I joke that apparently, heaven had reached its quota that day. Daddy hung on for 2 more days before he passed on February 29, 2004....Leap Day.

Then I did not see God's timing. My sister had literally JUST returned home to her family and had to fly back out. My mom had JUST retired early in the school year to take care of him. My class was going on a field trip that I had organized the morning he passed. But those were all things that could be managed. The timing that I didn't understand was even though I said goodbye, I wasn't ready to let go.

However....this day only comes around once every four years. Daddy and God were pretty strategic I believe. Gifting me four years between it happening and observing the 'anniversary' of it gave me time. The gift of time to go from only remembering the hellacious year of cancer to being able to remember what his laugh sounded like. It is a gift to fade away from the chemo, weight loss, and sickness and bring back his smile, his love of cars, his passion for 'sho nuff country' and westerns to my memories. But it doesn't get easier. It won't ever be easy.

But at least now I can smile when I think about him. God's timing is everything.

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2012 post about Daddy - You are always on my mind

2016 post about Daddy - God gave you me!