kind of.
it's cradled me in the cool mountain air,
held me in my excitement of that sparkly ring he placed on my finger,
became a bed when i was 5 months pregnant and so very sick.
supported me in those first few days of fresh grief.
rocked me in those dark nights while we waited to see where He was sending us, transplanting us in soil unfamiliar and strange...
his dad new i loved that chair,
knew that when i came, that's where i would plop myself and so in the last days before he wasn't anymore, i received a note in my inbox from a sister asking where i would like the chair to go that christmas. he wouldn't move it until i gave my final okay.
i haven't thought about that memory since i sat down to write...
sometimes our minds guard the most treasured memories close.
it was still in storage when i made the decision those 14 months ago - that decision to print out those cards and glue them down in that book and begin to memorize those words penned from some dark prison cell.
and when it did see daylight and was placed in our home, my discipline to memorize on schedule began to fade away on waves of nausea.
there is another father here, one who has opened his heart to us who are fatherless and at the beginning he listened every week, and then waited patiently while i would get my feet back under me and my mind would catch up to where i should be. my book is covered with his signature...
then little miss made her grand entrance and i missed the dead line of having the whole book memorized by the new year, but i determined, despite sleeplessness and hormones and the loss of all those brain cells, to finish.
they tell you, the experts, to put your babies on schedules and let them learn to sleep on their own, but i would pick up those pages during the afternoon quiet time that i have fingered over and over for the last passing year and then i would fill my arms with the newness of her and cradle us both in the chair his father knew i loved.
and i would rock to the rhythm of ancient words scribbled down and i would whisper them over her head. new life in my arms and His Life on my lips and i would pass those hours being changed little by little.
it was when those last words were said, the call to remember his chains and the final benediction...when what rested on her soft downy head was his blessing of grace, it was then that the tears came.
entwined in small and quiet ways are the gift of a father, the patience of a father and the Words of my Heavenly Father in that corner that old chair rests, and beth moore is right, "Never — NOT ONCE — have I ever known anyone to get to the end of a Scripture memory commitment and say that it didn’t make any real difference. Not a single time.”
so i start again with paul at pen, but on letters to the romans and we rock, her and i, to the rhythm of His mercy...
