April 30, 2011

It has been a wonderful 3 weeks since I last posted. My Mother came to stay with us during the flooding in Fargo-Moorhead area. We have enjoyed visiting, looking at pictures, "shopping" and eating. Mom will be 93 on May 19th so we have been celebrating the big event to come.

Friday morning our daughter, Whitney, invited great-grandma, grandma and grandpa to watch her ultrasound of our future grandchild. What an awesome experience. The baby was sleeping. We saw the heart beating, blood flow and pulse of the baby. Measured the femar bone and head to determine approximate weight and age. The projection was about 8' plus. Looks like Colin and Whitney will have a good size baby to take home. She is scheduled to have the baby on May 16th. Psalm 139 came to life in front of our eyes...
"For it was you who formed my inward parts;
   you knit me together in my mother’s womb. ¹⁴ I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
   Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well. ¹⁵   My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
   intricately woven in the depths of the earth. ¹⁶ Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
   all the days that were formed for me,   when none of them as yet existed.
Our prayers continue for Whitney and Amy, who is due around June 8th will be having a little girl. We are excited about the new arrivals. It will be a busy summer with new babies in both of our kid's families.

Friday night we had a 40th Class reunion of my dental school class. It was a fun evening of visiting and trying to catch up on 40 years of life and practice. There was more gray hair and less hair in the room. Lots of laughter and sharing of stories. I was so blessed to be alive and able to enjoy this experience. Thank you Mayo and Jesus for giving me these days of my life. Thank you for continued prayers and encouragement.

April 5th 2011

Happy Birthday Lindsay...

It would be Lindsay's 34th Birthday today. We were blessed by having her for twenty six years. Below is the quote shared with us at the time of Lindsay's death that has helped us in the passing days.

“Here, in a nutshell, is what it means to understand something as a gift and to handle it with gratitude, a perspective biblical religion puts around all of life. And I am here to testify that this is the only way down from the Mountain of Loss. I do not mean to say that such a perspective makes things easy, for it does not. But at least it makes things bearable when I remember that Lindsay was a gift, pure and simple, something I neither earned nor deserved nor had a right to. And when I remember that the appropriate response to a gift, even when it is taken away, is gratitude, then I am better able to try and thank God that I was ever given her in the first place.” 

Quote from Tracks of a fellow struggler by John Claypool, pg. 82, Word Publisher, 1974.  (We have edited the text by using Lindsay’s name to replace his daughter’s name in the original text.)