I am a father and grandfather. What more could I ask for this Father's Day? Seven grandkids with wonderful parents bless my life each day. Thirteen years ago, I had just started R-CHOP chemo for mantel cell lymphoma. My hair was starting to fall out. I was losing weight. One grandchild on the way but not sure if I was to see that little guy.
Our lives were never to be the same after 7pm on November 17, 2003. As a father, I watched our young daughter slip into the hands of Jesus that night. Who would have thought such a thing would come into our lives after 30 years of marriage, but it did. It seemed to engulf us like a thick dark cloud. Grief is a strange thing. It is real and necessary. We do not seek it. It finds us. But it would not define us. Out of the darkness came light. Memories of the joy and laughter we had shared together sprang up from our friends and family. Little did we know we were being changed ever so slightly by the unthinkable. God's mercy and goodness would shelter us through the pain and darkness of grief.
As I lay in a hospital bed on Station 94 at Mayo, receiving my own stem
cells on October 13, 2008, I was filled with hope not despair. I had been
visited by my new grandson, Haakon, a few days earlier. It gave me such joy. I
prayed on the day of transplant that the power of Jesus' presence would be in
each stem cell that entered my body and that they would rescue my immune
system. I have survived to see six more grand babies born into our family.
Thanks to God's mercy and goodness, I survived. Not that I deserved to survive
but that Jesus chose to give me the gift of more days and more grand babies!
On this Father's Day, I am grateful and in awe of the gifts God has given me over the years. My wonderful wife, children and their families are precious to me. I pray I never forget God's great love poured out on my life through the unthinkable and the amazing times of my life. I have been the recipient of the Father's love and mercy. May I share the Father's love with all the lives I might touch in the rest of my days.
