My Week

It's Friday evening, 7:38pm and this week from hell is finally coming to an end. While the actual Viewing and Service for my father went well, it was all the shit in between that was driving me crazy! Just like many families, my family is dysfunctional. My father was married and had two sons before he married my mom and had myself and my siblings. So we had both sides of the family here including BOTH ex-wives. My father left the youngest of his children, my sister, as the executor of his will, which is just fine with me because I wouldn't want the stress, but my half-brother feels slighted. Needless to say there has just been a lot of immature fighting on both sides and then people get mad at me because I refuse to jump in. I just have had no emotional energy to waste on fighting this week.

Anyway, like I said...week from HELL!! But it's over now. The service today was great! Some of my college kids from church played and sung and they just did an outstanding job. I was able to make it through my little talking part without completely breaking down. Here's the text of what I had to say:

I read I Corinthians 13 (The Message)

It wasn'’t until Monday night, after having almost a full day to process the passing of my father, that verses 9 & 10 of this chapter really jumped out at me. Let me read just those two verses again:

9. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete.
10. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

Many times we as Christians feel like we have to have definitive answers concerning every aspect of our faith leaving no room for mystery, but there is mystery and we should embrace it. Perhaps one of the greatest mysteries of our faith is love, the complete and perfect love of Jesus Christ. Our present understanding of love has been warped by both society and the Church.

Throughout scripture love is the constant theme: it was in love that Adam and Eve were created, it was love that gave mankind a second chance through Noah, it was because of love that our Creator was born of flesh and it was love that ultimately nailed Jesus to the cross.

My father loved his God and he loved people. Some of my strongest memories of my dad were the times I would see him cry. I didn'’t know it at the time but those moments had a profound impact on my life in teaching me that it's ok to weep. My father may not have always expressed his love with words and while he lived here on this earth his love certainly wasn't perfect or complete. However, we can rejoice because now not only is his body complete, not only is his sickness completely gone but he now knows the complete love of our Savior and my father's love is now perfect and complete, his incompletes have been canceled out by the perfect love of Christ.

Love is not a simple concept, in fact it may be perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of our faith. Think about it, it'’s much easier to hate those that hate you, it's much easier to despise those that have a different ideology than yourself, it's much easier to declare war against those that would wish to harm you. Christ made it extremely clear that there is always a third way and that third way is the way of love. When asked to break down all of the Old Testament law into the greatest commandment Christ responded with, "Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence -- and that you love your neighbor as well as you do yourself."

There's the chorus of a song that sums up just how difficult love is:

'Cause love is different than you'd think.
It's never in a song or on a TV screen
And love is harder than a word
Said at the right time and everything's alright
Love is different than you think.

Until we are face to face with our Savior we will never know the complete, perfect love that Christ spoke about, but it is imperative that we do our best to live it as best as we can until that time comes.

13But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
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I first began thinking about what I would say at my father's funeral the moment I learned he had cancer. It wasn't a morbid thing but I just didn't want to get up and spew out some sentimental b.s. because that's what you do at funerals. I admit I had issues with my father up until the day he died. These weren't issues that kept me from speaking to him, at least for not great periods of time, I didn't love him less than my other siblings. I just refuse to sugarcoat my childhood and pretend like things didn't happen.

I don't know. Maybe I am being an ass??? It wouldn't be the first time nor will it probably be the last. I do miss my dad and I loved him very much. It's still just so hard for me to think he's actually gone...that I can't just pick up a phone and actually here him bitchin' about something. :-)

I do believe he is a Christian. I believe he was way off on a lot of things and he was the type of Christian absolutelyes me absolutly crazy but he knew he was a sinner and needed the love of his Savior to rescue him from that.

Well, that's it for now. I promised myself a couple glasses of Jack & Coke tonight but I am already feeling sleepy so it will have to wait until tomorrow.