He'll Take You When He Wants You

I have always known that.....

"He'll take you when he wants you."

But when he does, sometimes it is unexpected.  And not all unexpected things are great.

My dad died 5 years ago today, November 27, 2009.

Unexpected and not so great were just words that feelings can't express.

But as dad would say, "that's just part of it."

It is part of life and something that you just have to deal with.

I can hear him now, "stop mopin' around about it and go do something.  

Stop thinking about it, you think to much.  It's just part of it, Katie."

So as we celebrate Thanksgiving today and spend time with friends and family, we celebrate him.

We celebrate the athlete he was and tried to make me be.....as he told me to run the hills of our country road.  He instilled teamwork and a passion for winning and a respect for the lessons learned in losing.

We celebrate the fun-loving, crazy guy he was at my mom's 8th grade birthday party.

(Do we think he is trying to impress her with those moves and that hair?)

And we celebrate the party animal he continued to be as he "grew up".

 We celebrate his strength.......and sarcasm.

The strength he had physically, mentally, for his family and friends, for his work on the farm and the land and his love for Christ was a force to be reckoned with.  Don't forget the strength he had to have in order to share a house with three passionate women!  His strength was an example of how to live your life, and still is.

(Look at that farmer's tan!)

We will celebrate the fact that he met these two guys in college and remained friends with them until his death.  Among their differences and very different backgrounds, they were friends and taught each other things throughout their lives.

(We can only imagine what's happening in this photo......)

And we celebrate the fact that even though one lives on the east coast and the other on the west coast, we still get together and share stories of dad.

On this Thanksgiving as I lay down for my nap in my "spot" at grandma's, I will celebrate that sometimes in life we are in sync with one another like dad and my sister, Sarah, always were.  Being in sync and alike are great at times.

And sometimes we are out of sync with each other like dad and I always were with each other.  This is okay too.  I think our differences made us stronger.....learning from each other and pushing each other to be better.

So when I heard the guy I was dating say those words, "he'll take you when he wants you", well I knew he would be my husband someday because that's exactly what dad would have said.  And we were in sync about the way we thought about life and death.

God took him when he wanted him because he can.

And it wasn't great and it still hurts but didn't we always know that?

So today we celebrate, just as he would have wanted because

"that's just part of it."