{"id":1703,"date":"2016-11-29T05:09:19","date_gmt":"2016-11-29T05:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ladymacblog.com\/?p=1703"},"modified":"2016-12-14T01:36:43","modified_gmt":"2016-12-14T01:36:43","slug":"when-my-dad-died","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ladymacblog.com\/?p=1703","title":{"rendered":"When My Dad Died"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My Dad died earlier this month.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: large;\">I can&#8217;t seem to shake the feeling that my Dad is just too &#8216;big&#8217; of a person to not be here anymore. The patriarch of our clan, he was big in personality and presence even if he was a short Scotsman. I know anyone with a good relationship, and many with not so great a relationship, with their Dad will experience this same sensation upon loosing Dad. At first I thought this meant it was clich\u00e9 and I should keep it to myself to avoid over sentiment&#8230; but then it occurred to me that sentiment, when a common human truth, shouldn&#8217;t be avoided.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: large;\">This is the way it is supposed to feel. Dad&#8217;s are supposed to be bigger then life in the hearts of their children. Dad&#8217;s fill a very big piece of the puzzle of each child&#8217;s life, one of the interlocking pieces that connects and effects a whole lot of other parts of ones life. So yes, my Dad is just too big a person to not be here anymore.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: large;\">Dad wanted to go home to Jesus. Five years ago when he would talk like that, just after his cancer diagnosis, it made me so angry&#8230; I am a Christ follower too but there was a jealousy there that made me angry, a jealousy that didn&#8217;t want to let my Dad go or to trust him even to our Savior. Lately as he shared the same sentiment I understood more that he had ran his race, some would say on hyper-drive or with the n.o.s. injection button held down.\u00a0 He knew more then I did about how this physical body can become so broken it can be undesirable to remain in&#8230; especially when you consider the eternity Jesus promises us with him&#8230; No one wants to see their loved ones in pain so with pain in my heart I\u00a0eventually surrendered my desires to keep Dad, my anger,\u00a0and instead I made a Spirit empowered choice to trust him in the arms of his capable savior. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: large;\">How someone so full of life could also be so determined to be okay with leaving this life sometimes seems a total paradox to me.\u00a0 Other times I realize his eternal perspective meant he wasn&#8217;t choosing to leave life, but instead that trusting Jesus about the life here after meant he was choosing MORE life.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: large;\">The first morning after he had died was maybe the hardest so far for me. I woke up, still hidden under the covers and just cried into my pillow. I could clearly still remember the feel of his soft and very weak hands\u00a0as I held them gently and said good bye to him the weekend past.\u00a0 He had insisted, though it clearly hurt him a great deal, that I let him hold me to his chest in a fragile hug&#8230; our last hug. I had leaned in and told him he was a good dad to me and that it was okay for him to have peace now and that I love him so much. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: large;\">I said goodbye, realizing I was loosing, in this life, one of my biggest cheerleaders. This man never limited me, never told me I couldn&#8217;t do it and when I couldn&#8217;t or wouldn&#8217;t do it he wanted to lift me up to a point to be able to&#8230; I don&#8217;t recall him ever being anything but supportive of me&#8230; maybe that is exaggeration but that is how it felt in\u00a0my\u00a0grieving.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: large;\">Just so you know, I am one of his biggest fans too&#8230;and the rest of his fan club, you know who you are&#8230; Allan Munro loves you&#8230;<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>\u201cThe way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><br \/>\n<em> ~G.K. Chesterton<\/em><\/p>\n<p>TTFN<\/p>\n<p>Lady Mac an Rothaich<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My Dad died earlier this month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1704,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,15,5,20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ladymacblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1703"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ladymacblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ladymacblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ladymacblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ladymacblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1703"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.ladymacblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1729,"href":"http:\/\/www.ladymacblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1703\/revisions\/1729"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ladymacblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ladymacblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ladymacblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ladymacblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}