Happy Father's Day

I was going to avoid the entire Father's Day post, since I'm kind of in a funk about my dad right now, but yesterday was a gift, so here goes.

At church, I go to a Ladies Bible Study class in the morning before service, and our group has taken on a nearby nursing home as our mission project. We've visited there several times, trying to time visits around holidays like Father's and Mother's Day.

Yesterday was the first chance I had to go, and I won't lie and say I was excited. I was fairly well dreading it. My grandmother was in an assisted living place until she died, and while it was a nice place, it's not somewhere you want to go spend a lot of time visiting if you don't have to. Face it: as nice as they make them look, it's still a place for people to go as the journey to the other side, and that isn't something I want to examine on a regular basis.

Regardless, after talking myself out of flaking and then LYING about it in class tomorrow (it took a surprising amount of talking, I have to tell you), I showed up.

It was a wonderful experience. I won't say I didn't cry my way home afterward, but still. You go in with the idea that you will be spreading some joy to people by visiting with them, and little do you know just how filled your spirit will be by THEM.

I'm not so good with the words, so I won't try to wax rhapsodic about how I felt and how much it meant to me, but needless to say, getting off the pity pot about missing my dad and doing something other-centered got my head in the right place. Being there called to mind the joy my dad had each time we visited my Grandma, and how he took time to talk to any of the ladies he happened upon, asking them questions and laughing with them.

THAT is what I'm remembering this Father's Day. Thank YOU nursing home residence, and thank you AGAIN dad for continuing your counsel from above.