That photo is from 1969. I was about a year old. I am so blessed to have always had a loving, strong, faithful father actively involved in my life. He’s a great dad, and an awesome Papa to his grandsons. I’m thankful we get to spend the day together!

And I’m also grateful for my husband, Donnie Apted…

This picture is from Father’s Day 2010. (Note to self: make middle child put on shirt before taking 2011 pics!) He’s a wonderful, involved father, and though he didn’t grow up with the constant presence of a loving dad in his life, his number-one goal is making sure his kids know that he’s there and that he loves them. I hope my boys always know what a gift that is.

And now, to the column I wrote to honor these men, and dads everywhere whose children benefit from “The Power of Dad.”

*-*-*-*-*

The late afternoon sun sparkled brightly across the crystal blue swimming pool. Tree frogs croaked lazily from the surrounding forest, and the air smelled of fresh, clean chlorine. It was hot, much hotter than June should be, and we were all beyond ready to dive in.

All of us, that is, except for the littlest one. 20-month-old Jonah looked around apprehensively as we removed our cover-ups and kicked off our flip-flops. Not yet two, but with the memory of an elephant, he certainly hadn’t forgotten being dragged to this horrible place just a few days before.

“Be gentle taking him into the water,” I warned my husband, Donnie. “Last time, he started crying the minute we got in.” I dreaded a repeat of the screaming fit he threw last week, acting as though I dipped him into a vat of boiling acid instead of soothing, bathtub-warm water.

On that day, I’d taken my three sons to the pool alone, thinking that Jonah would follow in his brothers’ footsteps and be my third water-loving baby. Alas, one should never assume. The older two swam while I held the screaming tot—and then had the sweaty, miserable “pleasure” of chasing him around the deck for an hour until Donnie came to pick him up.

I am no dummy, so I made sure Dad would be at our next swimming session, to tag-team if things got ugly again. And I fully expected that.

But, Donnie scooped up Jonah and went straight down the pool’s steps. So much for a gentle entry into the water. “Slow down, honey—maybe he’d like to just play on the steps first?” I cautioned.

“Oh, he’s fine!” Donnie replied nonchalantly, as they swooshed together into the chest-deep water. And, Jonah was indeed just fine. His few whimpers faded fast, held safely there in his father’s arms. Half an hour later, my previously pool-phobic son was laughing and splashing and having a grand old time.

I commented that I couldn’t believe the difference in Jonah’s behavior. Our son Zach replied, “Hey, it’s just the ‘Power of Dad’!”

I like that phrase: The Power of Dad. Fathers do exude an almost magical form of strength and encouragement, the kind that inspires kids to ride the big roller coaster, stand up to the bully—or bravely splash about in what must feel like mile of water to a very small boy.

My heart hurts for every person who’s never known the security of having a loving father present in their lives. My friend Amy is a teacher, and recently shared this saddening incident with me.

“I teach in an urban school and had an at-risk class of 11th graders—kids that were slightly off track for a variety of reasons. We were reading The Great Gatsby and were talking about how Gatsby tried to reinvent himself and reinvent his past. I asked my students if they could reinvent their past, what’s the one thing they’d want to have. I was thinking they’d say things, like a bike or something. I used going to Disney World as my example—I’d always wanted to go as a kid, so I made sure I did that as an adult, and made sure that my kids got to go. Well, every single one of my students said that the thing they wish they’d have—and the thing they’d make sure their own kids had one day—was a father. It was heartbreaking.”

How sad that in an entire classroom of teenagers, not one had grown up knowing the love of a father. And that is just one class, in one urban school, in one American city—how horribly have we have failed our children, that so many are growing up fatherless?

But did you catch the glimpse of hope in Amy’s story? These kids want to make sure their own kids grow up having relationships with their dads. Dear Lord, may it be so.

Every child is aware of what my son Zach expressed: The Power of Dad. Some know it because they get to see it in action on a daily basis; others know it because their hearts discern it’s one huge thing in life that they’re missing.

I’ve never met a perfect father—or mother—but if your life is better because you’ve experienced The Power of Dad, take a few moments this Sunday, on Father’s Day, to let him know.

the world, and all who live in it;

for he founded it on the seas

and established it on the waters.

Who may ascend the mountain of the LORD?

Who may stand in his holy place?

Those who have clean hands and a pure heart,

who do not put their trust in an idol

or swear by a false god.

They will receive blessing from the LORD

and vindication from God their Savior.

Such is the generation of those who seek him,

who seek your face, God of Jacob.

~Psalm 24: 1-6 NIV

I’m sure you’ve heard all the doomsday predictions about the Mayan calendar, December 12, 2012 and how the world is supposed to end on that day.

There was a show on the History channel a year or so ago that was quite convincing. I’ve been a Christian for a long time, over half my life, but the show was alarming enough to scare me.

See, I know what the Bible says in Matthew 24:36, that NO man knows the day nor the hour of the Lord’s return, which signals the beginning of the end. But the arguments put forth by these “researchers” was enough to make me…well…worry.

I hate admitting that.

Then there are other believers who give credence to these theories, saying that maybe that IS how God intends to end things, and we should listen to the signs and be concerned. Of course, these are the same believers who were afraid of Y2K. And we all know what a terrible tragedy THAT turned out to be!

Someone said to me quite recently that she’d seen a show about how whole chunks of the country were going to fall into the sea and be destroyed, and she said this with quite a lot of fear in her eyes.

My husband shared a National Geographic article with me that should be required reading for all who’ve heard of the 12/12/2012 theory. Here is the link: 2012: Six End-of-the-World Myths Debunked

Read Psalm 24: 1-6 again. The earth is the Lord’s. All who are in it belong to him. He made this world. He made the seas and the land, and their boundaries. Like that old Sunday school song, He’s got the whole world in his hands.

And he gave us a book to let us know what was going to happen, and said so many, many times, like a loving father, do not be afraid. No matter what signs you see or what is going on around you, do not be afraid.

God is telling you and me, and everyone: Do not allow yourself to get scared — do not allow your minds to even go there!

Putting faith in man’s prophecies is the same as trusting in an idol. And he tells us in the passage above to clean our hands and our hearts of such things, and to seek him alone.

That is my prayer for everyone — that we seek him. Because only in his arms do we find our comfort; only in him does our salvation come.

“Creation Calls” has always been one of my favorite songs. We used to sing it at our previous church. I miss that.

“How could I say there is no God,

When all around creation calls?

A singing bird, a mighty tree,

The vast expanse of open sea.”

This song came to mind last week as I worked on a freelance article about Hawaiian seashells. I’d never really thought much about seashells before. They were pretty things littered on the beach, and that’s about it. I have a jar of them in the boys’ bathroom, which is decorated in a retro-Hawaiian surfer theme. It’s just a jar of pieces we’ve collected on vacation through the years, and aside from one or two unusual ones, it’s mostly full of flat, ivory-colored fan-shaped shells.

I was amazed when I saw the wide variety of shells native to Hawaii. There are huge Triton shells used as trumpets and colorful, rare, thumbnail-sized Sunrise shells that used to be worn only by Hawaiian royalty and now can sell for hundreds of dollars apiece.

On the tiny,  sparsely populated island of Ni’ihau, teensy pearlescent shells as small as 3 mm are collected by families to make necklaces so valuable, they’re the only shell jewelry that can be insured like gemstones. It can take a year for an entire family to collect enough Ni’ihau shells to fill a baby food jar.

Hawaiian cone shells come in dozens of sizes and colors, some adorned with perfectly-spaced dots and others with intricate patterns resembling handmade lace.

I think it takes more faith to believe that kind of precise beauty “just happened” than to believe that it’s the handiwork of a Master Designer.

I felt awed to think of how Hawaiian seashells are just one little drop in the bucket of all creation, yet God embellished them so beautifully, despite knowing that most people throughout history would never see them. And then repeated that around the globe, hiding amazingly beautiful, complex creatures in every little corner of the world, like treasures for his beloved people to find. I think he smiles when we discover them.

“Listening to a river run,

Watering the earth.

Fragrance of a rose in bloom,

A newborns cry at birth.”

I believe.

I love this quote. We seem to think of it the other way around, don’t we? As if this body and all our present physical concerns are the most important things in the world.

We feed our physical bodies, exercise them, dress them up and make them look good. We pay for manicures and massages, we treat our senses to chocolate and vacations and concerts; we indulge in things that make our flesh feel good. Few, if any of us, truly neglect our bodies.

But our souls? Most of us have souls that are emaciated, dehydrated and weak. We don’t take the time to pray, to seek solitude, to worship and give the deepest, most important part of us what it needs to thrive.

You are a Soul.

You ARE a Soul, an eternal one, temporarily trapped in a physical body. Your soul is who you are. Your body is just this thing that you’re forced to live in for a while.

I think this has never been more apparent to me than when my grandmother, Honey died last week. I went to her house shortly after her death—her arms and legs were still warm when I touched them. And it was the strangest feeling, one that is hard to describe exactly, but I will give it a try.

As close as I was to my grandmother, I felt very removed from the body that lay before me.

Because it wasn’t her. That wasn’t my Honey anymore.

And beyond those little farewell strokes along her arm, I didn’t feel the need to touch her again. So, I didn’t. I know that other family members did want to touch her, and that’s fine. I’m not knocking their experience of grief—it is what it is, and I’m glad they did what they needed to do.

But for me, how do I even explain how I felt? It’s probably a poor analogy but touching her body felt as preposterous as getting a long-awaited package from UPS, removing the gift inside, and then sitting there cuddling the empty box it was shipped in.

That box was just a vessel to bring me what I needed. Honey’s body was just a vessel to carry my most precious grandmother. And when her soul left it, that’s all her body was. It was empty. It was no longer her.

And I didn’t expect to feel this, but now I feel an attachment to her that I wasn’t able to feel during this last year or so of her suffering. Our souls are still connected, strongly so. They always will be.

As the pastor said at her funeral, you’ve only lost someone if you don’t know where they are. I know where Honey is, and it’s not in a pearl coffin in a silver vault atop Sand Mountain, Alabama.

She’s with Jesus, and through Him, she and I are still together.

Thank God that these bodies aren’t all that we are. When they wear out, we are still who we always were.

We’ve just been set free.

It’s payday, and the cupboards and fridge are much more barren than I like to see them. We are out of so many things we use daily: cheese, coffee creamer, lunch meat, bananas and more. The only meat I could build a dinner around is a can of salmon or some tuna fish. We’re down to our last two rolls of toilet paper, and the cat really needs new litter in his box. My freezer is empty save a few bags of collard greens I froze after my last big cooking session.

Back when the economy wasn’t so bad, before the rising cost of living outpaced what was once a comfortable income, we could afford to buy ahead. Clearance sales, wholesale clubs, and the case lot sales at our commissary were my friends. I’d find a deal on something and buy enough to last a while. It saved money in the long run and provided the security I feel when I see a full pantry and refrigerator.

Now, when every penny has to be accounted for, I can’t drop 20 bucks on a bulk pack of toilet paper. That money has to cover more bases than just the bathroom, stretching to the next payday when I can shop again. I’m finding that I really dislike this change in my lifestyle. I don’t like feeling unprepared.

I suppose those insecurities are rooted in the same tangled web of food issues I’ve carried since childhood. I come from a line of folks with varying degrees of hoarding and other OCD behaviors. But honestly, when I think about it, my fears of not having enough aren’t genetic.

This is really a spiritual issue.

Remember manna? God sent just enough food to feed the Israelites for one day. And the Bible says clearly that God did this to test their faith. For forty years—that’s almost my entire lifetime thus far—this is how they ate. Literally, one day at a time. Every single day, they had to trust God to provide. And every single day, he proved himself trustworthy.

“God is not man, one given to lies,

and not a son of man changing his mind.

Does he speak and not do what he says?

Does he promise and not come through?”

-Numbers 23:19 (The Message)

We are far from being in a place where we literally have nothing to eat. I know that is not the case for millions, probably billions, of people world-wide and I don’t deny the blessings that I’ve been given. It’s almost humorous that I’m even writing this post, because though by American standards, we’re struggling, compared to much of the world, we are rich beyond measure.

It’s just different for me, a different mindset I’m having to put myself into, a greater level of trust in God that needs to be built. My family’s manna doesn’t fall from the sky daily, but the resources to buy it arrive like clockwork twice a month, and I’m thankful.

“I was young and now I am old,

yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken

or their children begging bread.

They are always generous and lend freely;

their children will be blessed.”

-Psalm 39: 25-26 (NIV)

In February, they said she had maybe two months left. Several weeks ago, we were told it would be a week, maybe two, until she died.

She is still here, still suffering, still stubbornly clinging to life. She can barely hold up her head, but insists on being put in her chair in the living room each day so she can see the hummingbirds visit the feeder outside her window.

We don’t know why she is still hanging on. It sounds just terrible, but we want her to pass on. We’re ready for her to go because it’s so heartbreaking to see her suffer. None of us understand why she is still here, why God has seen fit to let her pass in such a slowly agonizing manner.

The only sense I can make of it is that she is so precious to all of us, the only way we can let go of her willingly is if we know that we know, beyond any doubt, that she is better off leaving us.

My visits with her have been heartbreaking and beautiful, sad and meaningful. When I saw Honey tonight, she was laying in her recliner,  so thin and frail, her head fallen to the side, her face nothing more than a skull stretched over with papery thin wrinkles. Her eye sockets were dark, sunken and her eyelids closed.

I rubbed her arm and talked to her to wake her, and her eyes cracked open into a blank stare. After a moment, it registered that it was me, and she smiled and greeted me. Then her head fell back to the side. She lifted it again then said how happy she was to see me, and how beautiful I looked.

Every time I’ve seen her in the past month, she has gone on and on about my beauty, about how much I look like her. I jokingly told my sister that if Honey had to get stuck on repeating one thing to me, at least that was a nice thing to hear so often.

My visit was short; I had to get home to feed the baby and put him to bed. As I nursed him, I thought about Honey, about how she asked for two hugs when I left tonight, and how every time I’ve hugged her goodbye in recent months, I’ve wondered if it was the last time I’d ever do that.

Years ago, Honey told me that she hated looking in the mirror. She said that she wasn’t pretty anymore, and she hated seeing herself look that way. I guess in a way, I understand. I kinda miss how I looked 20 years ago, too.

When my babies were born, I stared at their faces for hours. And because of that, in those early days postpartum, whenever I saw myself in the mirror, I always felt a brief sense of surprise, an odd sense of recognition as I saw them again in my reflection.

I wonder if something similar is what Honey feels now when she sees me. I favor her—and her mother—more than my sisters or my own mother. I wonder if when she sees me, she feels that same sense of recognition of herself so many decades ago.

I am certain that 40 years ago, she held me sleeping as I held my little Jonah tonight, gazing at that sweet little face and drinking it in. And I bet that after she laid me down, when she saw herself in a mirror, she also saw the melding of our faces.

Past, present and future—all in one reflection.

Today is my sweet husband Donnie’s 44th birthday.

Forty-four. Wow. That sounds like such a big number. Even ten years ago, anything beyond 40 just sounded…old.

It’s funny how, now that he and I are both approaching our mid-forties, it doesn’t seem old at all. Because we were talking, and had to agree: we still feel like the same people we were twenty years ago.

Oh, we’re more mature. I like the way that we don’t worry so much over all the little things that used to bug us back then. I like how God has shown us through the years to extend grace to others, including ourselves. I can’t say I was very gracious in my twenties. Everything was about me. Everything seemed like a BIG DEAL.

I behaved as though everything was a BIG DEAL. Now most of those things that worried me so seem so small.

But the essence of who we are is still the same as twenty years ago. He still gets up early, raring to go each day. He’s always loved Volkswagens and fixing things and watching TV. I still stay up way later than I should, and I’m still the artsy, crafty, motherly person I’ve always been.

Together, I think we’re still a pretty good match.

One thing I become acutely aware of with each passing year, and that is how fast each year passes by. Here we are in late July—it’s already back-to-school time. Then it’s Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas and a whole new year will be upon us when I swear it feels like this one just began!

My baby will be one year old in two months, my middle son is starting third grade, and my oldest will be a teenager in January.

The days are long, but the years are so short. So very, very short.

Note that I didn’t mention my birthday, which is coming up far too soon for me. I know they say age is just what you make of it, but I still can’t grasp the fact that I’m over 40, no matter how loudly my aches and pains announce that to me each morning.

Donnie and I laugh together over our creaks and aches that we didn’t have a decade ago. We talk about how we need to get fit so we can keep up with this house full of boys. Maybe one day soon, we’ll move beyond talk and actually do it!

Birthdays. The day we celebrate the arrival of the people we love. We give them gifts, but they are really God’s gift to us.

It’s been a while since I saw that show, but it seems like there was usually one angel assigned to a case. Then as the story developed, sometimes other angels came onto the scene. But remember how the Angel of Death showed up shortly before someone died? You knew it was coming, but when you saw him appear, it always made you kind of go, “Oh no—go away!”

That is how it’s felt here, across the street from my dying grandmother. It’s as if I feel the angels starting to congregate around her house. I can’t see them—though I do know people who have seen angels, and I believe them—but it’s like I’m just aware of a spiritual shift in the atmosphere surrounding her house, if that makes any sense.

I had a dream that I went to visit my grandmother, but instead of being at home, she was in another building, almost like a big, gaudily-decorated retirement home that looked like a cross between a day care center and an aquarium. I dreaded going that day, because I knew she was close to death—I had to walk forever it seemed, through these long, winding hallways and tunnels, peeking into different rooms and starting to feel panicky because I couldn’t find her.

But finally, I walked into a room painted brilliant blue, with lots of windows and sunlight pouring in, and there, kicked back on a purple chaise lounge was my grandmother, and on a red chair next to her, her sister, Ruby. They were dressed in white Capri pants and summer blouses, barefoot, with their fingernails and toenails painted red. And they were laughing their heads off. My grandfather was in the corner of the room, chuckling softly at them and shaking his head as he often did over other people’s silliness. The whole feeling of the room was pure joy.

And I didn’t know what to make of it. It wasn’t what I was expecting to find. Because Ruby has been dead for years, and my grandfather died over a decade ago. And my grandmother wasn’t sick or frail, but chubby and healthy like she was when I was 20. But when they saw me standing there, they smiled, welcomed and hugged me, and I remember feeling silly for expecting something bad when clearly, all was well.

I smiled when I woke up. And I smiled again when I heard that my grandmother has been dreaming about Ruby every night.

The past few days, when I’ve gone to visit, her face is so pale gray—I cannot get used to seeing her that color. But when she sees me, or one of my kids, her soft brown eyes light up with pure joy and it’s all I can do to not start bawling that very moment.

Because that look is what I saw when she greeted me in my dream. And I know that when my time comes, when I walk into heaven to be with her again, that is exactly what I’m going to see.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that I enjoy participating in daily memes. I don’t do them every day of every week, but when I think about it, I enjoy playing along with Not Me Monday, Top Ten Tuesday, Wordless or Wordful Wednesday, Thankful Thursday, Friday Fill-Ins, and Straight Out Of the Camera Saturday.

But there was nothing for Sunday.

I’ve looked around online and never found anything that really “grabbed” me for Sundays. So I thought Sunday would be a good day to rest from blogging. (My newspaper column runs every other Sunday, but since they put it on their website, I don’t post it here til Monday, as a courtesy.)

Anyway, this morning during church, I felt inspired to make a weekly Sunday post about what’s on my mind, spiritually. Or maybe that should say, what’s in my spirit this week. How God is dealing with me. The deeper thoughts ping-ponging around my brain.

You get the idea.

Someday I’ll share the story of my spiritual journey with you. It’s long, and knowing me, it’ll be rambling. Parts of it are interesting, some are downright amazing, but most of it is just the story of a quiet person living the life God has given her, looking to find Him in the everyday events of life, and thanking Him for all He’s given—sprinkled liberally with laughter.

Because if you can’t laugh, especially at yourself, what good is life?

A verse my pastor shared this morning reminded me of this passage from Romans 1:20:

“But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse.” (The Message Translation)

My family didn’t go to church when I was little, but I think I always knew there was a God. My will didn’t catch up with my heart until I was a young adult, but that’s OK. I needed what I went through to make me who I am today. I believe that’s true for all of us. As my friend Tiffany said the other day, if it’s your path, it’s pointless to follow any other.

I think I’ve finally reached a mature enough place in life to be happy walking my own path, at my own speed, doing what I’ve been created to do—not fretting over what I can’t do, but celebrating and using the abilities He placed in me at my conception.

And part of that is to use my voice to share His greatness. Just look around you—you don’t have to look far to see Him.

“So I say to you:…seek and you will find….” (Luke 11:9 NIV)

I see Him in the sun outside my window, that has shone faithfully my entire life, and through all the generations before me. It is just strong enough to keep us alive, just weak enough to not burn us up, and perfect for growing the plants that fuel our bodies each day.

I see Him in my laughing baby boy. Eighteen months ago, he was two teensy cells that joined and somehow multiplied into all the intricate systems that make up his adorable, chubby body. I hear the joy of God in his laughter, I feel heaven in the pureness of Jonah’s love. And I see my own need for a loving Father God in my son, when he reaches up for me and smiles when I hold him, and how he seems lost when I step away.

And as silly as it may sound, I see God in this cut that is healing on the back of my hand. I did nothing to make it heal, but the edges knit back together, and the redness will fade until only the smallest shadow remains. How is that not a miracle? And even these hands of mine, that are now covered in fine wrinkles of time, these hands that can type stories, and paint portraits, and thread a needle—they are miracles.

There’s a song we used to sing at our previous church called “Creation Calls.” At the risk of sounding like my mother (who is always telling people what to do at her funeral): when I die, somebody please—play this song. Because if my last message to the world could be one thing, I’d want it to be this: Everything is a miracle if you believe.