Beauty and Healing

It's been four years since my mother passed away and it has been since Christmas of that year that I have seen my father. It's a been a complicated relationship, but despite that, he's my dad and the bible teaches us to honor our parents.
In the past year, I have worked on making more of an effort to call daddy more regularly and follow God's lead on letting go of previous hurts. I had been praying about going to visit my dad, but had not felt God was telling me it was time. Then dad decided to have back surgery, which
turned up the need for open heart surgery! I prayed about going up for the surgery and still didn't feel the Holy Spirit moving. As hard as it was, I waited. It was difficult to be thousands of miles away when I knew what a serious surgery this was going to be, and then when I learned his wife had no one to wait with her, I really wanted to go, but my heart still said "wait." It was during the surgery while his wife and I were texting back and forth that God finally said "now you can go." I wanted to be sure, so I prayed God would speak through my husband and when we discussed it, he was not only supportive, but already had it in his mind that I needed to go. I so love that about my husband, his kindness and desire to help others and the importance of family.
So, the day my dad was released from the hospital, I got on a plane and flew to New York to help him with his recovery.
It proved to be a time of serving, healing and reconnection. Through my experiences of taking care of my grandparents, I've come to learn and respect the need for dignity when you are faced with caring for one who has lost the ability to do for themselves in their normal manner and this was no exception. I was grateful for the insight and truly felt it not only helped me to help daddy but to reinforce and bring to light the lessons God had been teaching me about being a humble servant. Now, that didn't stop me from being the hen that I can be ( grin), Daddy proudly referred to me as his 800lb gorilla who kept him in line. I have to give credit to my husband, who has taught me over the years how important laughter is and that keeping things light can make a difficult situation much more tolerable. This was a tool that I relied on to be helpful in a non confrontational way and it too served me well.
It was a week full of purpose and hard work and in some senses, new beginnings.
It was a bonus blessing that Daddy's and his wife's house was surrounded by the beauty of the landscape and I very much enjoyed the distractions of the views and life that teamed about.

This was the first thing I was greeted with in the morning as I awoke.


And this was the view outside the sun room, where daddy and I spent much time chatting and watching the activity outside of birds, squirrels, chipmunks and deer.