Tag Archives: Mt Hermon

Loving Pursuit

I’ve posted the video of my message at Kristi’s celebration service we held here in Texas on July 13th, 2013. I know there were many of you who wanted to attend but couldn’t be here because of prior commitments.

I’m glad to be able to bring it to you here. NOTE: The videographer’s battery ran out at 13 minutes in and had to be swapped. The video freezes at that point, but they patched in the audio and continues uninterrupted for 40 seconds until the video kicks back in. Stay with it.

I hope you enjoy the story of our love and life together! Here’s the post I wrote about the service at the time.

B-Gone, B-9, B-Healed, Its a Way of Life!

http://youtu.be/aoB0EOehB-4

18 + 482 An Unexpected Journey

To grieve Kristi with friends and family all together is to give voice to the love and life that she brought to our lives. Today was a very good day…

My heart is full from the myriad expressions of love showered over my family and me. We haven’t counted names in the guest book, but the room was packed to overflowing and the courtyard was busy with friendly reunions during the reception to honor Kristi.

There was the reunion of her college roommates who hadn’t gathered in years; Marion even came from Germany to join the celebration. A sizable group from our church in Grass Valley made the journey as well. Then there was the turnout of Wolf Mountain staff alumni. What a fun blessing to reconnect with those who served so many years together and started the journey of parenting with us there at camp.

These folks I knew, we had lived life together and I knew what Kristi meant to them. However to finally have hugs, kisses and blessings from so many of you today that I have only known from your encouraging words here on CaringBridge and/or Facebook, was a true highlight! The God Squad ladies, the Monte Vista crew, YVCS friends, Livorna and Round Hill friends as well as Kristi’s extended family reminded me of how loved Kristi was and the wake she leaves in her passing.

But grieving together today, in public, with all of you reminded me that we are not alone. To receive the outpouring of your love and blessing was a deep encouragement to me, a reminder that we are connected in the most profound ways imaginable by our love for an amazing woman of God.

Yesterday was the penultimate day of this journey. While at Mount Hermon we gathered under the towering redwood trees along the banks of the creek with John and Bev, Kim and her children and spread more of Kristi’s ashes. My tears flowed as freely as the stream into which we laid the ashes. Mt Hermon was always a spiritual home to Kristi. Not only did she grow up going to camp there but, during a camper in leadership training program before her senior year in high school, Kristi made the irreversible decision to fully commit her life to Jesus.

That decision resulted in years spent on summer staff and made it an easy choice for her to come and provide end-of-summer help in 1992 to cover for staff that had left early. That’s when we met, the last two weeks of my year on staff. I crowded the family into the staff lounge at Mount Hermon’s Redwood Camp and, with Katie playing Kristi’s part, I showed them all just where we were sitting the moment I looked up twenty one years ago this month and noticed the blond newcomer in the corner. That day started a journey that ended today, 482 days after receiving the unexpected news of her diagnosis.

I didn’t know such pain and heartache could be repeatedly experienced in 482 days. Nor would I have ever imagined the consistent, faithful care and love lived out that filled the 482 days to overflowing. As I write tonight, the 23rd Psalm comes to mind:

The Great “I Am” is my shepherd, I shall not be lacking.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul.
He guides me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for you are with me.
Your rod and your staff they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies,
You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life,
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

I know that the coming days, weeks and months will be filled with every emotion imaginable and that our God will be there with me every step of the way, providing wisdom, counsel and guidance but that is a different journey. That is the new and unexpected journey through grief, through learning to live, love and laugh again in new ways. So changes are in store for this blog.

This is the last numbered entry, but it is not the end, I believe it is only the beginning. A new website is in the works and will be announced here when it is ready. I will be moving this whole blog to that website to free up sever space for the good folks at Caring Bridge. That new site will provide me with the ability to manage how the blog looks and what it contains more freely than the limited toolset here. This entire journey will be posted there in perpetuity and what the site will fully become is not yet known. Yes, there will be a book too.

Stay tuned and I’ll make every effort to make the migration as obvious and painless as possible to the new location when that time comes.

So the journey continues even as this portion comes to a close. Let us forge ahead together, praying, declaring and believing B-Gone, B-9, B-Healed!

18 + 480 Mountain High

As my body eased into Donner Lake on Wednesday afternoon all my skin attempted to crawl up on top of my head to avoid the frigid chill of the clear mountain waters. But I would not be denied the shock of the cold and plunged beneath the surface and pulled hard to make the raft floating on the surface of the sapphire colored lake perched 6,000 ft up in the Sierras.

The boys had preceded me in the aquatic frolic and lay sunning themselves on the dock. Swimming in a mountain lake without a wetsuit is an exercise in controlled shivering. As I climbed up the ladder to the dock I made sure to shower them with some liquid refrigeration eliciting the expected howls of protest from sun-warmed bodies.

While the girls were happily ensconced on the sandy beach we all felt ourselves begin to get into the rythym of the mountains and let the therapeutic beauty saturate our souls.

As we prepared to leave the lake and head to our friends’ house for dinner my buddy suggested we rent a bike for me and I could take a ride with his wife (who likes to ride but doesn’t often get the chance) while he watched their two young children and our four helped with dinner. We snagged the last bike that was my size and before I knew it she and I were pedaling along through pine-studded meadows, climbing up granite mountain grades and racing down the backsides. What a bonus! I got a bike training ride in with a great friend in one of the prettiest places around. Talk about a mountain high!

Dinner was filled with nostalgic visiting and reminiscing about Kristi and what she meant to this young couple. All too soon we had to take our leave and drive to another friend’s house for the night and to grab some quick winks for a very busy Thursday.

The flood-gates of emotion opened as I began to spread Kristi’s ashes around the perimeter of the mountain-top dance floor. I proposed to her on this very spot, twenty summers ago and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to find the hand-built site. But after casting around for the trail, I finally spied it and we plunged under the forest canopy. Ten minutes later the children and I popped out on the rocky knoll overlooking the great central valley of California.

Like the lake plunge the afternoon before, I knew this moment would require my determination to forge ahead in spite what would follow. We all embraced and shared several moments of tearful grief before the children took their own turns with mommy’s ashes. Each spread them in their own way and while full of sorrow it was a sweet time.

What started with a nervous question and exultant response that night under the stars so many years ago has now brought forth four fabulous children and matured a young man into one with some gray wisps of experience on his temples.

After a prayer, a camp song (I Like Bananas) and some laughter, we sat down to a picnic and I shared all about how I built the floor with friends and surprised Kristi there on that evening. We all picked stickers out of our socks while we ate and I told them that was the ruse I used to kneel down and keep Kristi unsuspecting while I fished the ring box out of my boot.

I didn’t know how the event would come off, and tried not to have expectations. I knew I’d be crying and I know its hard for children to express themselves. But I think it was a good time for everyone, there on that mountain top and Kristi will always be a part of that place now.

The balance of the afternoon and evening were a blur of touring the camp where she and I lived and ministered for 10 years and where Katie, Megan and Luke joined our family. Then we visited the ministry where my parents lived and worked and where I grew up from ages 10-18. Finally we celebrated with several former colleagues and friends in a mini-reunion of sorts at an ice cream and candy store. That was literally and emotionally a sweet time. Dinner was hamburgers cooked over the open fire on a mountainside with friends.

Today, Friday was a chance to catch our breath after the day of flying on Tuesday, the trip to the high sierra on Wednesday and the whirlwind of Thursday. We slept in (for Texas time) and then shared a relaxed lunch with yet more friends (my apologies that we haven’t been able to see everyone who asked) before ambling back to Kristi’s parents house this afternoon.

Kristi’s sister Kim is here tonight with her children and we are all, John and Bev included, heading down to Mt Hermon tomorrow which is where Kristi grew up going to camp and where she and I met. But that’s a story that has yet to be told and I need some sleep.

Suffice it to say that the weekend will be equally as emotional as the preceding two days, but my heavenly Father reminded me once again on top of that mountain that I’m loved, that my children are loved and that we are tenderly yet firmly held in the center of his loving affection in the middle of this journey. That brings peace and comfort that no mountain high can match.

B-Gone, B-9, B-Healed!