It's interesting the things that mean the most when someone is gone. I remember when my mom asked me if I wanted any of his clothes. A little taken back, I said "no."
Was it morbid? Not really. It was uncomfortable and strange. It was the business of burying the dead, as you know all too well when you have lost someone. There are practicalities that seem cruel, unnatural, and awkward, but things that must be done nevertheless.
I'm so thankful she saved for me one of his old Georgia t-shirts. It is red, and an XXL, with the painted word "Georgia" on the chest cracking and peeling off in places. It is perfectly flawed, much like the man himself.
I have struggled at times to make sense of my dad, in an unbiased way. I'm afraid I have failed miserably. I just simply can't see him as anything other than what he was to a little girl turned grown up: larger than life, a lover of people, a seasoned laugher, a generous giver, an unpretentious country boy, a grace giver, a life speaker, an incredible encourager, my hero.
Do I know his flaws? Yes, of course I do, but they have always paled in comparison to his strengths. For the good things in him were so much more staggeringly great than in the average man. They could never be overlooked in the interest of his imperfections.
Mom also saved me one of the Hawaiian shirts he wore when he went on speaking engagements. Thank you, Kim, for not cutting it up and making me an apron out of it. Seems an improper use to make ruffles and ties or anything fashionable out of a shirt belonging to the most unfrivolous man on the planet.
That one stays wrapped in plastic in my closet. I have never taken it out. He is wearing it in many of the pictures I have of him in recent years. It is shades of blue and white with palm leaves, with buttons all the way up the front ending in a collar in the middle, and has a big pocket on the left breast. If you knew him, you know the one.
In the pocket he never failed to keep a pen and a notepad-- the kind with white paper lined with blue and a metal spiral across the top. The weight of it pulled at the pocket so that it hung at an angle drooping away from his body.
He often scribbled in it at inopportune times. We teased him about it. He wrote notes about things he needed to do, funny things he heard or noticed, kept a list of people to write letters to, dreams and ideas he had.
It seemed prematurely old man-ish to me when he began to carry it in his forties. Maybe even embarrassing when I was younger and still trying to be cool. So did the reading glasses he kept around his neck on a string that he got when he turned forty and for the first time in his life couldn't read the paper without holding it 12 inches away.
He was not technologically savvy and the carrying of those items- the pen and paper and the glasses- was a writer's insurance, so to speak.
Now I totally get it.
I wish I had more of his shirts, but I'm not sure why. Maybe the American way- that more is better. When we all know deep down it is not.
Maybe it is because I feel small when I wear them. Like a child again. Wrapped in him, or something of his. It is a poor substitute, a counterfeit really, for the real thing.
I also carry one of his handkerchiefs in my purse. After two and a half years, it is now peppered with pen marks and crumbs of various child's snacks smashed into its fibers-- much like the lining of every one of my purses. I would never offer it to anyone in its present condition. It's more of a momento of the memory of him, of the many times he offered this hanky to me.
Like the handkerchief, he is still scattered about my everyday, his likeness appearing in the art of my children, his love of food present in their snacks. Parts of him are still tucked away in the lining. It is a little faded and scarred, but present with me everywhere I go.
Like me, it carries many tears inside of it, filled with sorrows yet not overcome by its scars. I have no plans to restore it to its former glory. It's not my job or within my skill set.
For when it is finally cleaned, unblemished, and washed and pressed, there will be no evidence of the pain it once contained. Every tear will have already been wiped away. Its former use will be no more. The vessel of sorrow will become a beacon of glory.
There will be only joy and completeness and the memory of what once was broken and hurting.
Like going to sleep on a pile of bricks and awakening atop a shining castle.
I was thinking today, because the busyness of Thanksgiving kept me from really reflecting until now, about what Jesus left behind. What did he want us to hold onto two thousand years after he was gone to remember him by?
And two precious things come to mind. His Word, the Bible. And His Spirit.
He also left us the practice of meeting together in fellowship and community of the church. He left us the practice of taking the Lord's Supper-- to proclaim his death until He comes. And a bunch of other things.
But the Bible and the Spirit are overwhelmingly the tangibles/ intangibles that come to my mind.
And unlike my Dad's shirt, both of those are not just "things" that remind us of him. They actually ARE Him, or a part of who God is.
John 1:1-2 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God."
Jesus IS the Word.
Jesus IS God. The Spirit IS God, too.
When I sit and try to wrap my mind around those three sentences, I can't. They are too deep, too rich, to sacred for me to understand fully.
But I do know this. What Jesus left behind for me gives me way more comfort, way more hope, than a Georgia shirt, a Hawaiian shirt, and an old hanky ever could.
Jesus sent another form of God, the Spirit, as a deposit guaranteeing what is to come, and He gave the Word as the roadmap to help us find the Way. To find more of Him.
What Jesus left simultaneously gives contentment and discontentment, satisfaction and longing, comfort and discomfort, because one taste of Jesus only leaves us longing for more. And the more we get of Jesus the less we want of this world.
I thought about my dad yesterday, feasting with the King of kings, and that, deep down, is what I am most thankful for...
That those in my extended and immediate family, my husband, my children, my mom, my brother, and his family, will be there, too.
I'm thankful for hope in the middle of hard things. I'm thankful that Jesus didn't just leave us a stained shroud or a crown of thorns or a stick he used to draw in the sand. Or a Georgia t-shirt (no doubt He has one).
He left us more of Himself. More of God. No counterfeit. No remnant. No marred possession.
The Spirit. His Word. Living and active.
God with us. The pinnacle of our gratitude rests on everything that is fulfilled in Jesus. He is in all and through all. He is the most we could ever have to be thankful for. I pray He is with you today and in the life everlasting.
I pray that you see all your blessings today as given to you by the hand of a loving Father. He has already given us His very best. We need only have faith to believe it.
