March 30 – “Suiting up”

Whew.  Yesterday was another really long one.  We left the house around 12:30 to attend a funeral and didn’t get back home until after seven.  Actually I was asked to speak at the funeral.  My sister-in-law’s Dad died, and he had requested that I be allowed to be a part of the celebration.  That is always a humbling honor, but I have never fully understood why people would request me in particular.  Maybe because they know that they won’t have to actually listen to me.  It was a really positive service.  I worked with the pastor of the church where it was held, so we kind of tag-teamed the event.  And as usual for a funeral, I wore a suit.  Well, I had the coat draped across my arm, but the tie was in place.  I know.  Very rare occurrence, right?  My older brother thought so, too.  He came up behind me and touched me on the shoulder.  When I turned around he said, “You look a lot like my brother, but he doesn’t wear ties.”  I immediately offered to unzip the one I had on and take it off for good, but Chris happened to be standing right there.  She quickly nixed that idea.  I did manage to get by without ever putting on the coat, though.  And as soon as the service ended I had several people encourage me to lose the tie.  Didn’t take that much encouragement.  I just had to find the right opportunity when Chris wasn’t looking. 

Afterwards we stopped by to say hi at Jachin’s opening day baseball game.  He started at first base.  Nice accomplishment for the youngest one on the team.  We couldn’t stay very long, but we did find out later that he scored on a squeeze bunt play.  Now that’s impressive. 

The reason we couldn’t stay long there was that we had to go to my brother’s house in Tiki Island for the family meal.  Pretty good stuff, too.  Not sure what it was all called, but the catering was done by Olympia Grill in Galveston.  I had a shish-ke-bob thing full of some kind of meat and a few vegetables.  I watched other people eat first so I would know what to do with it when I got mine.  Seems the appropriate thing to do was scrape the contents off the stick, wrap it in some of the round bread they had on the table, and eat it like a soft taco.  It’s hard to beat chunks of meat.  I even added some lettuce and tomatoes to make it a well-rounded meal.  It was good to see my niece who now lives in Phoenix and my nephew who works for Microsoft in Washington State.  Oh, and we saw Hardy, a friend of my brother’s.  He’s the guy who smashed into Josh at a turkey bowl one year and caused Josh to have to go to the emergency room for stitches.  And it happened right at the beginning of the game, too, so Josh had to miss it.  I told him about it, though.  Wait.  What?  Well, you wouldn’t expect both of us to miss the big game, would you?  He was in good hands.  His Mom’s a nurse.  OK, OK.  I should have gone, too.  I still haven’t lived that decision down.  But I could have done worse, you know.  I could have told him to be tough.  I did have some duct tape in the car …

John 14:1-3 says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.  In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you.  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”

Father, walk with Sue and her family as they deal with missing Fred.  Thank you for welcoming him into that house of yours.  Amen.