Tuesday, December 19, 2017

December 19 – “A Bucket list check-off”

We started our day early again yesterday.  We attended a funeral in Houston for a gentleman from our way-back past.  When we were at Langwood Baptist Church back in our early years of college (my first youth pastor position), Joe was the church treasurer, a deacon, and as I recall, a pretty decent church league softballer.  He had three kids, so I got to know them as well.  It was good to see the kids, Connie and Rhonda and Mike, and their families, his wife Mary Nan, and a lot of the old crowd from that era at Langwood.  Most of them even recognized me.  Well, all of them did except for one guy.  Gary assured me it was because he was getting old.  Nothing to do with my long, flowing, gray locks and white Santa-ish beard, I’m sure.  On the other side of that particular coin, though, his son recognized me, but had to introduce himself.  Last time I saw him he was about three years old.  Now Keith towers over me like Aaron Judge over Jose Altuve.  There was one lady who looked very familiar to me, but I couldn’t come up with her name for the life of me.  Made me feel even worse when she told me she recognized me when she saw the back of my head during the service.  Ouch.  Mrs. MacBee finally helped me out with her name, though.  Very sweet lady, I might add.  Bo, one of the kids in that youth group when I was there who later became Langwood’s pastor, did a fine job leading the service.   You know what, folks?  How about next time we do this in the form of a youth group reunion or something rather than a funeral?

I got to cross something off my personal bucket list yesterday.  I never even realized it was on the list until yesterday, actually.  On the way back from the funeral we stopped at a restaurant called Red Robin.  Browsing through the menu I was stopped cold by one description, and I just couldn’t get away from it.  They called it the Red Robin Special or some such nonsense.  What it was, was a hamburger topped with bacon and a sunnyside up egg on top.  Never had a hamburger with bacon and eggs on top before.  Now I have (Well, I could only finish half of it, but I knocked off the rest of it for supper).  The combination of tastes was quite interesting.  I’m not sure I would order it again.  Chris says it’s a heart attack waiting to happen.  But I can check that one off the list. 

Since we were already in Texas we stopped at a few places to do some Christmas shopping.  I know, I know.  It’s the week before Christmas.  Why are we waiting so late?  Well, if you had lived with Bethlehem Market preparations for the last few months, followed closely by hosting a church Christmas party, and then a trip to Alvin to deliver presents to some great families, all wrapped up between day to day operations and preparations for Sundays, you might be a little late getting to certain things as well.  Wouldn’t trade any of it, though.  We even got home in time to watch a Hallmark movie.  I’ve started sneaking a kiss from Chris (of course) whenever the characters on the movie have their Hallmark kiss moment.  Most of the time it’s the very last scene after the misunderstandings have all been cleared up (Hey, the plots aren’t all that different).  But it’s been fun to do the whole mistletoe without the mistletoe action.  I love that girl.

Psalms 18:30 says, “For who is God besides the Lord?  And who is the Rock except our God?”


Father, be with the Tisdell family as they walk through missing their father and husband and grandpa and friend.  Amen.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Reunion sounds good to me too!!