Friday, October 06, 2006

Dad not feeling well

Forgot to write about the second email. My dad isn't feeling so well. My take on it after talking to his wife is that he's in a funk, depressed. I think his body is not healing like he expected it would and like he wants it to. But it is normally a two month recovery and I told her to remind him of that. I wish I could articulate my faith well enough to persuade my pop. He comes from a Catholic family yet never embraced Catholicism as his siblings did. I think he lets his intellect get in the way. My husband believes in God, but has reservations about Jesus. My father is not sure a God even exists.

I'm reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis in a hopeful effort than I may learn how to speak out loud, as in to people, duh, about faith. I think it makes death much less frightening if you have faith to carry through with you to the end. I don't want my pop to be scared.

There are two things that all human beings must go through alone. Birth and death. When we're born we're greeted, usually joyfully, as soon as we enter the world, but we have to actually get born by ourselves. When we die, we may have our loved ones around us, for comfort and assurance, but still each of us must actually do the dying ourselves. I think if you have Jesus with you it would not be so frightening to leave this world. You don't have to be alone and you don't have to dread an unknown. Fear can be debilitating.

I always remember what Tammy Faye Baker said about her cancer; that she cried lots and lots about how she got the cancer, but she was not afraid to die. She's such a doofus girl but she touched my heart when she spoke those words. We will all be there one day.

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