The next adventure

A quick back-story: Just before Christmas, 2007, my brother-in-law's dad was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Chad had surgery to remove as much of the tumor as possible just after the first of the year (I think), and then had to wait to see if they got it all. I don't know much about brain tumors, but Chad was not given much hope because the tumor had little fingers all over the place. Still, in the couple of months it took to get the results (new scan, etc.), Chad and his wife Kathy relied heavily on prayer and their faith in God to get them through the scary time. Kathy, an amazing cook, reworked Chad's diet (which had already been very healthy) to completely cut out sugar (because their research suggested that sugar helps the cancer cells to grow). We all prayed constantly for Chad's miraculous healing. To our great joy, the results came back and Chad's cancer was completely gone. However, the medication he had been taking took its toll on Chad's body and he began having seizures and strokes. A little over a year after his battle began, Chad went home to be with his Savior. There are silver linings all over this story. Chad's family had lots of "borrowed" time to spend with him in his final year. Matt, my brother-in-law was able to visit with his dad many times (Matt is in CA, and Chad was in OR).

We attended Chad's memorial service yesterday, and it was wonderful. We almost didn't go because it started at 10:00am, and we would have to leave our house SUPER early and drive for 6 hours, and I wasn't feeling that great. However, as we were trying to decide what to do, Grant said, "I think we need to go to Uncle-Matt's-Dad-Chad's service." See, we had been praying for Uncle-Matt's-Dad-Chad at almost every meal and bedtime for the past year. So, our 5-year-old made our decision for us. We left the house at 4:00am and drove to LaGrande. The boys slept most of the way and were wonderful the rest of the time. We arrived in time to change our boys out of their pajamas and into their clothes. It started snowing as we got out of the car and scurried into the school auditorium. The service was uplifting and fun and sad and such a wonderful tribute. I think Chad would have been pleased to see us laughing about his many adventures: bungee-jumping, sky-diving, skiing, riding his motorcycle, building and racing his little sports car, his crazy inventions and many more. Matt put together a couple of slide shows that were so much fun to watch and helped us get a really good picture of the man that Chad was. After the service, there was a great reception where our boys got to catch up with their cousins. Then, we went out for pizza and went back over to Matt's childhood home for a few minutes before jumping in the car for the long ride back.

There was a lot to think about and talk about on the ride back home, and plenty of time to do it. I love having heart-to-heart talks with Mitch, especially when we have both just experienced something that was very moving. I am very thankful that our 5-year-old decided that we needed to make the effort to go to the service. Sometimes God speaks to us through our children, huh?