this is such a great picture. i cannot believe that my littlest brother is a man. i know that my dad would be proud of him today. he has taken on the "man of the house" responsibilities admirably and without reserve. for this, i know our dad would be beaming with pride. i love you dave.

thursday

so, today is thursday. today is the day my daddy died. i have a hard time with thursdays now. it is weird how a day of the week can be so significant. it is also weird how when you have good days you don't always remember the day but a horrific day is forever stuck in your heart.
anyway, i was driving this morning feeling so sad. third day was playing and this song came on. it struck me as so appropriate and so heartwrenching. and so true. so, i thought i would post it here for others to read in order that they too can cry out to jesus to heal them.
Cry Out To Jesus - Third Day (2005)
To everyone who's lost someone they love long before it's their time.
You feel like the days you had were not enoughwhen you said goodbye.
And to all of the people with burdens and painskeepin' you back from your life.
You believe that there's nothingand there is no one who can make it right.
There is hope for the helpless, rest for the weary,and love for the broken hearts.
There is grace and forgiveness, mercy and healing
He'll meet you wherever you are.
Cry out to Jesus.
Cry out to Jesus.
For the marriage that struggles just to hang on have lost all of their faith in love.
and they've done all they can to make it right again 'til it's not enough.
For those who can't break the addictions and chains
and try to give up but you come back again.
Just remember that you're not alone in your shame and your suffering.
There is hope for the helpless, rest for the weary,and love for the broken hearts.
There is grace and forgiveness, mercy and healingthat meets you wherever you are.
Cry out to Jesus.
When you're lonely and it feels like the whole world is falling on youyou just reach out, you just cry out to Jesus
Cry to Jesus.
To the widow who suffers from being alone,wipin' the tears from her eyes.
For the children around the world without a home,say a prayer tonight.
There is hope for the helpless, rest for the weary,and love for the broken hearts.
There is grace and forgiveness, mercy and healing that meets you wherever you are.
There is hope for the helpless, rest for the weary,and love for the broken hearts.
There is grace and forgiveness, mercy and healingthat meets you wherever you are.Cry out to Jesus. Cry out to Jesus.
Cry out to Jesus.
Cry out to Jesus.
hear our cries.....

look at this.

look at this picture. how could this picture be any more beautiful? i was looking at this picture one day while i was on the phone with my mom and i said " daddy is looking at me like he has never seen anything like me before." and mom said: 'he hadn't kimmi, he hadn't". i would do anything to see his beautful face again.

it's been a long time

well, it has been long time since i posted on here. actually, i have not been writing because i couldn't remember my user name. i am always pokergirl33 and on this site i am pokergirl35. i guess this is a testament to my aging, not only that i am 35 (holy cow! ) but also that i am forgetting things.
i still think about dad a lot. i know intellectually that he is gone but most of the time it does not seem right that he is gone. i think about suicide and how a lot of people think that if you kill yourself there is no way that you will go to heaven. i found out that baptists believe that once you are saved, you are always saved. no matter what. if you are gay or a thief or.... if you commit suicide. i know that i grew up thinking that gay people went to hell. i know now that god loves us no matter what. i know that god is a good god. that doesn't mean that he doesn't get sad when we sin, or that we can assume that we are forever in his good graces once we are saved, but for us as people to put conditions on the unconditional love of god seems sad, and wrong. he stated that he loved us unconditionally right? so why do we as christians assume that we know better than god? we don't. we can't. if that was the case, well i guess i could assume that my dad was in hell. because no matter his state of mind, no matter what the drugs did to him, a typical believer may argue that he still committed a grevious sin without asking forgiveness and in so doing, lost his place in heaven. well, i am pretty sure that we cannot lose our place in heaven unless we grieve the holy spirit. which brings me to this, what does it mean exactly to grieve the holy spirit? i have been perplexed by that my whole christian life. when i was a child i could not fall asleep some nights thinking over my day, wondering if i had in fact grieved the holy spirit. i still don't know, but i don't lose sleep over it anymore, there is nothing i can do about it if i do. i can just pray that god will continue to guide me through my life. i know i have made a lot of mistakes, i know that i will continue to, but i believe that life is unfolding as it should.
sigh. i have not talked all that much about daddy. that is okay.
i light a candle at church every sunday in memory of my daddy. i don't know what that does exactly, i don't imagine it really does anything but it helps me somehow. it helps me to have that little bit of light glowing in the dark, maybe i hope that he can see it somehow. it makes me feel better. it is true, darkness cannot live in the light. well, there has been no darker day than the day my dad died and some of my days feel dark still. the candle burns through the night and holds the darkness in my heart at bay.
enough for tonight. i love you daddy.