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.