Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day, Mark! Our children are blessed to have a dad who is so active in their lives and who loves them so much!

We celebrated Father's Day twice this weekend. I made Mark a big breakfast on Saturday morning and we opened gifts with the kids. Today we went to the Joshua Wilton House for brunch after church. The weather was gorgeous so we ate on the patio in the garden. We ate entirely too much food and it was all so delicious. It was fun to take the kids somewhere new. My mom is in town visiting and she, my in-laws, and my family are coming to my concert tonight at JMU. It should be fun for the kids to run around in the sculpture garden while we play.

Father's Day is a little bittersweet for me. I miss my dad all the time, but I really miss him today. I hope I showed him over the years that I loved him and that he was a great dad to me. I always felt sad hearing people complain about their dads because mine was pretty great. He was a very hands-on dad and I always knew he loved and cared about me, even though I didn't always appreciate his rules at the time (I know now why he was so protective)! Our pastor talked today about dads and a "pop" quiz he sent to friends and people in the congregation. The responses he read were really interesting and powerful. It made me appreciate all the things my dad did for me, especially in modeling a relationship with Jesus. He showed me what a real relationship was, not religion, but a relationship. Not to say he was perfect, he questioned things that happened in our lives and was angry with God, but he came back and showed me that it was okay to doubt and to be upset, but that I had to have faith and trust in God. I hope one day to "be there" in Heaven with my dad and to thank him for all he did for me.