Six years

On a wooded hillside behind a church just north of Madison, Wisconsin, rests a beautiful cemetery. At the very top of the hill, at the top of the cemetery, you can look back down the hill over the top of the church and see the dome of Wisconsin's capitol building between the branches of the trees.

During the winter, the trees stand as barren sentinels along the white and frozen hillside. In the summer, the trees sprout foliage so dense and green, the resting place of the dead remains cooler than most any place in town.

The cemetery is most beautifully dressed in the fall. The trees don colors beyond imagination, a final celebration of a year racing to its death.

It's in this cemetery that my dad was laid to rest six years ago today.

Each year since his death, I have walked a cemetery near my home and thought about how God has blessed my life through all that my dad invested into our family and into me. Last year I had the honor of walking that cemetery in Madison. Not so this year. Today I look at my photo and thank God for my dad.

My dad wasn't perfect. None are. But he took me to church every Sunday laying the foundation for my future relationship with Jesus Christ. He remained faithful to my mom through thick and thin, through joy and sorrow. He busted his tail to put food on the table and paid off tens of thousands of dollars in hospital bills after the death of his first wife...with no government assistance.

In his final years, his passion for Christ grew the hottest I had ever seen it. Despite being on oxygen twenty-four hours a day, he would leave the O-2 aside each Sunday morning as he taught the word of God to a Sunday school class the truth of God's word, things they had never heard (and haven't since his passing).

Six years. Days go by where he does not come to mind. Others I will think of him often. Then there are days when his absence stings like a wicked Wisconsin wind in the depths of January.

I was supposed to walk that cemetery again today, but due to poor weather in that neck of the woods, I could not make the journey.

As I tap this out, I know a joy that only comes from the promises of God because I know that I will see him again.