For Wilshire Baptist Church
April 30 is a day that sometimes gets our attention and sometimes it doesn’t. This year, LeAnn and I both seemed to be dialed in as we remembered God’s blessings and tender mercies.
April 30 is the anniversary of the day 12 years ago when LeAnn and I combined our lives in a new home we had built from the ground up by Wilshire friend Steve Conner. We had spent the previous nine months in LeAnn’s house and then a small apartment while most of our belongings were in storage. On that April 30, I met the movers at the storage units while LeAnn managed the move from the apartment and went to the house to get things ready for the arrival of the rest of our stuff. It was a busy, hectic day because we’d never had hers and my stuff together in one place before.
April 30 is also the anniversary of my marriage to first-wife Debra. That day began with coastal rain that threatened to spoil our celebration, but the clouds broke and everything went according to plan. As it did for the next 25 years until Debra was struck by cancer.
Last year, April 30 was on a Sunday, and LeAnn and I wore brave faces to church as we tried to digest my own cancer diagnosis and the first week of appointments with oncologists. That night at a concert at Wilshire benefitting the Grief and Loss Center of North Texas, I couldn’t help but wonder if I would see another April 30.
LeAnn and I marked the move-in anniversary this week with banana pecan ice cream, a nod to her parents who brought homemade banana pudding to us during the move. We remembered how good it was and how we offered some to the movers, who dove in with gusto. I don’t recall exactly, but we might have finished it off that night with the Wingfields, who brought dinner and ate with us amid our unpacking. And mostly this week we celebrated how wonderful these years together have been and how the house has been the perfect center of it all.
I marked the anniversary of my first wedding by walking the labyrinth at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Richardson, where Debra had been a parishioner. It was cool and quiet and the perfect time and place to reflect on this convergence of life events and how God has always been present in such unimaginable and often mysterious ways.
Actually, the day’s remembrances began for me early that morning when I had breakfast with lifetime friend Ken. We’ve been meeting for lunch or breakfast once a month for years and enjoy sharing the latest developments in our lives as well as some laughs from the days when we were young and dumb. It was just a coincidence that we met on April 30 this time, but it was fitting because Ken was a groomsman when I married Debra and best man when I married LeAnn. It’s no exaggeration to say he’s been there for me through “better and worse, richer and poorer, sickness and health.”
But so have so many others. I could start naming names but there’d be no end to it. So, I’ll just say thank you for blessing our lives in ways both very specific and often immeasurable. You have been the bearers of God’s blessings and tender mercies.