February 19th

As I was standing in church today singing my favorite hymn...."Come Thou Fount", I was listening intently to each word.....hanging on for dear life. My dad flashed into my mind, and I had a realization at that moment. It happens to me every year around late September through November....I get into a funk. It's the melancholy state where I think about the few months, weeks before he died. Each year, that time of year gets a little easier to get through; but I still get in a funk. I realized today, while singing my favorite hymn and preparing for the normal routine things we do at church this time of year....our Chili Bowl which is today, the Super Bowl sermon that Ken was famous for and which also happened to be the last sermon he preached, that I'm in that same state. It's in preparation for re-living the sadness that I so desperately felt when Pastor Ken died last year. There have already been announcements and talk about different things to do in his memory to remember him and the impact he had on so many lives on the year anniversary of his death. February 19th will be on a Sunday this year, so we will be at church grieving again....or in some cases grieving still. I know, from experience, that it gets easier; but that empty space that was left at the loss doesn't go away. I'm trying to prepare myself for re-living that day, but honestly I know that I can't. There's no way to prepare. Prayer for our church family and Ken's family would be much appreciated!

Come Thou Fount

1. Come, thou Fount of every blessing,   tune my heart to sing thy grace;   streams of mercy, never ceasing,   call for songs of loudest praise.   Teach me some melodious sonnet,   sung by flaming tongues above.   Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it,   mount of thy redeeming love.   2. Here I raise mine Ebenezer;   hither by thy help I'm come;   and I hope, by thy good pleasure,   safely to arrive at home.   Jesus sought me when a stranger,   wandering from the fold of God;   he, to rescue me from danger,   interposed his precious blood.   3. O to grace how great a debtor   daily I'm constrained to be!   Let thy goodness, like a fetter,   bind my wandering heart to thee.   Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,   prone to leave the God I love;   here's my heart, O take and seal it,   seal it for thy courts above.