Jack

As I stood by my grandfather's side on Sunday, holding his hand, I could not wall up the memories.

These were the hands that held me in his lap.

These were the hands that baptized me in November 1991.

The hands that held the steering wheel and took my sister and me cross-country on vacation.

The hands that prayed for me.

The hands that shook Josh's hand and welcomed him into our family.

The hands that held the fishing rod right next to me.

The hands that signed our wedding portrait collage -- and included, yes a verse, but wrote "Blue Bell" in parentheses under he and Mamps' name. I think he didn't want me to forget that all of the stories he would tell me and Kayla growing up --no matter the genre-- they all ended in someone getting run over by a Blue Bell truck. He made me laugh more than almost anyone I know.

Consequently, the hands that gave Hunter some of his first Blue Bell. Hunter had only had rice cereal and milk at this point in his life. Jack asked me how much he could have. I said "one..." Before I could say tablespoon, he said, "One bowl, coming right up."

The hands that knocked on doors to bring the gospel.

The hands that made me many of breakfasts. He dearly loved breakfast. Breakfast was not cereal. Breakfast was eggs, toast with butter to each corner, at least 2 types of jelly and crispy bacon.

The hands that held a stone of Baylor pride all the days I knew him.

Those hands that worked so hard.

He would not have liked for us to see him laying in bed. But as I watched him on Tuesday, his last day with us, I did not see a weak man at all. All I could picture was his hands around a baseball bat. A teenager, strong, full head of hair, at youth camp. Attracting a young woman named Dolores Smith.

The Bible says "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived, what God has prepared for those who love Him." I kept thinking---just like Jack has no idea what he is about to enter--he could not have imagined what God would do through he and Mamps as he stepped up to bat at that baseball diamond those many years ago. No idea. Oh, what the widespread love of Christ has done. They birthed a family in the Lord. And grew the family of God through his heart.

Let us live it out all of our days. May it be everything he can imagine for us now from his new vantage point.