It's getting closer and closer to his memorial service. A big part of me wants to say something at his service, but I know that I won't be able to. I'm not a talker. When people ask me how I'm doing or whether or not I want to talk about it... I can barely utter the words, "I'm not ready yet" before the tears start to well up and blur my vision. If only I could just carry a computer with me and just type out my thoughts and have it speak for me. Actually, I kind of think that's what Anderson did for me. He knew my thoughts and he knew me well enough to speak for me when I couldn't... with the added benefit of having his smooth-talking filter soften up my often-too-blunt-for-comfort words.
I think maybe what bothers me (mildly) is that the people who are speaking at his service... they only knew parts of him, but I know so much more about his whole person than anyone else. The things he kept from the public... we shared during our nighttime talks. He told me his thoughts 100% unfiltered. Most of all, we talked about love. We talked about how much we loved each other probably more than anything else. Words weren't even enough to convey our love to one another. We were always looking for new and better ways to love each other. We talked about God and everything we saw Him doing in our lives. We talked about the ugly things too. We talked about our pain. We talked about the future we wanted here on earth... together. We cried together. We had joy together. We lived out our wedding vows to the fullest... for as long as we both lived.
I want to tell everyone about him. I want everyone to know the Anderson and I know... or knew. I want so badly to share but as much as I try to put it into words... they don't ever seem adequate, accurate, or vivid enough to describe my Anderson and the life he lived.
On February 12, 2009... we journaled together about the work that God's done in us. This is what he wrote on the topic (I transcribed as he spoke):
I feel like I'm a changed person, a better person. God's made me see things I thought I would never see & experience things I've never experienced. I've grown so much.
In the hospital, he kept saying how everything he'd experienced... seemed to give him glasses to see things he never saw before. How some things, like God and family, became so clearly important and all the lesser things faded away into the background.
On February 13th, we journaled about what kind of tree we are. Yeah it's a weird question but here was his response:
I wish I had more leaves to protect people from the heat. I'm not always a strong tree. I need help. I need another tree to help me.
I could be wrong, but I think that I'm his helper tree. Maybe we just intertwined and became one tree. I imagine it to be something like this
Maybe I'll try again to write about him tomorrow.
let God lead you through tomorrow
ReplyDeletegood luck and see ya :)