This is for Luke

I wanted to get some pictures posted from Christmas but things just didn't go as planned. It was a wonderful Christmas and we got lots of fun stuff. My parents came over Christmas Eve and stayed the night. It's always so much fun to watch the excitement on the kiddo's faces when they see that Santa came. My parents left Christmas night because my mother in-law was due in early the next morning for a visit all the way from Pennsylvania.I was hoping for a great visit with hopes of her relaxing a bit since she had just took on the task of caring for Grandma and Grandpa. If you seen my previous post about grandpa being ill and in the hospital. He was doing better yet his lungs were never going to get better. They had decided to put him in the nursing home down the road to get that much needed around the clock care. The day before my mother in-law headed down they transferred him over and he was settled in just fine. Anyways the visit was going great and we had decided after a long day of rest and hanging around the house that we'd take a 2 hour trip over to Albany Georgia to an aquarium. when we arrived it was a bit frustrating. We sat at the pay window what felt like forever. A long game of who's on first and what's on second! All we had asked is if they gave a military discount. We wanted to see the movie (kinda like IMAX) of the dinosaurs. The kid (maybe 25) not only forgot to ring up one of the kids granted that could have been our mix up to but he didn't add the movie payment. My mother in-law had numerous payment slips now. We finally finished paying and by the look on all of our faces we were quite exhausted or maybe a bit annoyed from that whole process. But quite honestly who wouldn't be in this rush, rush, rush fast paced world. We headed in to the exhibit and it was great fun. Fish every where and lizards and birds! We were about to head to the third floor when we received the phone call. The only thing that I had prayed for before Ann (my mother in-law) came to visit was not to get this call. I was thinking about it the other day that I didn't even pray for her safety flying like I usually do. I just prayed that Grandpa wouldn't pass away while she was gone....and he did. We were walking up a ramp and for some reason in my gut when I heard the phone ring I new.Maybe this is how it was suppose to be. Maybe she was not suppose to be in town or even there. But I am sure in some way she feels guilt. Grandpa was an amazing person and it's amazing that a Grand father IN-LAW can feel like as if he was my own my entire life. I'm not good with words and what exactly I should have said. But, we did in deed start trying to figure out what we should do and it meant leaving the aquarium. We had only been there for 30 min. or so ...I think. I had told Ann that I was going to ask for her money back ( it was super pricey). I just dreaded the fact that I was going to have to talk to the guy. You know the one from before. Just getting in was a ridiculous process and here I was going to try and get money back. So I headed to the window and he could see we all had been crying and were visibly shaken. I explained the situation and he got his supervisor. Whew! Thank goodness! The process still takes a bit of time so I talked with "the guy" who's name is actually Luke. As we talked he stopped mid sentence and said "I have a prayer book" nothing more just that. I told him that was great. He then asked if he could have Ann's name and Grandma's name to add to the prayer book. He then explained that he had read the book the Purpose Driven and how that and other things had changed his life and he lives for God! The other things were heart breaking and humbling and made me want to curl up and cry. See Luke actually had a Brain Tumor and then had two strokes which made him go into a coma for six months. They were going to pull the plug and he went on from there. He explained that he had to learn to talk, walk and eat again and is still a bit slow but said he had so much love for his Lord! He then came walking out of his glassed in room to give his condolences and hug everyone. I still wanted to cry. Cry for the lose of a great man and cry for meeting one.