Miles Between Us

The last two weeks have been exhausting. There have been moments of both good exhaustion and bad. But the common denominator is the same...we are worn out!

While I was at camp, Sara drove to Nashville, to fly to Baltimore to drive to a wedding weekend (for one of her relatives) in Pennsylvania. That same week we found out her grandmother passed away. So she made plans to drive back to Baltimore and fly to Tulsa, Oklahoma to drive east to Muskogee for the funeral. I came back from camp making plans to drive to St. Louis on Monday to fly to Tulsa, Oklahoma to drive to Muskogee to meet Sara for the funeral. Then Sunday morning before I was to leave on Monday I got a call that my grandpa had a massive stroke and he wasn't expected to live. He was 92 but the crazy thing was he was out helping build a fence the day before. My aunt and uncle had been building an apartment on their property for him and they were about two weeks from completing it and moving him in. He was so looking forward to that day!

I still left for Oklahoma on Monday. My grandfather passed away late Monday afternoon. We stayed in Oklahoma for a few days and attended the funeral for Mildred Marie Collier Siner on Wednesday. On Thursday we drove back to Tulsa and flew in to Dallas Love Field. We then drove to Rockwall on the east side of Dallas, where my aunt and uncle live, to meet my family. We did his funeral on Friday which was pretty special. He served in the military (Army Air Core) and so some men from the army were there at his burial to honor him and present a flag to my dad on behalf of the United States of America. We then stayed the weekend sorting through all of his belongings. We couldn't get a flight home until Tuesday initially, but at the last minute were able to get one on Monday. Late Sunday night we decided we would drive grandpa's old '97 Buick Century home. So, on Monday Sara drove to the airport to fly from Dallas to St. Louis to pick up our truck that I had driven there at the beginning of the week in order to now drive the 3 hours home to Paducah. I left early that morning to drive the 10 hours from Dallas to Paducah and got home Monday evening. We crashed pretty much all day on Tuesday as the weight of everything settled upon us.

I'm feeling tired again just typing all of that out. We covered quite a few miles between us the last two weeks both physically and emotionally. I'd prefer not to have to do anything like that again in the near future or the distant one for that matter. But in all of it I'm reminded that we are called to live a certain way in this world and that kind of life is possible because Mildred and Richard daily showed us the way...