I don’t IMG_0001usually post twice in one day but today is a bit different. This morning I was flooded with emotion and memories as I walked down the sidewalks of The Ohio State Medical Center Campus. I was there to pray with a man getting ready for surgery.

As I walked down the sidewalk and breathed in the cool fall air just after 6am, I remembered that 5 years ago to this day I was walking these exact same sidewalks. Then it wasn’t to visit a member of a church I was serving but to see my dad. He had been taken to the hospital by life-flight helicopter on life-support. The prognosis wasn’t good.

As I walked those sidewalks and entered the very elevators I used five years ago, I was forced to pause and remember. I remembered the flood of emotions that I felt five years ago. I felt the tears come back in my eyes. I felt the knots forming in the pit of my stomach. I felt my knees getting weak and shaky. The smells from the hospital, the feel of the hand sanitizer, the beeping of the monitors and life support systems – they all caused me to pause and taste the raw emotion of that moment five years ago. I could see the pain in my mother’s eyes as she sat beside him not wanting to leave him. Not wanting him to leave her. She was stronger than all of us.

Not a day goes by that I don’t give thanks for the life that God restored to my dad and the rock He gave us in my mom. Dad was in a coma for a couple of weeks, but has made a full recovery. But today was different. I didn’t just remember that day. I lived it all over again.

Mom – Dad I love you both. Thanks for the example you’ve given me. I thank God today and always for both of you.