My Jessie Journal: Hi Sweet Pea…it’s daddy! I love and miss you so much. I’m constantly thinking and talking about you. Sometimes you come to my mind at the most interesting times and I love everyone of them.
For example, last Saturday night when I was on the beach in Santa Barbara performing a wedding for this wonderful couple. It was a public beach so there were lots of people out enjoying the day with family and friends. In the middle of the ceremony, I heard from a short-distance behind me a man yell…. “Jessica be careful in the water.” There I was, conducting a wedding and having this flash back memory of you at the beach and me saying to you… “Jessica be careful in the water”.
On the drive home I thought a lot about the wedding and the word “LOVE”. I told the couple “LOVE” stands for: Listening – Offering – Valuing and Encouraging your spouse. Those are four characteristics of lasting love. If someone feels heard, supported, valued and encouraged they will always feel LOVED!
While many say… “I love you”…there are different levels of love. There are the more surface levels when you say to a friend… “Love ya”. Then there are the amazingly deep levels of love that you feel down in the crevasses of our soul. It’s almost a level that can be communicated and conveyed without words. The bonds of this deep love are crazy tight and keep people together when the waves of life try to flood their relationship. That’s the love that has kept our family together and will keep our family together.
It’s like the love that you show Shaya in this picture. Now words but you can tell there is extreme love! She misses her best friend so much…
I wish my parents would have had that type of love so when the waves of job loss crashed in on them they wouldn’t have left each other. Coming from a divorced family the concept of trusting “love” was always a challenge for me growing up…then I met mommy…then we had kids. You, Shaya and JT taught me what true “unconditional” love was. Having children took what I thought were the deepest levels of love and made them seem shallow. I had never experienced that feeling of love until I held each of you on the day you were born. In some ways it’s indescribable.
Then I think about the depths of love mommy has for you, Shaya and JT. It makes mine seem shallow too. I have learned so much these past few years about the amazing bond between a mother and her children. It’s both unconditional and sacrificial…mom’s sacrifice so much and ask for so little in return. Mom’s love never out of duty but out of deep devotion to their children. It’s amazing love!
As life unfolds, there are those times that LOVE calls you to say “good-bye”…could be for a short trip…sending a child to college…or in our case kissing you “good-bye” before we placed you on the gurney.
I’m so thankful that “good-byes” are not permanent and “LOVE” keeps people close no matter if you are separated by a few miles, hundreds of miles or by heaven.
Less than two hours before you moved to Heaven, the last words you mumbled to mommy and I were… “Lub-you”. Cancer had restricted so many things in your body but you were able to say “lub you”. I so wish I would have video taped that but thankfully my heart and mind captured it and have it available at anytime to play.
Jess, I will always “LUB” you too!!!!
xoxo,
daddy
