Happy Thanksgiving!

Yesterday, I could say HAPPY Thanksgiving and mean it, because it was.  And although in a perfect world (the way things were originally planned by our loving, benevolent God) there would be no sad good-byes and world peace would be a reality, I chose happiness because of the promise that one day things will be as He intended. On that day, there will be no more sorrows, no more tears, no more sickness and no more good-byes.

So, at the intersection of Gratitude and Grief, my precious memories, amazing friends, and wonderful family--along with the promise of reunions in heaven--sustain, soothe, and comfort me, and I am thankful, so very thankful to Christ, my Lord.

Revelation 21:4-7

Reflections...Daddy's Little Piece of Heaven on Earth--the cove I love.

As autumn hues transform Lake Norman’s shores, the fireworks and picnics of summer make way for bonfires and blankets. It’s bittersweet in some ways, but I welcome the reprieve from this year’s heat.

Summer’s end at the lake usually evokes memories of the first time I saw On Golden Pond. I was twenty-two when the Oscar winner hit theaters, and already waxing nostalgic about my childhood, it stirred recollection of my own futile attempts to catch Walter in our golden cove in Sherrills Ford.

Years later, I recall other aspects of the film that may be more compelling than its majestic scenery: the complexity of relationships between parents and children, the exhilaration of shared adventures, the brevity of life.

Few things motivate us to ponder such matters more than the loss of a loved one, and having recently said, “See you later,” to the man I called Daddy, I hope what I’m about to share will encourage you to consider today’s opportunity.

My dad was old school. Undaunted by most challenges, after fighting in the Korean War he came home and started a business, learned to fly airplanes, built houses, and founded a private school. None of these accomplishments were a significant part of the legacy he wanted to pass on, however. What mattered to him was leaving a heritage of fierce faith and limitless love.

Daddy loved to talk, so he did. The greeter at Walmart knew him by name. The pharmacist at the drug store, the lab tech at the doctor’s office, the waitress at his favorite Japanese restaurant, his dry cleaner’s employees, the customers at my sister’s store, and so many others around the lake knew he loved them.

It seemed to me that Daddy didn’t recall a time when the clock had been his master and he reminded me often that he thought I needed to slow down. I justified my busyness but recognized that I often allowed the tyranny of the urgent to take precedence over important and occasionally, it haunted me.

Standing at Daddy’s bedside during his last days this summer, time stood still. Schedules, meetings, appointments and deadlines didn’t matter so much anymore, I just wanted to hear him tell me about the time he and his brother’s went skinny dipping in Lane’s Creek one more time. Instead, he pulled me close and whispered again that he was proud of me and that he loved me.

Today, as bronze and yellow leaves reflect fall’s glory in the waters of Dad's golden cove, I’m reminded of the man who built the house on the hill above the shoreline I love, and I miss him. But oh how precious it is when sorrow is soothed by the awareness that I won life’s lottery when God chose to give me a father who seized every opportunity to say, “I love you.”

If you read this with sadness thinking you weren't as fortunate remember this, the PERFECT Father who loves unconditionally is eager to adopt you. "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." Romans 10:9

Sweet Little Blessings

It's that time of year in my family again.  We're celebrating births and birthdays!

Steven Pate joined the family on Friday and we couldn't be more excited to have a beautiful boy join the clan.

The Gompers' Girls turned two and three and enjoyed being the recipients of presents and cakes! There are few things more fun than watching a child delight in being celebrated!

And now...we wait until Friday to celebrate one more precious little one! Our youngest granddaughter, Cadence, is about to turn 1 and we cannot wait to celebrate what she means to us!

Fun times, God's blessings, Grateful heart.

To Tell the Truth...or not.

Reading scripture in the order it was written gives new perspective to me as I consider the unfolding of events in a fresh way. 

The prophet Amos was given a difficult message to convey, but his unwavering obedience to speak the "hard to hear" truth is challenging to me on several levels.

The first is that we seem to be living in a time when confessing Christ-followers are prone to mistake the mandate to demonstrate Christ's love with the imperative to be silent about sin, specifically regarding issues that contradict the undisputed doctrines of our Christian faith.

When King Jeraboam heard through one of the priests (Amaziah) that Amos was foretelling God's plan to punish Israel for her sin, Amos found out quickly that he wasn't on the king's most popular people list.  Here's Amaziah's message to Amos:

Amos 7: 12...“Get out of here, you prophet! Go on back to the land of Judah, and earn your living by prophesying there! 13 Don’t bother us with your prophecies here in Bethel. This is the king’s sanctuary and the national place of worship!”14 But Amos replied, “I’m not a professional prophet, and I was never trained to be one.I’m just a shepherd, and I take care of sycamore-fig trees. 15 But the Lord called me away from my flock and told me, ‘Go and prophesy to my people in Israel.’ 16 Now then, listen to this message from the Lord...

Amos did not back down from the directive he'd been given by God to warn the people of what was to come if they didn't wake up.

Today, there are times when I sense a subtle (or not so subtle) expectation to just be quiet, "to go back to Judah," so to speak, rather than sharing that there is a Holy God who is the same today as yesterday and His standards have never changed. 

I fear imbalance. I imagine that a group of well-intentioned Christians who carried out their mission with misguided methods and sometimes sloppy scholarship have ushered in this era of confusion. Not desiring to be associated with one of the hateful, judgmental bigot types (who would?) many believers today have adopted an, "I'll just love my neighbor to Christ," modus operandi.  Scripture is clear.  Love is unquestionably commanded, but it is "hearing" God's Word (Romans 10:17) that leads to believing faith. But let's face it, that's not always an easy assignment because as John Maxwell says, "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."

I confess honestly though, that if I'd never heard about sin, I'd have remained ignorant of the fact that I was in need of salvation and that I was helpless to save myself, regardless of how lovingly compassionate the bearer of that painful truth was.

What it all boils down to, at least as I see it, is that love in its highest, most genuine form is evidenced by a willingness to tell the whole truth (lovingly) even though it may be scoffed at or rejected. Why?  Because the eternal and unchanging Word has the power to yield believing faith .

G.K. Chesterton once said, "Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions," but Gerhard Forde drove it home when he stated, "Christianity is not the movement from vice to virtue but from virtue to grace." And grace truly is, amazing.

Today's Reading: Amos 6-9; 2 Chronicles 27 Isaiah 9-12

Joy Comes in the Morning...

Awake for hours...sleepless, sad, I finally read and remember.  Daddy is more alive now than I am.  Joy, refreshing as water from a clear mountain stream, washes over my broken heart again and I am grateful, so grateful, for the Word of my sweet Lord.

1 Thessalonians 4
The Hope of the Resurrection
13 And now, dear brothers and sisters, we want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died so you will not grieve like people who have no hope. 14 For since we believe that Jesus died and was raised to life again, we also believe that when Jesus returns, God will bring back with him the believers who have died.


 15 We tell you this directly from the Lord: We who are still living when the Lord returns will not meet him ahead of those who have died. 16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God. First, the Christians who have died will rise from their graves. 17 Then, together with them, we who are still alive and remain on the earth will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Then we will be with the Lord forever. 18 So encourage each other with these words.

Daddy's Girl...

My father died a week ago today and I'm left with a pretty sizable hole in my heart.  After a short battle with Pulmonary Fibrosis/Amiodarone Pulmonary Toxicity (brought on by the drug Amiodarone that was prescribed for atrial fibrillation) he succumbed to the disease leaving a heartbroken family who lost a great man much too soon for our selfish preferences.

Born June 2, 1932, we celebrated his life and legacy on Saturday, August 21, 2010.  My precious children-in-law, Nichole Broome and Steven Gompers, shared beautiful songs in tribute, and I spoke for a few minutes about the man I called "Daddy".  For friends and family who couldn't be with us, here's what I shared:

Daddy was a mess! The dictionary defines “mess” as something that is disorderly or untidy—and that surely isn’t the kind of mess he was—in fact, he was just the opposite, so the reason I use “mess” has little to do with its actual meaning and is much more about an idea and if you knew him well, you are following right along with me, and you can probably hear his voice saying, “You are a mess!” if you ever made him laugh. He truly was the only one of his kind in captivity.

Daddy was such a mess that sometimes 'he didn’t know which one of the boys he was'. He told us often that he felt like he was sent for, couldn’t go, finally went and wouldn’t do. At other times, he was down with the con-soni-bonilitis and that was a big mess. When three little girls vying for his attention were all yelling, “diddy, diddy!,” he always answered us, “no he didn’t!”. And if we said, “Daddy, guess what?” without hesitation he responded, “the higher you raise a mule’s tail, the better you can see his butt.” Ponder that picture for a minute.

All of Daddy’s boys were girls—and as the eldest, I will be spokesMan. So for just a couple of minutes I want to talk about three traits that define our Daddy and our sweet Mama’s husband: Life, Laughter and Love.

Daddy lived life with a carpe diem kind of seize the day attitude that amazed. The baby of ten, we often imagined him as a little boy who had to work hard to get noticed because the “cuteness” of little kids had probably worn off by the time he came along. Undaunted, Daddy made his mark in the world by determining to conquer and complete whatever he made up his mind to do.

All of Dad’s brothers and sisters graduated high school after completing 11 years, but as Dad’s 11th grade year drew to a close, the state of NC decided that to really be smart enough to graduate, there should be 12 grades. In his mind, that was grossly unfair so he decided not to get a diploma and show this dumb state what they could do with their new requirement. He moved to Charlotte, got a job as an apprentice electrician and thought that would be that, but a wonderful agriculture teacher who had a particular fondness for daddy, drove to Charlotte and convinced him to move back to Peachland and finish high school.

As young girls, we loved looking through Dad’s high school yearbooks, especially enjoying the knowledge that our Dad’s nickname was “chicken.” The father we knew was anything but that, he was our brave hero and earned a Bronze Star during his time in Korea that proved it! He could do anything and knew everything—and if he didn’t know, he made something up that sounded so good we believed him.

When driving somewhere didn’t get him to his destination quickly enough, he took flying lessons so he could pack us into a little Cessna and take us exploring. When a Charlotte District Court judge decided that Daddy’s girls would be bussed across town rather than attending the school we could walk to from home, he protested that decision by founding a private school in our neighborhood that he built from the ground up with the help of like-minded neighbors. The letter he wrote petitioning for Valleydale School’s charter was so impressive that the response came back addressed to “Attorney Glenn Horne”. That 12th grade served him well!

Daddy lived life by seizing every chance possible to demonstrate his love for his family and there were evidences of that all around our home. He was a life-builder and even our backyard play house reflected that—it was wired for lights and sound and built by loving hands that were never too tired from a hard day’s work to keep him from doing the things that he set out to do. If he had any idea what Kathie was doing out in that playhouse though…but I digress…

Daddy took us places and showed us things that were important to him and always entertained us along the way with stories that may have occasionally been ever-so-slightly embellished, but made us heehaw anyway. He had nicknames for our friends and back in the day entertained them and us by bringing home a bucket truck to give us rides up above the trees. He had no idea that Lisa was pocketing some cash by charging her friends for their rides, though!

Laughter was the soundtrack of life with Daddy. Not long after they were married, Mama cooked dinner and set the table in her finest Martha Stewart fashion. On the center of the table there was a large metal spoon in the green bean bowl and silverware beside their plates. Suddenly, the spoon in the bowl started dancing—and Mama starting freaking out a little. Then, the silverware started to move around. Daddy fessed up when she was visibly shaken, pulling out a huge magnet that he was balancing on his legs under the table.

A couple of years ago Mom called me to tell about a religious experience she thought she was having as she watered the plants on her back porch. A bumblebee was buzzing by her head and suddenly she felt certain that his buzz was to the tune of Amazing Grace. She looked up into the heavens, confident that God was giving her some kind of special encounter and stopped what she was doing so that she could be sure it wasn’t in her head—sure enough, the tune Amazing Grace was buzzing in her ears. She dropped her watering can and ran to tell Daddy to come and listen only to find him on the lakeside porch with a kazoo—humming—you guessed it—Amazing Grace!

He made friends with inanimate objects like a rabbit statue in a beach house we once rented. He named her Esmerelda and she became a part of that year’s vacation. He never got too old to laugh and play with some of his toys. He loved his talking Bubbas and his gobbling turkeys and was famous for lots of what we lovingly refer to as Glennisms. When we got a scrape or bruise as children will, he always sympathetically said, “That will feel better when it quits hurting!” At restaurants, we knew that his order was always going to be either hummingbird livers on rye or a peananer rocious on a super gobsloscious depending upon his appetite. Waitresses loved him!

LOVE was the theme of life with Daddy. He loved LOVE themed music like “I’ll Be Loving You Eternally,” a song that was his love song for Mama that we played for him on his last day and when he could no longer speak, he still puckered his lips for one last kiss as he heard that music and her whispered reminder of love in his ear.

He was a man who didn’t just show it, he said it. Never once did I visit him since getting married 31 years ago that he at some point he didn’t say, “I love you Sandy Kay.” or, “Does George know how much I love him?” or, “I sure do love those babies!” or, well…you get the picture.

On Sunday as he was telling us all how much he loved us for the last time, I couldn’t help thinking to myself, "I said, self," I hope he knows that we’ve never doubted that for a second because he’s made sure every day that we knew.

There is only one person that Daddy loved more than his family and that was his Lord and Savior. More important to him than pulling out pictures and bragging about how cute we all are (or were) when talking to someone (and he talked to everyone) he’d more than likely pull out his business cards and tell them how they could get to know the love of his life, Jesus Christ.

In the last years of life, he spent his energy sharing his faith. I told my sisters that one of the most endearing things about Daddy was that where he was, was where he was. If he was talking to you, he was looking you in the eyes, concentrating on you—the most important person in the world at that moment, instead of looking around the room to see if there was another better or more interesting conversation to be had. He was a masterfully skilled communicator who never seemed insincere when he was sharing his heart of love with someone, and I’m convinced that’s the reason that nurses who only knew him for a few days fell just as in love with him and came in after their shifts ended to spend time at his bedside and came back to the hospital to cry with us as he was dying.

One of them was a nurse who cared for Daddy last year after he fell out of the infamous pear tree, chainsaw in hand. She had heard he was up in CCU and wanted to come by and tell him that he had touched her life like no other patient. Her words to us were that he looked her in the eyes and asked her if she was okay. She found herself telling him that she wasn’t—really—and he told her how she could find the joy that she needed for life in spite of her troubles. She never forgot that, and she never forgot daddy—and she wanted him to know that he made an indelible impact on her life and in her marriage. She said, “he didn’t know me at all, but he genuinely cared.” His care was born out of his love for His Savior—a love that was so compelling that he couldn’t not care.

While going through some of Dad’s mementos and keepsakes, we found a folded restaurant placemat—he was quite an accomplished placemat artist by the way—and on it he’d written a poem that reads:

Just to know that our love has lasted almost a lifetime


Keeps joy and thankfulness on my thankful mind


We savor all the good times and let go of the bad

And to know our daughters can still call me “Dad”


Are just a few of the reminders of the blessings I have had


God has been so good and


I have always known that with me He’s always stood. Signed, G. Billingsley Horne

After he retired, Daddy designed his new and improved business cards. They featured praying hands on the left and his name and address on the right along with his favorite Bible verse, John 3:16. He always kept one ready to hand out to anyone he struck up a conversation with who needed encouragement or wanted to hear more about God’s love.

On Wednesday night, I picked up the Bible he read every day and randomly opened it to a page with just one highlighted verse…

Matthew 25:21 (New King James Version)

21 His lord said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.’

This morning, he is there with His Savior and his loved ones who had gone before him, still celebrating life—ETERNAL LIFE—that was bought for him on Calvary’s cross when he asked a resurrected Jesus Christ to be his forgiver and leader. Daddy HAS entered into the joy of His Lord! And the thing he’d want me to ask every person here is will you be there with him one day? And are you sure? Because if you aren’t, you can be. His favorite verse John 3:16, explains how that’s possible. It reads: For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but will have everlasting life.

Our family thanks every one of you who has prayed for us, mourned with us, rejoiced with us and celebrated his life with us today, and I would be negligent if I didn’t ask one last question for Dad—will your legacy be like his? Will you live life fully, laugh hard often, and love God and people extravagantly? Because that is how best to honor the memory and legacy of my Daddy, Glenn B. Horne…

TIKVAH!

Tikvah!  It's a word I learned from a woman I love--Tiffany Pate.  Tikvah is a Hebrew word that means "hope, waiting in expectation of," and God gave it to her during a special quiet time after her breast cancer diagnosis.

If you've followed my blog for a while you know about her journey, her faith, and her legacy--but if you are new to Cerebrations, you can catch up here.

Because of Tiffany Pate, my life will never be the same, so it's my privilege to share that her husband Brian has created bracelets in her memory to help raise funds for Cancer Services of Gaston County, an organization that has helped her family and the families of so many others touched by the disease. The bracelets are $2.50 each and include two scripture passages that define (in summary) her hope and her confidence.

Romans 12:12 says: Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. and she was. Psalm 91 (stamped on the inside of the bracelets) is a passage that strenghtened her unwavering faith, and finally, TIKVAH,is a message for us all--that our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.

If you'd like to order a bracelet you can find out more by emailing TiffanysTikvah@hushmail.com.

Finally, please remember to pray for Brian and her boys, Landon and Ridge, who like so many of us carry on because of our confident TIKVAH that we will see her again soon!