An Easter blessing.

Having the chance to worship God always blesses me, and getting to worship with my Heritage family is special. But being there on Easter Sunday was EXTRA special this year.

More than 1,500 souls came together to honor our Lord and celebrate his gift, our savior, and it was a Spirit-filled time of praise.

On a much less important note, we were glitch-free through two services in spite of the (literal) drama and multiple videos. Now we know how many A/V techs it takes to run an Easter service: all of us!

Still, with all three of us in the sound booth, I knew we were still down a man. As is the case whenever I'm in the booth, I really missed my friend. It's been 3 1/2 months since he ran "the board" for the last time, but I can feel his presence in that spot more than any other. Still.

During that Easter service, as I sat on the left side of the booth for a change, something caught my attention. At first I thought my eyes were fooling me, but it was there. In the sheet music files, one label didn't have room for the full song title, "Come, Now Is the Time to Worship." Instead, it says,

"Come Now Is The Tim"

Now THAT made me smile! And I just thought it was only in my imagination that I was seeing Tim in the booth! I still struggled to get through the day without letting my grief overwhelm me, but like I said on Facebook:

"This year more than ever, I need to celebrate Christ’s victory over death. Even though we struggle with our grief, mourning those who have passed from this life, we KNOW that death doesn’t win. Easter gives us a special day to shout to all the world: 'He lives, and so can we!' I thank God that our celebration doesn’t have to end when the bunnies and baskets get put away."

Thank you, Father, for Jesus. Thank you for life after death. And thank you for the life of Tim Head.

A-tiskit, a-tasket...

No green and yellow here, but ol' E.B. managed to find our new house to deliver Easter baskets!

Brett's

Katie's

Ryan's

Sorry, ChaCha and Frisco! Maybe next year.

Nothing like Easter candy for breakfast before church!

Easter Eve.

Different house, same tradition. Memaw came over for our annual Easter egg dye-a-thon.





Even though we lost our Good Friday day off when schools closed on Jan. 7, this weekend still had a "holiday feel." The flowers Brett gave me to celebrate didn't hurt!

Tornado plus 10.

Last night we were downtown for the pops concert, and as we walked toward Bass Hall, I couldn't help but think about the night 10 years ago that changed Fort Worth forever.

Bass Hall, although it was close to so much destruction, was largely untouched. Its angels with their trumpets still stand guard over that building, just as they have for more than decade.

But the old Bank One tower is no more. The remodeled building now houses condos and looks like this:
But 10 years ago, after the tornado ripped through downtown, it looked like this:The night of the tornado, one of our friends was working in that tower. Brett's sister and another friend were both driving to work and found themselves in the middle of the storm. We had friends who lived downtown, and as we found out later, a friend who had gone down to the basement of the downtown Y after seeing the large windows there bow in and out.

But our family of four was at Chick-fil-A in the suburbs. It was "family night," and in those days we spent quite a few Tuesday nights with some church friends at that particular restaurant. The kids were on the playground when a manager said they'd better come indoors; it was hailing. She came around a few times to say we were under a tornado warning, and when one was spotted on the northside near I-35W, she told us we all needed to take cover.

So where do you find cover in a glass-wrapped Chick-fil-A? Why, the refrigerator, of course! We huddled in the walk-in fridge, nervously joking about how long we could sustain ourselves with brownies and carrot salad.

It was nervewracking, but we were safe from the deadly winds, which ended up hitting south of us. It wasn't until later that night that we learned about the downtown destruction. We heard about the Bank One building, the Cash America buildling and Mallick Tower, and Calvary Cathedral, the church building that had been demolished.
We had no clue how that destroyed building would change our lives and the life of our church family.

It was soon after that night that our elders learned that Calvary Christian Academy had lost its home when the church was destroyed. We had room in our building, so the invitation was extended and accepted. CCA moved in and shared our classroom space during the week. Meanwhile, Calvary Cathedral was holding worship services in tents, and as summer approached, that arrangement became tiresome. That's when the church began using our building on Sunday afternoons.

Eventually, the Calvary leadership learned it was not feasible to rebuild on their old property, so they approached our elders: What if Calvary bought the Midtown building? Previously a church growth expert had suggested our congregation move, but months of trying to sell our building had gone nowhere. But then this?

It took a lot of prayer and a giant leap of faith, but the elders accepted Calvary's offer. Land was acquired for our new home north of town, and plans were set in motion to build on a pasture. When we drove up there for the groundbreaking, there weren't even roads yet, but there were plentiful cow patties! There were also bunches of signs for home builders.

Today there are bunches of HOMES.

All we need's a horse.

Since moving in, our backyard has been Frisco's territory. On this sunny Saturday, we took it over for a couple of games of horseshoes.


This is our neighbor's redbud, but isn't it pretty? Funny to think that just a week ago, we had snow!

Spring showers?

Let the record show that it snowed on March 20, 2010, the first day of spring! The morning after, we still had remnants of Saturday's flurries.


It was pretty and caused no traffic issues, but seriously? MORE snow? Crazy.

Spring break escape: Day 2.

I believe every American passing through OKC should visit the national memorial and museum. Although Brett, Katie and I had been there before, Ryan had not. Tuesday it was his turn to learn about the 1995 bombing.We started at the "survivor tree." I wanted him to get a good look at it before he saw photos of it from that April day, surrounded by crushed and burning cars.

Then we got a good look at the "gates of time," denoting time before and after the explosion.

From there we headed indoors to see the museum.
It is powerful to see the impact this event had on us as individuals and as a nation. In spite of the tragedy and loss, the museum is able to convey the incomparable Heartland spirit that carried people through those dark days, our first real brush with terrorism in those pre-9/11 times.

After the museum we went back outside to the symbolic memorial. It was overcast and cold, which seemed to fit our somber mood.

We visited the fence to find mementos other visitors had left there in memory of those who died.

Then we just looked at all those chairs, each representing a life lost because of the bombing.

A park ranger there said it was OK to walk on the grass to get a closer look, so Brett and the kids did.
Being there gave me the chance to tell Ryan about Baylee and the other children who were killed that day. I told him how her sweet, smiling face broke my heart when I saw her picture in the newspaper.
And we once again saw the survivor tree, still standing 15 years after the bombing that destroyed so much of that tree's surroundings.
We can never go back to that innocent time before the bombing, but there at the memorial, we can remember those who died or were injured. We can also pay tribute to all the people who showered Oklahoma City with goodwill.

From there we drove to Bricktown. We had a lunch date with Toby Keith!
OK, we had a lunch PLANNED at Toby Keith's restaurant. We're not exactly TK fans, but we love the food there.
For the second day in a row, we had some gooooood ol' home cooking. We really love the spicy creamed corn there!

What I don't love? That upside-down longhorn over the door. I know Toby's a big ou fan and all, but DUDE. It's funny to me that during our trip we saw more anti-UT shirts and stickers than pro-ou stuff. WHO'S YOUR DADDY, sooners? Obsess much?

We had planned to cruise the canal via the Bricktown Water Taxi, but it was a COLD afternoon! Instead, we took a brisk walk over to the land run statues:






The sun was teasing us, peaking out from behind the clouds to give us just a little warmth. Since it was warming up just a tad, we kept walking around the canal.
By virtue of my monthly Diet Coke with lime intake, I'm obligated to take pictures of the Sonic HQ on each visit to Bricktown.

I still love this mural, too. Katie and I have seen these Bricktown scenes four times now.
But how nice to get to show all of this to my boy! It was great for all four of us to explore the place together.

After this picture, we had (yet another) conversation about how hard it is to get Brett to really smile for pictures. He insists that you have to say something funny if you want a grin. My old standby funny line ("Dukakis!") doesn't work anymore. He insisted that if we want him to smile, we've got to make him laugh—for real.

Katie took up that challenge, zinging one-liners to get Dad to crack.

It worked! He smiled!

After our Bricktown stroll, we headed home, chilly but chilled out. Our quick trip was a great little get-away!