Original Post: Just Another Day

My daughter has been redesigning my website for me. She added a subscribe link (please use it!), and tweaked fonts and colors. Today I started clicking around and rereading old posts and I came across my blog from November 15, 2012.

I remember that day. I remember turning on the radio in the morning and singing along to the words. I remember the pray I offered up, asking God to please remind my heart to still be so thankful at the end of the day regardless of what happens, and how at the end of that long day as I began my journey home, that song came on again. I sang praises and thanks the whole way home and then I blogged about it.

Quite a while later, my mom read through my blog entries and pointed to that one. Do you realize what day that was? she asked me after double checking the date. And I was reminded, once again, of how carefully our Abba plans out the little details of our lives.

Because, you see, that joyous journey home wasn't really the end of a long day. It was simply a peaceful interlude in a really, really long day.

After I posted that blog, I checked my phone messages and found out that my grandmother had been taken to the hospital. I climbed back into my car and drove to St. Vincent's where I sat by her hospital bed for the next five days holding her hand while letting her go.

There's one more verse to Matt Redman's song (10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord)) – the last one:

And on that day, when my strength is failing,
the end draws near and my time has come,
still my soul will sing your praise unending
10,000 years and then forever.

It's been eight years since Grammy slipped into something more comfortable to hang out face-to-face with our Abba. Eight years since that long, long day when God used that song to remind me that He cares enough about me to play an active role in my life. Eight years since I asked God to remind me to stay grateful, to stay thankful, and to keep praising Him at the end of the day.

I do better some days than others.
But at the final end of the day, when it's my time, I know where I'm going, I know Who I'm going to, and I'm planning to sing His praise the whole way there.