Love Conquers All. I’ve heard that phrase for most of my life at one time or another, and I’m not sure I ever really understood it until now. I have no idea why it took so long.

Love Conquers All.
I’ve heard that phrase for most of my life at one time or another, and I’m not sure I ever really understood it until now. I have no idea why it took so long.
It portrays love in the sense of the conquering hero.
The one whom no enemy can stand against.
The difference for me now is that I understand that the battlefield on which all this conflict takes place is in my own heart.
When I examine it realistically I have to admit that I always thought of it in terms of conquering someone else. I wanted love to conform others to my own expectations of what they should be. I wanted love to be at my command.
Imagine my surprise then, when the blade turned upon me instead.
Love will, if I let it, overcome my pain to grant forgiveness, or ask for it.
It will overcome my pride to extend my hand in friendship to my enemy.
It will overcome my anger to allow my faithfulness.
It will overcome me.
Love conquers all, but first, love conquers me. My walls must be overcome from within.
It is sometimes hard to love, but worth your whole life to reach just one moment of being completely known by another, and to know the other in turn. To reach out your hand unseen in the dark knowing the hand of another is already there in expectation to take it.
It is worth everything for just one moment of this. To be known, and not forgotten.
Living your life in pursuit of that first, and maybe only, all encompassing instant of perfection.
Because God is Love, He created us as an expression of Himself, hence we are created in His image. As an expression of God Himself we are inherently worthy of His sacrifice for us, and yet God on a cross seems so incongruous to our concept of love. That’s the problem with our interpretation of love. It’s so watered down we have no concept of what real love is. It’s as though in so many ways we have sanitized the true expression of love to be bloodless. It’s all butterflies and sunny days to our general way of thinking.
We seem to forget that love "endures all things"(1Cor 13:7), and the need for endurance implies conflict, distraction, and sometimes pain. We should love fiercely letting nothing come between us.
Love, when practiced honestly, becomes beauty incarnate.
Love influences the practice of my life. It gives everything I do different meaning.
Love truly is an action, and yet it is more. It becomes what we do, where we go, who we know and how we know them. Love cannot reach its full potential in our lives if we do not allow ourselves to live in complete surrender to it. If I am only capable of loving someone when things are all good, then I don’t really love at all.
Each of the qualities of love (1Cor 13) implies that there is a need for that quality because its opposite exists in the world. Patience is needed because the lack of it causes bitterness. Kindness is needed because cruelty exists. The difficult part of this is that we all know that we are capable of dealing out all the opposing forces of love. We focus on the positive aspects because we feel better when we actively pursue them as a lifestyle. There is healing in the practice of love.
“Love your enemies” (Lk 6:35), is the most difficult aspect of love, but Jesus gave us examples of it throughout His life. Judas was the most difficult enemy to deal with because he was already loved. His ability to cause pain was increased by the measure of love Christ gave him. There are times when the evidence of the love of God seems so profound to me that I actually understand why some people fear it rather than readily accept it.
Even the one who betrayed Christ was allowed at His table. Christ knew that Judas was His betrayer, and yet His love for him was such that He still desired Judas’ presence in the Passover meal; one of the most intimate of settings.
Judas didn’t deserve that and he knew it. Jesus knew this as well, and gave it to him anyway. All this made Judas’ betrayal that much more profound to Judas, for the greater the love we give when betrayed causes that much more pain for the betrayer.
And is it not one of the most important aspects of love that we should find the ability to love our enemies for the simple fact that when we sin we ourselves act as the most intimate of enemies to God, and He loves us still? Is He not the greatest example of loving one’s enemy simply by loving us for, “He loved us while we were yet sinners” (Romans 5:8), let alone the ones we condemn without authority?
It is the ability of love to not only conquer all things, but to remain after everything is done and over with. After all the blood has been shed, the ground churned, and with the vultures circling overhead to pick at the corpses of our discontent, Love walks among us to restore us after all the pain to a healed state ready to love again. It is self perpetuating by nature so that when we learn to love ourselves, as God loves us, we understand that we must do something to maintain it in ourselves in order to stay alive to share it with others.
His love makes us matter.
And so we are filled with possibilities.
Because of His love Jesus not only died, but He came back for us!
He. Came. Back.
It is this single, overwhelming act of love that inspires every other expression of true love that we can ever submit to or practice in the human experience.
Through His redemption we are alive with the potential to discover the worth of our very souls.
Live in love,
Do battle in love,
Rest in love,
Die in love,
Return in love.
God did.
It’s called Easter.
©Dan Bode 2010

Dragonfly

I watched a dragonfly die today. 

It was the oddest thing.  It landed on the curb next to me gently setting down.  It laid its tail section down one segment at a time, then folded its legs, and finally laid its wings down for the final time. 

It just stopped. 

It shut down.

And then it died.

I watched it for a few minutes just to make sure it wasn’t just resting, because I’d never seen anything like that before.

It’s so foreign to me to simply know when it’s time to die, and then do it.

Our purpose is so different.

There have been times in my life (long ago) when I wanted to die, even felt the need to die.  To just sleep and not bother waking up.  

But I realized that my death would accomplish nothing. 

And in opposition to that same realization came another: My life can accomplish much.

I have a different purpose from the dragonfly, and have devoted my life to the One who saved it, so it is not my place to end it.

I don’t want to waste my death, because even that has purpose when I put my life in the proper context.  Finding my purpose is one thing, but accepting that purpose and choosing to live it out is something else entirely.

I have always looked at dragonflies as intellectual curiosity personified.  It’s a picture of what humans do on the inside.  The dragonfly flies about, sees something that arouses its curiosity, hovers over it in examination, and then moves on to the next thing having satisfied its curiosity.

I live on curiosity.  I thrive on wonder.  If I lose that then I’m as good as dead. 

If I seek nothing, if I lose the desire to know and be known, then what is left for me? 

What if I cease to strive to know myself?  How do I run from that? 

Yet that’s what I’ve been doing – running from myself, and it’s surprisingly difficult to get away.  It’s exhausting.  It’s like spraying bug repellent on an insect – how does it get away from itself?!  I fill my time with activities that I can’t remember by the end of the week, and I have nothing to show for it.  I can’t maintain commitments to myself so I have trouble committing to others.  I hate that, because I know the value of commitment, but I understand that my commitment to someone is insufficient to satisfy all of their needs.  And in the end I have discovered that my need to satisfy the needs of others can actually be selfish sometimes.  I’m not always doing it for them.  Sometimes I’m doing it because it makes me feel better about myself.  And in a circular mentality I realize that I’m doing so much to keep myself busy so I have an excuse to avoid examining myself.

My mirror has been left covered for a long time, but having recently divested myself of a few responsibilities my thoughts turn more frequently to myself.  I have fewer things to distract me.

I have a different purpose now.  It’s odd how I found out.  Or maybe not.  Maybe this is how we always find out - when a stranger makes an observation we never considered before.

I had a landscaper come by the house recently to give an estimate on removing a tree stump in my front yard.  He stopped by during the day when I was not home and left his card with the estimate.  When I talked to him later he asked, “Is there anyone living there?  It looks vacant.”

Hmmm.  I went out to the street and looked back at my house.

Oh, you mean because I ripped every living thing out of the flower beds?  Or the dead lawn?  Or the peeling paint on the trim?  Or perhaps the grass growing in the rain gutters? 

Wow.

Where have I been?

Sometimes it takes new eyes to realize you were blind. 

I got so used to living by simple attrition that I forgot to push back against the forces that I thought were limiting me.  I have been avoiding all the things I need to do to make my life liveable.  Sometimes life requires that “you must be present to win”. 

Sometimes I have to actively take possession of it.

Sometimes…ok, all the time, it’s worth it. 

It doesn’t always feel that way though.  It’s in those hard times that I remember my intrinsic worth that still remains regardless of my circumstance or another’s opinion, and this is important because one of my strongest desires in life right now is to be in a relationship.  I learned to interpret my self-worth through my relationship so now I long for it.  At times it consumes me. 

To be once again connected to another. 

I lived so many years where my value was directly related to what I could or could not do for another person, in a value system that was completely false, that my desire to now choose a relationship based on a purer instinct is often overwhelming. 

I discovered that love is what comes back to us, but only the love of God comes back in its purest state.  All other love is tainted by the sediment of this world.

We are abused so we understand that love is pain.

We are abandoned so we understand that love is loss.

We are deceived so we understand that love is untrue.

Because we seek other loves before His we learn avoidance.

We learned that disagreement was to be avoided and gave up intelligent discourse for inauthentic relationship.

We learned to lie for fear that others wouldn’t love us if they really knew us.

Because we learned the wrong expressions of love, and yet are created to love, we keep looking for the incorrect expressions of our deepest desires.

But I also discovered that my desire and my purpose are not always the same. 

I was fortunate enough to hear what I think God was trying to tell me about it. 

The weird part of it all is that my desire hasn’t changed, but there is definitely a shift in my focus.  I have to make a determined effort at times not to think about it, but I’m better when I don’t.

So I wait.

Waiting is a worthy cause, it’s just not terribly enjoyable.

My desires and my purpose are different, and when I try to fulfill one while still anchored in the other this prevents me from being effective in either.

In order to effect change in my life I have to make choices.  Making choices requires effort.  It means saying “no” to things, some of which I desire, but would not be good for me.  I convince myself that it would be better to just let life happen to me so I wouldn’t have to work at it, make no sacrifices.

But a life without sacrifice is a worthless life. 

I paid no price and therefore gave it no value.

It’s easier to wait for someone else to regulate me, than it is to make the choice myself.  But that’s just one more way to put responsibility for my own choices on someone else’s shoulders.

It would be so easy…

And it is done so often.  The role of “victim” is easily assumed in our society.  Everything seems better when someone else is there to take the blame.

But I am faced with the same questions in life over and over again.

What is my purpose?  To seek and glorify God in my life.

Am I living according to that purpose?  Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Does my life have more meaning than my death?  It does now.  There was a time when it didn’t.

Because when Christ said, “It is finished!” He meant that His purpose had been accomplished. 

The purpose of His death was to purify me.  To give me a clean slate from which to start over in my messy life. 

Every day I have a new opportunity, a fresh start that makes no mention of yesterday’s sin. 

For Grace is such a heady thing, intoxicating and giving of life.  Forgiveness releases me from so much pain, and yet is so often difficult to practice.

Forgiveness is not such a small thing.  Consider how difficult it is for us to forgive some minor offense against us, and compare it with His forgiveness of the world.  It’s a crushing burden, but He came to take it willingly upon Himself.

After the dragonfly died a small breeze wafted by and caught his wings.  It balanced on the edge before falling off as though it still felt the need to do one last thing, but then it succumbed.  It seemed as though it had no more weight and was lifted off the curb onto the ground beside it.  His purpose was complete, and so his life.

Purpose gives me presence, impact, and compassion. 

Purpose allows me to see the differences of love; which is pure and which is less so.

Purpose shows me what to change, what to be, where to go.

Purpose gives me a reason to keep going.  It’s simultaneously a future goal as well as a present place.  It allows me to think freely, to wonder, to question, and ultimately to stand in awestruck wonder of the love of He who is greater than me.

So I suppose that dragonfly had a greater purpose than I thought.

Imagine that.

©Dan Bode 2013

A Year Gone By

So it’s been a year.

I don’t really understand the idea of a year being the official time period for recovery. 

Certainly there are milestones within the year that mark its passage.  Birthdays, holidays, and anniversaries are all contained there.  But up to now these were all important only to the living.

This year past is most certainly gone.  The one to come is most certainly here. 

Years aren’t really big on waiting for us to catch up are they?

I made a lot of plans this year.  None of them came to fruition.  In retrospect it’s much better that way. 

I woke up on New Year’s Day, the day she died, and it was just New Year’s Day.

I woke up on January 2, which was once our anniversary, but it was just the day after New Year’s Day.

And there were tears.  A lot of salt was shed, but not wasted.

There was so much more lost than I realized, and much that I was forced to give up.

It’s never easy.

There have been so many times earlier in the year where I would walk into the house expecting to see her, and then I would remember, “Oh that’s right, she’s not here anymore.  She’s really gone.”

Then, one night a few months after she died, I had a dream. 

Usually my dreams are fairly unremarkable, and I seldom remember very much about them.  This one was profoundly different, and I believe it was more than just a dream.

I was in a condominium that we had rented several years earlier.  Sue was there and we were just going through our home and doing normal everyday chores.  We were working together happily and accomplishing things together.  This never happened in reality.

I realized as I looked at her that I saw in her face what I had always wanted to see.

She was free from pain.  She knew she was loved.  

She was happy.

I saw the Sue who existed beneath all the layers of garbage the world had piled upon her over the years that I could never clear away for her.

It felt good to be in her presence.

In the midst of this dream I was struck by the realization I had in my waking moments when I walked into the house and realized that she was gone.  At first I was confused, but then I realized that I wasn’t in the real world although it was a place I would have liked to stay. I was conscious that this was a dream.

I turned to her and I said,

“You realize that you’re not really supposed to be here, don’t you?”

She looked at me with a sad smile and said,

“I know.  I love you all.”

And I woke up.

Many will tell me that it was just a dream that my mind created to resolve the issues I had related to her death. I’m a psychologist; I know all the explanations and rationalizations. I don’t care.

I’m convinced it was real.

I have said that the two things Sue needed in life were to know that she was truly loved, and to be free from pain.

I now know that she has both of these things.  This has allowed me to live my life.  I will grieve this loss at different times; that is the way of grief.  My parents died when I was a teenager and I still feel that loss. 

But I am better able to live my life now knowing that she’s ok.

I believe this was a gift to me and my family from her and God.  I believe this was her way of taking care of us in the best way she could.

Life is different now, and I can now say without guilt that it is in many ways better, because she is no longer suffering.

I understand that it was never within the scope of my abilities to make her well.  I could only support her in her own efforts.  She had to make the choice as I could not make decisions for her.  I could not think for her.  My guilt came from my inability to change her for the better.

Because the reality is that I can never change another person.  That is an ability that God reserves for Himself and each of us individually.  I might be able to instigate change, or support change, but it is ultimately a conscious individual choice, and one that my wife did not make. And this is what I will always mourn.  My greatest struggle was that she was never able to understand how much I, and everyone else, truly loved her.  I miss what could have been, and never was, but what I always hoped for.

This has been a year where I have learned a great deal about my limits. 

I learned that I am incapable of saving anyone.

I have learned that my way is not always the best way.  I’m learning to hold back rather than simply run over everyone else’s feelings.  This is a work in progress by the way.

I’m learning generosity, and grace.  Lots of grace, because I use so much of it for myself.  It is absolutely essential for my survival.

I am slowly learning to be content with what I have instead of taking what I want.  I have come to understand that while I have less than some, I still have far more than most.

And finally, I am beginning to see the effect real love has on real life.  I see that often we use things and people as temporary placeholders, or substitutes, while we wait for the real thing to come along.  I can do without until the real thing shows up, and I will be better for it.

When I say, “I love you” to someone, I mean it.  They are not merely three words.

My family and friends are more than necessary.  Life without them would literally be hell.

I miss my wedding ring.  I miss being able to twist it on my finger and feel the reassurance that I was bound to someone else.  I miss knowing that regardless of how she felt about me at any given moment there was still an underpinning of love for me alone.

Despite all that I miss, God is making me whole again.  It’s a process, but a process made easier by the fact that I now understand the meaning of commitment.

He needs me to pursue Him.  He needs me to find my meaning in what He asks of me, rather than what I want.  To find my great value that never changes in His eyes, regardless of what anyone else might think of me. 

There is no greater gift.

I’m running the race again.

So, it’s been a year.

© Dan Bode 2013

My Mother's Letters

I was suffering a bout of insomnia and decided to go through some of my old stuff.  I wrote this back in 2000.  It's strange sometimes to look back and see the progression of some the lessons I learned and how they affected my future.  It's a little long, but there was a lot to put into it.

I hope it means something for you.

My sister Diane recently showed me a collection of letters that were among some of my mother’s possessions.  They are providing me a great deal of insight into many different aspects of my parent’s lives that I had not previously been aware of. 

My parents divorced when I was 10, and the end of that marriage was not pleasant.  Since they both died when I was still too young to really understand the reasons for the failure of the relationship there are many questions that will remain unanswered for me.  I can only go by what I experienced directly.  I remember many nights when I could hear them arguing in the living room.  I would lie in bed listening to the sharp words through my bedroom wall desperately hoping it would stop.  I remember one particular night after I heard one angry retort after another I called out to my mother.  The argument stopped suddenly and she came into my room.

“What’s wrong?” she asked quietly.

“Please stop fighting.  I don’t like it.” I said

“It’s ok, Danny.” She said as she stroked my cheek, “We’ll be all right.”

“Ok.  Can I talk to Dad?”

“Sure.”

She gave me a kiss and a hug and went back into the living room, and I could hear her say to my father, “Your son wants to talk to you.”

My father walked in a few seconds later.  His step was slower and gentler than I was used to hearing. 

“What’s a matter son?” he asked.  Maybe it’s just me looking back with a tainted view, but I would swear he was close to crying when he asked me that question.  My father was never one to cry. 

“I just want you and Mom to stop fighting.”

“Ok.  We will.  But don’t worry, we’ll be fine.  Ok?”

“Ok.”  I sat up and gave him a hug, and he held me tight.

“You go to sleep now.  I love you.” He said.

“I love you too.”

Looking back I realize that this occurred near the end of the relationship.  I have no idea what, if any impact this incident had on them, but for me it came to define in later years what I thought their relationship was like.  It was the last thing I saw, and the first thing I remembered when I thought about their marriage.  I allowed this to color my thinking without considering the fact that they had been married for almost thirty years at that time.  I assumed their relationship had always been like this.

As I began to read my mother’s letters, I found they had a union that was worlds removed from my perceptions of it.  Some of these letters are written in the very early years of their marriage, around 1943-‘44.  In some my father is in Europe fighting in World War II.  She is writing to her parents in Petaluma, California, from where she had moved to Cleveland, Ohio where my father’s family lived.  She is pregnant with my oldest brother Bill.  She writes about daily life, the clothes she is sewing for the baby, the price of food and the things she is doing with his family.  She also talks about my father.  She talks of how much she misses him, and how much she wants to see him again.  She tells her parents what a “great guy” he is.  There is no question that she loves him.

There are also letters from my father to her parents.  He talks about what a great wife she is, and how deeply he loves her.  He talks about how much he misses her and their son while he is overseas.

I will never know all the reasons for their divorce.  I will never know exactly what led to their disillusionment.  Some answers are locked within lives that I have no access to.  There are times when answers to some things are simply beyond my reach, and no matter how great I think my need to know is, that chasm between question and answer is not going to be bridged.  As much as I cry out what I think are the right questions the only response I get is the empty echo of my own voice.  With that in mind I look at what I do have at my disposal, and I find that though the end of my parents’ marriage was not happy, the end did not define the whole.  I am given the opportunity to see the beginning that I was not there to see.  I can infuse my memories with some of the happiness that I have discovered did indeed exist in their life together.  I can see that there was a time when their relationship was a good example of what a marriage should be.  I can only guess at the changes that occurred between them that led them to their point of no return.  They were probably very gradual in their nature.  A slight change of habit here, a different need appearing there.  A desire expressed by one refused by the other.  I don’t know.  There is always more to any situation than I can see.

The first document in this binder is a poem that was apparently written by a good friend of my mother about her.  I do not know exactly when as it is not dated.

“Hollywood Episode”

Once there was a little girl,

A sweet and wholesome maid,

Who heard of glamorous Hollywood,

And its lure could not evade.

She thought she’d like to be a star,

And live in regal splendor

With closets full of lovely gowns

And rings on every finger.

She envisioned every week a check

Too big for simple math

And clearly saw outside her door

The crowds awaiting autographs.

And so we find this lovely miss

Leaving friends and home

Telling those she loves farewell

To seek fame on her own.

But this little country lass

Fools no one with such chatter,

It isn’t a career she wants

It doesn’t really matter.

What her heart is really set on

What she dreams about at night

Is the day she’ll finally meet The One

And know that He’s just right.

In a cozy little cottage

She’d love to settle down

And raise a happy family

In a shady country town.

Her friend compares what she initially thought she wanted out of life, and what she later realized that she truly wanted.  She did indeed go to Hollywood for a little while, and did some acting and dated some actors that went on to make names for themselves.  Yet she also left it behind when it did not satisfy her true desire.

We all seem to start out that way.  We walk into life thinking we know what we want, only to find that what we truly want is either something completely different from what we are pursuing, or something we had all along.  In his book, “Lake Woebegone Days” Garrison Keillor says it this way “Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.”

My mother was a beautiful woman within and without.  In her letters I find myself marveling that the woman I knew who had all the right words of comfort for me growing up, and all the answers to my questions, knew so little at times.  She asks her parents for advice on many things that I took for granted.  She had to learn things too.  There was a time when she needed to depend on her own mother for different things.  It was a time when the things parents passed on to their children were still considered worthwhile. 

There are letters to my mother from my father, telling her of events that are happening and hoping he will be home soon.  My father was not what I would term a sentimental man, but the pain of their separation is infused in the words of his letters.  He was not as hard a man as I remember.  He was lost at times, as I am too.  He was a much better man than I have given him credit for.  He was the man who was my father, and he was worthy of the love I gave him even with his flaws.

It was a time when they longed for each other’s touch, and valued each other’s company.  It was a time that I had forgotten, or perhaps had allowed to be overshadowed by the pain of their divorce.

There are other letters in this collection as well.  They are from friends overseas in the army.  They describe different aspects of the war.  Some of them have holes in the paper where the wartime censors have cut out words that describe their locations.  I had always heard that this kind of thing had occurred but I had never seen it with my own eyes.  Somehow as I read these 60-year-old letters, they didn’t seem so old.  The physical connection of the actual paper that I was touching brought everything closer over that expanse of time.  So much of our history is tucked away in the boxes in our attic.  We have so much to learn from our past, and yet we try so hard to forget it sometimes.  Sometimes we don’t want to give up our preconceived ideas for the incontrovertible truth, and sometimes we would just rather not change.  It’s simply too much trouble.  After all, it takes a lot of work to change your life when you find out that some of the basic experiences that have shaped you as a person were based on misconceptions.  The marriage that I saw end in anger and bitterness began with love and devotion, even longing.  It was richer than I had imagined, and all the years of my life that were influenced by acrimony are now found to be incomplete.  This incompleteness within me was what caused me to search so hard for a greater love, and a greater peace to put my faith in.  It was this that allowed me to discover the healing that takes place when I experience both the receiving, and the giving, of forgiveness.

So then this begs the question: How will this change me?  What difference will this make, and who will see it?

The answer is: I haven’t got a clue.

The fact of the matter is that I am a man who, when faced with a personal epiphany, often expects to see great change in my life when I am on the mountaintop.  Yet shortly after I return to the day to day tasks within the valley the changes I see aren’t all that dramatic.  I have a hard time following through on some things.

But I will say this: I will appreciate that which God has blessed me with more readily. 

My wife says we should live every day as if it were our last, and having so far survived a brain tumor she is more than qualified to make that statement.  I agree with her, but I have no idea what I would do if I knew today might be my last.  Did my father ever wonder about that when he was in the middle of a battle?  Did my mother ask herself this when she was lonely and waiting to see if her husband would come home?  Do we ever bother to wonder about this when we don’t face a crisis in our lives? 

If today were my last day would I bother to do the dishes or mow the lawn?  Would I still take out the garbage?  I doubt it.  Or would I do the normal things with a greater appreciation of my ability to do them?  Would I be able to spend more time with my wife and children, or would I only be able to look at them and wonder how I could possibly say in one day all the things that should have been said over a lifetime that could convey the depth of the love I have for them?  Perhaps we can live our last day only as well as we have lived the days that have gone before it.  Can I make each day the sum of all that have gone before?  Can I live well enough to be certain all of those whom I love will know of my love for them if I never speak another word to them?

To express a lifetime of love to someone takes a lifetime.  It requires every day that relationship exists, because each day builds on the next.  It is a cumulative effect.  It can’t be done in one day; rather it must be done every day.  And if it is done every day, as it was the first day then the relationship will never end.  Because when it comes right down to it the only love that is capable of surviving in its purest form is the love of God, and that will live beyond us as a legacy to those that come after.  The legacy we leave our children goes far beyond what is written in our wills.  There is always more left unsaid and unseen that still influences generations yet to come.

Recently my pastor and his wife celebrated their 25^th wedding anniversary.  At the surprise reception the congregation had for them their children said a few words.  I will never forget the words of their oldest son.  He said that while growing up people would inevitably ask him what it was like being a “pastor’s kid”.  He said, “It didn’t matter to me that my dad was a pastor and my mom was a pastor’s wife, because they were always my parents first.  We always knew they loved us.  We always had priority.”  He honored his parents by giving back to them what they had given him: the love that never dies.

So I must consider the truth and substance of the legacy I leave from this day forward, and pray that I leave behind something worth keeping.

©Dan Bode 2000