I am late in sharing about Rebecca’s 8th Grade Awards program that was held this past Friday evening at the Birdville High School auditorium.

It was a wonderful experience as Rebecca and her classmates were recognized for their accomplishments throughout the school year.  Here’s the list of recognitions she received.

• Student Council – one of seven students on the council
• Choral Music – nominated for the top girl award
• National Junior Honor Society
• A Honor Roll for all three years at Smithfield Middle
• Top 10 in the class
• Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) Citizenship Award

When I got home I googled the DAR Citizenship Award. In case you are not familiar with it, it is a national award presented to students that show the highest levels of a host of personal values including dependability, service, leadership and patriotism in their homes, schools and communities. It also requires a letter of recommendation from the student’s school.

Principal Jeff Russell Presents the DAR Citizenship Award to Rebecca

What can a dad say about his little girl? Am I proud? Yes, beyond proud because, as I have written before, these are the kind of things that let me see just how well she is doing. I can see how she is blossoming and how she is flourishing in life.

I thank God for Rebecca Nicole and I thank him for the special people he has put in her life and who have partnered with me to be there for her and to guide and direct her. I thank him for her mom, Phyllis, who gave her such a great start in life. I thank him for her mom, Jody, who is the new “go to person” for all of those mother daughter secrets and whispers and giggles. I thank him for her sister and brother who have been such godly examples to her. I thank him for her grandparents and aunts and uncles, all of them. I thank him for the community of faith at NRHBC where she has seen first hand how God wants his children to live together and serve him. Finally, I thank him for her teachers, from two schools now, two Smithfields, Elementary and Middle, who have cared so deeply, not just for her but for each of their students.

Rebecca is excited about the future. She looks forward to what God has in store for her. So do I, but I wouldn’t mind if life would slow down just a bit. My little girl isn’t little anymore. She is a lady. She’s a lady that needs me, it seems, a little less every day.

I’ve written in several posts and in the Trusting God : A Life Journey pages here on my blog about my first wife Phyllis. I’ve shared some of the difficult times the two of us lived through along with our family and with God’s help during the two years that she was so sick and up until the time that she chose to go and be with her Lord.

There have been some brief mentions of our more extended family members but not some of the very important things that are a part of being a real family. I think it is time that I share at least a part of the story of Phyllis’ family, the Lanes, and their amazing love for Phyllis and for me.

Way back in 1978, when Phyllis and I were first married, I was welcomed into the Lane family. Her parents, Roy and Lois, her sister Doris and her three brothers Barry, Terry and Alan, accepted me as a new son and brother. This was no small thing considering that I was, for all practical purposes, stealing a very young Phyllis away from them and moving her to the far away east coast.

Years passed. In every aspect of the family’s life I was welcomed as a son, welcomed as a brother. Years went by. Children were born. Time seemed to pass very quickly. Then Phyllis got sick and time seemed to pass much more slowly.

One day, after being sick for a very long time, at the end of an emotionally high but draining week, Phyllis made a request. So, five days later, with hospice nurses in attendance, the family gathered to say goodbye to a wife, a mother, a sister, a daughter, a friend. Then, quietly and peacefully, but also victoriously, she was gone. Her spirit left us to be with her Lord Jesus. The day was June 2nd, 2006.

Later that day, as I said goodbye to Roy and Lois, they looked at me and told me how much they loved me. They told me that I would always be their son. I knew that it was true, because they had, for all those years, always treated me as a true son. They thanked me for the way I had loved and cared for their beloved child. In my heart I knew that many, maybe even most, things would never be the same, but I knew that their love for me would remain the same.

A year passed. I decided that I was going to explore the possibility of dating, of trying out the online match scene. I joined eHarmony. In a very short time I actually “met” several ladies online and pretty quickly set up a “date” with one of them.

Up to that point, I had only told one person, a friend at work, that I had begun this new adventure. I hadn’t told my children or my parents or my closest friends. But, just a few days before I had my first “Starbucks rendezvous,” as I came to call them, the second person in the entire world to know was Lois. My mother-in-law. I just wanted to talk to her about it. To, I guess, get her permission. I dialed her number and as I began to tell her that I was about to meet a lady for coffee, I was close to crying for the first time in many months. I just couldn’t get past the idea that I was betraying Phyllis somehow.

When I finally got it out, Lois literally yelled in my ear and started saying how wonderful she thought it was and how happy she was for me and that she had hoped that I would not wait too long before I started being open to the possibility. She said, “When you find the right one, I will be on the front row of the church cheering.”

This was the mother of my first wife. She loved me then and she loves me now so much that she looked beyond the loss of her daughter and cheered for me.

Almost ten months passed. Lots and lots of first dates. A very few second dates. One or two third dates. It just wasn’t working. All nice ladies, no spark. Let’s just say that by March of 2008 I had just about decided to throw in the towel. Then, I think God intervened and showed me the one he had prepared so long ago for me to find at just that time in my life.

I’ve already shared elsewhere on this blog site the story of how Jody and I began our relationship, and I know that there will be many more opportunities for sharing about my new love again, but for the sake of this story, I skip ahead to a point where I knew that Jody was the one for me.

It was early October of 2008. Roy had just passed away the previous month on September 10th. I asked Jody to marry me. She said yes. Once again I called Lois. I called to tell her that God had brought a new love into my life. I know that some might have been a bit reserved in their response to that kind of news, but not Lois. “Oh Bill, that is so wonderful. I am so happy that God has brought Jody into your life.”

I also shared the news with Doris, Phyllis’ older sister. Then on to Barry and Terry and Alan and Judy. Yes, a new sister came into Phyllis’ life. That is also another story so I won’t go into it here. Each one was so gracious in their response. They expressed their happiness for me.

To my surprise, the very next afternoon, Jody called me to say that she had just received a beautiful plant at school from Doris that had a card attached. The card said, “Welcome to the family.” Wow! Another demonstration of love for me and now for Jody from this special family.

Just a week after Jody and I announced our engagement, Bethany announced that she was engaged to Russell. They had a pretty quick engagement and then had their ceremony on December 20th of 2008. Of course the entire Lane family was invited. After all, Bethany is a Lane herself, so her family came to be with her for the big day. Roy’s passing was still pretty recent and fresh in our minds, so we were all still sad from that, but what a wonderful day that brought us together.

Although this was Bethany’s day (and Russell’s of course),  it was also Jody’s first introduction to the Lanes. Such an expression of warmth and of being included in the family. Lois told Jody several times that, “You are my new baby girl.”

Lois (left) and Gretchen (right) at Bethany and Russell's Wedding Rehearsal

That’s the Lanes. They love well and they love forever.

So when I talk about my family, I have a hard time using the words, in-laws. We may have a different last name, but after you have loved so long and lived so much life together, any difference that might exist in a name fades in significance to the point of being nothing and all that is left is family.

That’s why, when I talk about or think about the Lanes, they’re just my family too.

Last night, Jody and I decided to visit Rebecca’s middle school age worship time at NRHBC.  We knew that she would be leading in singing with two of her friends and that she would be involved in a couple of other activities.  We even knew that she would share her testimony with her peers.

We were not prepared for what we heard. I’m so glad that I had my iPhone so I could video it.

So, without further ado…

Based upon lovingly and gently conveyed input from Jody, I am slowly coming to the realization that I may be a geek. As I said, she delivers her message with a smile and, I’m pretty sure, she actually means it as a compliment, but I’m not sure what I think about it. I mean, I know I’m not the most sophisticated guy in the world, but a geek?

I decided I would look up the word geek in the Oxford American Desk Dictionary, one of Jody’s favorite references, but I don’t have one of those. Not to be deterred, I went to the online source instead and looked it up on the online Oxford English Dictionary, which by the way they are very proud of.  Annual subscriptions for individuals are $295! Fortunately you can get one lookup for free before they require you to log in.

I typed in the word geek and I eagerly looked over the first definition offered. I have to say that I was none too excited about the word geek at that point.

In case you’re interested, here’s what I found.

Geek. Noun:

1.slang (chiefly U.S.).

OK. A little better. Not much better but there is some hope here. Still, there are several problems here too. I don’t think any one who has ever met me would call me unsociable or “obsessively” devoted to anything. Well, maybe my iPad but that’s it.

Actually, as I looked carefully at that last phrase in parenthesis, I decided that maybe that wasn’t too far off the mark. I tried a couple of preceding attrib. nouns to see how it sounded.

• Techy Geek.
• Computer Geek.
• SciFi Geek.

Well, wasn’t that interesting. I decided to continue my quest and moved on to the third and final definition.

c. spec. A person who is extremely devoted to and knowledgeable about computers or related technology.

In this sense, esp. when as a self-designation, not necessarily depreciative.

Now then, that wasn’t bad at all. In fact, the final sentence had a lot of truth in it. I did sometimes describe myself as “geekish” or “geeky”. Not geek, mind you, but geekish. The interesting thing was that there was something about how, as the Oxford American Dictionary, Online Edition, indicates, using the term as a self-designation made it actually palatable.

Now I have to decide what I really think about the whole being a geek thing. First of all I have to decide if I agree with Jody? Do I think I’m a geek? Or am I something else?

Then, let’s say I do agree that I’m a geek.  Is it something I can grin and bear? Or, is it something more? Something I can actually embrace?

To be honest, at the time of this post, the jury is still out. I mean, is it a bad thing to be a geek? No, not really. But, is it something to aspire too? Right now, I just don’t know.

I will spend some more time cogitating on the subject, but right now I gotta go. There’s something I want to watch on the SciFi Channel.

I just did some quick mental calculations (only needed my left hand to count months) and determined that I’ve lived in this house for almost 11 years, 5 months, give or take a week. During that time, a lot has happened in my family’s life. Public school, college, careers for the kids, new career for me, illness and even death. During that time the garage has gone through several cycles of being completely unaccessible for cars, to partially accessible, to completey accessible. But, in all that time, there have been some parts of that space that apparently were never touched by human hands from the very first day we moved in.

Yesterday, that changed. Not a single item was left untouched or unexamined. There were some interesting discoveries.

I found, just sitting at the bottom of a box, an old album that Phyllis’ mom had made for her, starting when she was in elementary school and continuing through high school. There wasn’t a lot of stuff in it, but still…  I’m not sure why that album was there. I don’t remember seeing it before.

I found “old” music booklets from the 70′s. Things that I had collected during my high school and college days and even from the early years in the navy. Jody and I looked and laughed at them. We even tried singing some of the songs. Rebecca listened dubiously then, as we got a little louder, she said, “Hey you guys, people can hear you.” That’s right, we were in the garage, with the garage door wide open.

Anyway, the garage, with the exception of the pile of trash on the left side, where my car will resume parking after Monday evening when we take the trash to the curb for Tuesday morning pickup, is in better shape than it has been in maybe all those 11 years, 5 months.

Jody and I are pleased. That’s what it is all about.

I’ve created a Facebook profile for myself.  I’ve gotten the impression that if I want to know what’s going on in my older kids’ lives as well as some of the kids at church I need to add them as friends.

We’ll see…