I remember the moment like it was yesterday.

I needed to make a descision between God, and insanity and death.

It’s surprising how appealing insanity and death can be.

Because my daughter was dying.

Her name was Olivia. She was just 2 1/2, and had gone into fibral siezures while taking a nap just two days before and had never come out of it. Still to this day, I don’t know what happened except that maybe she had lyme disease from a tick bite that had gone dormant. Lyme disease can do that. Anyways, at the time, the doctors and nurses couldn’t tell us anything, except that they were fighting for her. But it wasn’t doing any good.

So I stood there, in the hall of the hospital. It was off of a breezeway between two wings. I still smoked back then.

And I remember I just wanted to die.

But instead I got to see everything else. How for the nine years before that, I had got to see my life unfold spiritually in a way I could never have ever imagined. The voice of a friend reminded me how all of those nine years was allowing me to do this. How I was still a husband. How I was still a father.

How nothing had changed.

And I began to see God in everything. And I got to help my daughter die. And I got to be a husband, a father, a son, a friend to the people around me. I got to find out that people on four continents were praying for my family. I got to thank the 400 people who had known her, been touched by her and came to her funeral.  I got to let them love me after when I couldn’t love myself.

Because I got to see it wasn’t about me.

I got to know that right before my daugher had gone down for her nap, she had grabbed a camera and gave it to her mother and said, “Momma, take a picture of me.”

 And I know without a doubt in my mind that my daughter is ok.

She would have been 13 years old this past January.

And for a moment, on that day, I lamented the fact that I would’t get to guard the door for her, from all the boys who would be calling after her, like the other dads did.

But then I remembered I get to raise three little gentlemen instead. My three sons.

And they all get to know their sister.

And we’re ok.