Emotional Day

Today was kind of a strange day full of pretty much every emotion in the book. It started with Dale's funeral. There were a ton of people at the funeral and it was truly a celebration of his life. His immediate family struggled a lot and the only way I can describe the scene is to picture what the bible talks about...people wailing and mourning. It was heartbreaking to watch the family suffer, but as we spent time in the Word and talking about Dale's life we could do nothing but rejoice and praise God for where Dale is now.

It was kind of difficult for those of us that knew Dale from Cornerstone, though. Dale sang in the choir of another church (we don't have a choir) and the funeral was held at that church. Many people that knew Dale from that church told stories about Dale, but we didn't get the chance. I hope we do something to remember Dale at our church service tomorrow.

The hardest part for me was mourning with the teens. Several months ago the father of several of our teens passes away and I struggled at the funeral seeing how deeply hurt they were. This time, they were hurt and so was I. That was really hard, and not something any of us will get over any time soon.

After the funeral (which lasted a ridiculous 2.5 hours) we got some lunch and then I went home for about an hour to rest. I was completely exhausted. Around 3:30 Brooke and I picked up several kids along with 2 of the teens to go paint pumpkins!! We had SO much fun digging the goop our of the pumpkins (not all of the kids enjoyed that part) and then painting them. Carisa came over and took a ton of great pictures and we all had a BLAST!!
After the pumpkin painting Brooke and I, along with Shera, Joy, J and Dominique headed to see the movie "Gameplan". Its a somewhat cheesy movie, but I enjoyed it...I especially appreciated that it was an appropriate movie that I would even take kids to see. It was a nice way to just escape for a little while. After the movie we got some ice cream and talked and laughed for hours. It was a really fun time with friends and a nice way to end a very emotional day.