The Gift of Unconditional Love

Only ten days away from Exodus Catalina 2010 and I am scrambling like a mad woman! Not in a bad way, mind you, but in a sort of crazy, peaceful and productive way! Putting together a retreat on an island is an amazing and insightful undertaking...one I wasn't quite prepared for, but embracing my journey through the process. This retreat has been especially challenging given it's location and more importantly, my Dad's recent cancer diagnosis...incurable.
When we heard these words, you can only imagine the thoughts running through our already overloaded brains. In Arizona last week with my parents, I was painfully aware of the struggles they will both face and as their only daughter, the responsibility that rests on my shoulders.
Coming home from yet another long day at the hospital and another round of "tests", my Dad and I fell into the comfortable lounge chairs in their living room and engaged in the most meaningful, loving, honest and compassionate talk we have ever had. I gave in to the conversation and allowed all my insecurities to surface and to my surprise, my Dad responded with a sensitivity that I had never seen before. He was somehow transformed into the Father I had always dreamed of and I was his little girl....vulnerable yet safe, surrounded by his loving voice.
That night in my room, I cried out to God, my Father in Heaven, and HE surrounded me with HIS loving voice... and this is what he said;
"YOU WILL be strengthened with all His Glorious Power so YOU WILL have all the endurance and patience you need!" Colossians 1:11
"Christ is the Visable Image of the Invisable God...He made the things we can see-and the things we cannot see." Colossians 1:15-16
"HE holds the whole body together with it's joints and ligaments and it grows as God nourishes it." Colossians 2:19
These are such beautiful and precious promises for my Dad. That night I wrote him a letter with the words God gave me. In the morning I gave the letter to my Dad and it brought us both to tears...he received the assurance from God that he was so deeply needing to hear, and I received the gift of unconditional love from my Father.