I streamed the Celebration of Life service for Gerald Ray Friday afternoon from Houston's First Baptist Church. His creative touches and his gift for helping us remember was so evident in the service. He had sat down with his daughter Kristy about a year ago to go through what music, who would speak and details planning for that great and glorious morning, fare thee well. The family sat in the center section and those who have been in Gerald's choirs over the years sat all around them. What a wonderful and thoughtful touch.
Being Gerald's choir at First Baptist was so special. That is when I started making friends at HFBC. Everyone told me that I should meet Peggy Bain cause we'd be good friends. She was recovering from major knee surgery and was out of choir for a while. We finally met at a Camp Sponsor meeting for Camp Houston. She came up to me all 5'1" to my 6' and said, heard you're funny. My very cool response, can be. She asked me to rewrite the words to Do You Love Me for the Clean Cabin Girls. Said, yep, I'll do it. I cannot tell you how excited I was, really thrilled and enthusiastic. Even call Roy from my car phone on a thirty minute plan cause why would I need more minutes? Told him I had finally met Peggy and that my friends is the start of a beautiful friendship. Yep, right there in choir, who knew? I loved the songs we learned even the ones that were loved by the musical type but not the average choir person. I was remembering the signs that Gerald had to help us with those memorized words. The video of Wonderful Name, yes I remembered to sing soft on the first Jesus just like many of you. Gerald had such a good reading voice. I told him once I would pay him to record reading a book cause his voice was so kind. Gerald told Peggy and me about all the tapes people sent to him of their singing or songs they wrote. If he didn't like them, he threw them out the window of the car. Peggy and I said if we ever recorded a tape for him we would call it, Going Out the Window With God.
While our home was being built in Rancho de Five, my job was to go through stuff we had moved from the townhouse to the condo to discard or donate. I did one clean out early on and once we were closer to moving in to our new home, there had been delays due to shortages, I went through everything again. The wadded up Kleenex in a zip lock bag did not make it through the second round. If one looked closely enough a small note could be seen and if one was so inclined to be interested the small printing said, tissue used for drying my tears at Trevleyn's memorial service. That little Kleenex filled baggie was a remembrance that I needed to hold onto, for awhile, out of honor for her life, her love in serving her Lord and I just wasn't ready to say goodbye. We were not close but Peggy shared the greatest and funniest stories about Trev before she became so ill and the fatigue kept her from doing a lot of things. Joining choir was a such a time as this moment in life. It seemed so difficult to make friends in a large church and Sunday School was less than desirable for us. Too competitive on accumulating stuff, too much. I was a late bloomer in that regard. When I joined choir and when the CLC gym was built that is when we made friends and a big church felt less lonely.
I have had all kinds of echocardiograms and stress tests beginning in 2009. They have come a long way technologically since then. In fact, this was the best experience ever and I have to tell you, I wasn't expecting that. I had to go to Mission Hospital to have the test done. From the front desk person to the nurses performing the tests I was so pleased, but when you have friends specifically praying for everything, all I could do was take in the wonder and blessings that the Lord gives. A humorous thing, I was sitting by an older woman in the waiting area, older than me and guessing she might be about 88 or so. Her phone rang and her ring tone was, The Thrill is Gone by BB King. If I was drinking water or anything, I would have spit it out laughing. Nurse Katherine came and got me from the waiting area and she said to Roy, we will try to have all this done in an hour, we will be overachievers. As we went toward the echo lab, I told her my husband will love that because he is an over achiever but as for me, I just chieve. No under or over for me, I am just a chiever. We hit it off, you know best friends for the hour or so and talked about a lot during all the prep. She asked me why I said my husband is an overachiever so I told her. Passed CPA exam the first time back in the olden days when you took all four parts of the exam over the course of two days. He went to grad school working full time and got a MBA in finance. Then he decided to apply for Law School and was accepted despite the fact he was in his early forties. He was laid off in the middle of law school but worked contract jobs, graduated and passed the bar on the first try. He was one of the first Accredited Petroleum Accounting holders in the county. He took the Certified Internal Auditor exam, given world wide and he was in the top five of over two thousand people that took the exam that year from around the world. His specialties, Sarbanes Oxley, Risk Control and Compliance. That is why he is an overachiever. She was blown away and after writing this afresh this morning, I am blown away too. I added my overachieving was being on time for my appointment. They did the echo and added all the stuff in my IV to make my heart react as if I were exercising. I needed to reach a certain number and I was about twelve points below where I needed it to be. So, I was pumping heart softies, pedaling my ankles and feet as well as doing a one landed jumping jack. I might keep checking out America's Funniest Videos to see if I am on cause it was foolish looking on that table with my left arm overhead. I got the number up to 129 and we ended the session, one point above the requirement. In the procedure I got to watch the screen as well as they explained or merely reported what they were seeing. The nurse said to me, if you had any other of the nurses here, they would have stopped everything in defeat and a long afternoon would be ahead of me going to the heart cath lab but she knew I could do it. The scheduler forgot to tell me not to take my beta blocker twenty four hours before. They left me to change back into my clothes and she would escort me out to the waiting room. Before taking me out there, she took me by the shoulders and told me, now who says they aren't an overachiever. We almost made the hour time limit but we were over just be a few minutes. A concern though, my BP was through the roof which is unusual for me. Most of the time my BP is normal or in a very low range. This was very high. They asked me if I was nervous for the test, no I said. Do you have something you are stressed over? Yes and Sunday night didn't help that.
I was so tired afterwards and kind of hungry since I had to semi fast. We stopped to pick up a milkshake and then continued home. I was told my heart had just run the equivalent to a 5K race. Easy evening around home, even got to talk with Peggy for a few minutes.
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