Chris Addington

Although it's been nearly 6 years since you went ahead of us honey, our loss is no less sudden, enormous, and vast as the moment we lost you...when we first met, I was just 13 years old and you were 15. I can't remember life before you as I fell deeply in love with you...a love that would capture my heart and my spirit, not just for a lifetime but for everlasting.You were so profound, even at the age of 15. On the very night that we first spent together, you spoke to me of many things, the first being that I would marry you. And that you would pass at the age of 43. As I lay there and listened to the beat of your rich, viable and splendid heart beneath my hand, I was blown away by your certainty of such things, and how you must have known such secrets. I knew instantly that I would spend my life loving you. From these moments on, you filled my life with such passion, devotion, and gifts, untold. Although we were incredibly young then-living life as life taught us many lessons, with all of its humanity, humility, brokeness and regrets as well as its joys and truths and victories. We were married one beautiful 8th day in June, 1991. It was then that we also fell in love with God and we were irrevocably transformed, no longer lost. But found in Jesus! The Lord so sweetly presented to us, our greatest gifts, our daughters, Nayah, then Megan and finally, Justus. Our lives were sweet, simple and certain. We talked, sometimes, usually whispered deep into the night about our beginnings and, about the birth of our love. We also spoke about the other things you had told me that very first night...about you passing at the age of 43. I would cry for hours at the thought of this, crying in your arms until I was exhausted and spent. Other times, it would come up and I would push it as far from my reality as could get it. Life is so busy. So very busy. We are easily distracted by its chaos and grew tired and unguarded. Because God was our first and foremost love we were confident and grateful, never noticing that we had entered into a dangerous under-current of our journey. No one ever told us that The Enemy, so clever, knocks upon our door, clothed in garments like that of a of a friend. I knew with all of my heart that if I could just keep a watchful Eye out for Satan when he arrived, I would already have the means to protect and defend myself and our family. Tools that we had read about for many years prior. Tools that were sharp and able, shields, mighty and strong. And yet, I was completely fooled by him, I am so ashamed to say. During this season, like summer giving way to autumn, our enduring precious love story began to change. And although things turned out so differently than we had always believed it to be, Our love had become even greater, even truer, even more profound in our lack...Julie, whom I had waited for for all my life, it seemed, had arrived at this time...a little girl whom you welcomed and loved so generously, despite the origins from which she came. A different love began to occupy our hearts, yet never diminished ours. Right before you left, I had found such a gift in the arms of an angel, and she captured all of our hearts so swiftly, even yours. She would take the place and the very incredible job that of which your passing would soon create...I cannot put into earthly words, no definition worthy enough to apply to the loss of you....countless moments, countless memories, countless ways you have touched so many through out your lifetime and even now, long after...for you will always be....your our Papa forever...thank you for finding me, for seeing me, for the gift of our daughters, all 4. For showing me the tender, fierce love of our Savior...for forgiving me when I forgot...I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind yet now I see....I will write again, sweetheart.... PS- your doctors gave you the name "echostat" while you were under their watchful care and the doctors said that you had the heart of a 15 year old young man...isn't this serendipity, my love? Until then.....your tracy