Luke's Honoration Service

  Saturday, January 9, 2010 was a day we hoped would never arrive.  It was the day we honored our son with what we called an 'Honoration' Service.  We wanted to honor his life, celebrate and thank God for what we had been given in our sweet little guy.  It was an impossible day and my memories of it seem to come in bursts and are not always the clearest.  I do not know how we survived it, but we did and looking back on that day, we feel incredibly peaceful about it all.

In the weeks and months leading up to his service, we had spent a lot of time thinking about and planning what we wanted it to be.  It was heartbreaking to think about preparing a service for our unborn baby who all the while was kicking and wiggling within-very much alive.  There were so many times where I had to remind myself that this was really happening, that this was not just a bad dream. This was real.  I knew we would only have one chance to give Luke the best send off possible, and we wanted to get it right and to have no regrets about anything so Joe and I spent lots of time thinking about what passages of scripture we wanted to have read.  We spent a lot of time discussing what we did NOT want it to be like or look like and we spent lots of time talking about music and lyrics and words and emotions.  There were so many emotions.

We decided early on to have the service at beautiful Village Presbyterian Church located in Prairie Village, Kansas.  Although this is not the church we attend, there were many reasons why we chose it.  I grew up attending that church and have many fond memories there and my parents are still active members of the Village congregation.  I knew it is a truly beautiful venue and that they had a smaller chapel there in addition to the giant sanctuary.  We wanted to have Luke's service in the chapel.  It felt more intimate to us.  It could seat 100 and we were sure that would be more than enough room.  We also knew that there was a Friendship Hall just down the hallway where we could have a simple reception following the service.  We wanted a little party for him instead of a meal- a party with punch, tea, coffee and his favorite cookies and special cupcakes made by some of our favorite people.

Probably the most important reason we wanted to have Luke's Honoration at Village Church was a deeply personal one for both Joe and I.  Our beloved church, Heartland moved to their new location in early November 2009, right in the middle of our time with Luke.  For us, it was a beautiful and important place for our family that we got to share with Luke.  When he was with us there in that new building, he was very much alive.  He was kicking, he was moving and he was growing.  We could not bear to have some of our first memories in Heartland's new home be some of the saddest in our lives.  We did not want to have memories of his passing there, we wanted to have our memories of our time with him there to be times when he was brimming with life.  We were also secretly harboring hopes of possibly doing a special memorial for Luke somewhere at Heartland's new home- something that would honor his life and bring smiles to our faces seeing it there over the years to come.  So that is how we came to make the decision to have his Honoration service at Village Church instead of Heartland Community Church.

We asked our dear friend and Heartland's pastor, Dan Deeble, to speak at Luke's Honoration.  We requested that our family friend, Meg McLaughlin, who is on staff at Village Church to also speak and  help lead the service.  We also asked our friend, the incredibly talented Jon Shirley, to preform some of his amazing original songs as well as an additional one.

In December, Joe and I sat down for an intense meeting with Dan and Meg to plan out the details for Luke's Honoration.  Joe and I had done so much prep work, that I was hoping to just sit down with them, hand over to them our ideas and be finished.  I had in my mind that this would be a rather brief meeting and was all about just making it through and making sure we were all on the same page.  I honestly did not want to go deep in this meeting... to that place of really dwelling on what Luke's Honoration Day would mean and represent- what it was truly all about.  I did not think I had it in me to survive facing that yet.  I felt like we had cognitively planned it all out but my heart just could not go there because by going there, my language for that place is spoken only in tears.  But God again knew better and and gave us Dan and Meg to help guide us during this difficult yet essential element of planning for Luke's arrival and passing.  We sat that evening in Meg's office and talked.  I tried my best to just hand over the paper of our ideas and be finished, but Meg and Dan had deep intention and purpose for this meeting.

They asked us questions that probed our hearts and spirits.  They listened with an intensity that truly heard the pain, the anguish and the ripping love of our hearts.  They truly ministered to our broken spirits that dark December evening in that tucked away corner of the church.  Yes, there were so many tears, so many sobs, so much silence, but there were also conversations about hope and even a few smiles along the way.  We talked about Luke's life.  We spoke about his purpose and impact here on this planet and all of the lives he was touching... this meeting I had feared, ended up being absolutely and unexpectedly life-giving.  We left Village Church two hours later that night, exiting into a snowstorm, and where before I had felt only anxiety and fear, I (we) now both felt a peace beyond our wildest imaginations.  I knew we had truly gutted it out and done the work.  I absolutely knew we had planned Luke's Honoration service down to the tiniest details and that this part of our work was finished.  All we had to do was show up on his Honoration day and we could rest assured that our hopes and plans for what we wanted that day to be like had been heard and that our little family along with our hopes for this special day for Luke, were in extremely capable hands.  We received a gift of peace that night which enabled us to turn our focus from preparing for his service onto preparing to meet and love our little guy on his birthday.

The Honoration service started at 3:30pm.  I remember that day was FREEZING.  Literally, the high was around four degrees.  Bitter.  Biting yet absolutely beautiful.  It had been snowing and cloudy and extremely cold for the days following Luke's birthday.  However, the day of his Honoration, the sun came out and lit up the whole city for the first time in days.  The sky was blue overhead and with the sunshine against the fresh snow, the day was radiantly beautiful.  

Many people asked us in advance if Luke's service was going to be a private one for just family, but we knew from the beginning that we wanted it to be open to the public.  We felt that we had been surrounded by so many people who had helped us to reach this impossible day- people who had loved us and loved Luke, that we wanted to welcome them into this part of our journey as well.  Planning a service like this one, it is very difficult to know how many people will show up.  We had initially intended for the service to be in the smaller, more intimate chapel at Village, but we made the last minute decision to move Luke's service into the giant sanctuary as we did not want people to arrive and not have a place to sit, or worse, to have to move the service right before starting and to have that worry on our shoulders.  We are extremely glad we made that choice as best we can tell we had close to 350-400 people come to honor our sweet son.  It was beyond humbling and completely overwhelming to have that much love and support on such a difficult day.  It was a powerful testament to how his little life had touched so many others.

The sanctuary looked very pretty that day.  We wanted to keep it simple with some photos we had of us with Luke blown up onto canvas on display.  Heartland's staff gifted us with the most spectacular flower arrangements in honor of Luke.  We were deeply touched and so thankful as they were completely perfect for what we had envisioned.  As for the content of the service, it was exactly what we had planned, asked for and hoped that it would be and so much more.  It was extremely powerful to have dear friends speaking, singing, reading and praying over us.  I know it was a difficult day for them as well and we remain so thankful for the way they shared their hearts and gifts with us that day.

Dan spoke about hope and impact and Jesus' hands.  We had several scripture readings, and three very specific songs, as well as the letter we wrote to Luke.  We asked Jon Shirley to sing his beautiful song, Psalm 130 as well as his (one of my all-time favorites) powerful Hallelujah.  (If you have never heard Jon sing, his talent will knock your socks off.  He is an amazing singer/songwriter and you can check out his music on iTunes).  We also asked him to preform the JJ Heller song, His Hands.  The lyrics of all three of those songs had been touchstones for me throughout our season with Luke and we felt them perfect for his service.  All in all, the service lasted close to an hour with some family and close friends praying privately with us following the service.

We then proceeded down the hall to the Friendship Hall where everyone was waiting for us enjoying the cupcakes (Chunky Monkey is Luke's signature cupcake!), cookies and punch.  We somehow stayed on our feet long enough to greet almost everyone there.  It took us hours to do so, but people were so kind and gave us so many hugs and well wishes that we absolutely would not have missed the chance to hug them back and say thank you.  We had several pictures from Luke's birthday blown up and framed and placed around the room as well as some of his little hand prints and footprints out for people to look at and see.  He was such a beautiful little guy, and we both felt his Honoration perfectly honored his presence in this world.

After the final guest departed, with the help of some very dear friends, we loaded up our cars and headed to my parents house for a final meal with family and then completely exhausted, we returned to our quiet little house and collapsed into bed and cried a few more tears together.  We knew we had lived this day to its fullest for Luke and our hearts were- and remain to this day, peaceful and fully thanks to that incredible and very special day.  We remain indebted with gratitude for the host of people who helped make it so special for us by praying, helping, planning, setting up, cooking, singing, taking photos for us, passing out programs, making us DVDs of the service, signing the guest book, contributing for the beautiful flowers, bringing us more kleenex, helping us load and unload cars, traveling, hugging and just loving on us and our sweet little guy.  We thank you.