It's In the Works!

As you know, we have been planning a very special memorial for Luke at our church.  This is a picture of our church's entryway at night.  We attend a church that recently renovated a former "box" shaped furniture store into an incredible, vibrant place we now love to be.  The talented people behind this innovative design brilliantly wanted to incorporate as much natural light into the space as possible and went to great lengths to open up, carve out, cut into and add in lots of space for glass and sunshine.  The results of their hard work is beautiful.

One of the ways they did this was by adding what is called a lightbox.  The above photograph is a shot of the lightbox on a Sunday morning.  As you can see, its an effort by the designers/architects to incorporate natural light inside- right in the middle of the building.  It is floor to ceiling glass around a hole that was cut out of the roof, thereby making it an outdoor nature area- indoors.  It is a focal point in the main area of the church.  And we are beyond thrilled to announce that we get to place a very special bench inside this lightbox area in Luke's memory!

Joe inside the lightbox at Christmastime...when our idea for a memorial in there for Luke was just a secret hope of ours....

A glimpse of the lightbox with snow... it is absolutely beautiful to see it snowing outside...inside...

...another glimpse....

As we proposed our idea for a memorial bench for the lightbox in Luke's honor, we were super excited to get to work with the talented Keith Mueller.  He is a fellow Heartland-er who has a beautiful family and a beautiful life story as well.  We were familiar with Keith's work as he had created two incredible, giant, concrete coffee tables for our new church.  His primary medium for his work is concrete and we met with him back in January to share our hopes and ideas for Luke's bench.  We were deeply touched by the fact that Keith is an artist who both wanted to get our input and ideas for what he was going to create for Luke but also that he felt so honored to be asked to help us.  We could not have been more blessed by his talents.

Keith created several designs for us to ponder and we met with him a couple more times to discuss specifics and possibilities.  He was extremely open to our ideas and feedback which really allowed Joe and I to feel that we were playing a role in helping to create something special to remember and honor our son whom we love so dearly.  We were excited to see Keith's ideas in 3-D (on paper) drawings which helped us to gain better insight into what the possibilities could be.  After getting our hands on those, we went home and Joe got out the tape measure which helped us to gain an even better idea.  While we liked what the drawings held, we also felt like we had a few more ideas of our own we wanted to flesh out a little bit.  Joe then set about sketching out some other ideas he had based on Keith's initial drawings and designs.  There were several that we then re-submitted to Keith and the church's management team (they had final approval obviously).  One of Joe's drawings especially captured our hearts. We both absolutely were crazy about it but were also realistically trying not to get our hopes set on it in case the church or Keith said no.  But they said YES! 

We are so excited to finally share the drawings of what Luke's bench is going to look like! It is going to be a beautiful cloud-shaped bench.  Subtle.  Simple. Absolutely perfect for Luke.

...here is Joe's sketch...looking from the sky downward....

...here is a faint sketch of the bench...inside each leg there will be something special.  On one side there will be a plaque with a message along with Luke's full name and birthday....

....on the other leg will be this design of two interlocking "L"s...for Luke's initials that Joe designed...

...here is the view from the roof looking down into the lightbox.  The circles are trees and the area is completely landscaped.  The 'square' with the shapes inside of it is an interior fountain.  The shapes inside the 'square' are stained concrete pillars in the fountain that we are assuming Luke's bench will coordinate with.

...above are some drawings with the specific dimensions and such- basically it is about the length of a couch (approximately six and a ½ feet long)

 ....the 3D drawings I was mentioning earlier only with the cloud bench design....

So there you have it! It is currently in production as we speak.  We do not know when it will be finished or delivered, but we will be keeping you posted! We remain extremely grateful to all of you who helped to make this a reality for us.  We also wish to say a giant thank you to Keith and to Heartland Community Church's Management Team who helped us bring this hope of an idea to reality.

We are truly honored to have Luke's bench be such a beautiful labor of love made possible by so many incredible people.  It fills our hearts with joy knowing that Luke will be smiling down into that lightbox and into our hearts – always.