How do you honor someone who lived so big?

It is upon us. I feel it with every one of my senses. Smells of the honeysuckles blooming at the baseball park and hamburgers grilling. The sound of lawn mowers cranking up. Flowers blooming. Sunburned skin. Wet towels and suits strung everywhere, as the pools are now opened for business. Watermelons and strawberries are tasting sweeter. Buzz cuts. School is out. Spring baseball season is over. The warm air and humidity is feeling thicker. Mosquito bites and checking for tics are a common occurrence.

Never before have these things felt so heavy. They carry a deeper meaning this year and trigger thoughts and feelings that seemed unimportant at the time. My mind constantly races back to last year, and with that a great sorrow floods in.

One year…Really? That seems so impossible, yet the reality of it is something that seems tangible. Some days have seemed to drag in slow motion, while other weeks just flew by. Grief is so unpredictable from one day to the next. I can't believe July 3, 2014 will be one whole year since the love of my life left this earth.

So, I have been thinking for a while about how that day looks for us. I do not want it to be about us…I want it to be about Rod Cook, and what his life represented. I want him to be remembered and honored. I want others to be inspired to go beyond themselves and serve others, just as Rod did on a consistent basis. Mostly, I want Christ to be glorified. This is exactly what he would want.

There have been a couple of people who have done something similar to what I would like to do. One family lost their son, Dylan May, in 2009, just before his 5th birthday to a terminal disease. They decided to honor him with "Do it for Dylan Day" and you can find them on Facebook here.
The other is a young widow and mom to four young children, named Sarah Wolff, who lost her husband a little over a year ago. We have "met" through Facebook and she has truly been an inspiration and encouragement to me. She remembered her husband on the year anniversary of his Heaven day with "The Chad Wolff Project". Read about that here. Both of these are essentially an invitation for others to be mindful of and take steps to do something kind for others in memory of their loved one.

I would love to invite you to be a part of "REMEMBERING ROD" by joining the Facebook group I created and inviting others to do the same. Even if they didn't know him…this is a wonderful way for them to know who he was. If there are those not on Facebook, it is still great to participate and I would love to hear about it. Emails can be sent to missycook@bellsouth.net. 

More details to follow, but it's something we will kick off soon, so go like the Facebook page HERE and be thinking about how you would like to REMEMBER ROD!