Celebrating Sean

Today Ian and I attended a memorial service for Sean Strickland. Sean was my bosses boss during my first job at the church. When he first came to work I remember that he brought an excitement and futuristic look at things. He was a great leader! We heard that over and over again today.

Ian was in a small group with him 2 years ago. Sadly this is the second death among that group of young men! There were only 8 of them in the group and now 6 remain. It's been tough for the men in that group to go through this 2 years in a row.

Today at the service we also heard over and over about how much fun Sean had with his family. Their family values spelled out FIESTA!! So today we decided to have a random pool party with our kids. We wore party hats and Ellison picked the menu. We enjoyed hotdogs, chips, baked beans and frosted oranges (the homemade version). It was spontaneous and so much fun. When I told Ellison that we could wear the party hats to the pool she screamed "This is so much fun!!!"

Today felt like a day filled with purpose. In some small way our family wanted to give honor to the life that Sean led.

Sean, thank you for the example of never taking yourself too seriously, loving and pursing God with all you had and loving your family with passion. You will be missed.

Here is his obituary if you'd like to read it. http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/obits/stories//2009/06/07/sean_strickland_obit.html



Jude enjoying a frosted orange.