Dale and his wife Renee (Rae) at Devil's Den state park (one of my favorite pictures of them)

Dale at his house. He was a big hog fan.

So the first two pictures I got a couple months ago, but since I learned to use mom's scanner I thought I would post them in my blog. The third picture I got yesterday along with a black razorback hoodie and a t-shirt from back in the old youth group days when Dale was my youth leader.

Dale is is the guy in the back row with the gray shirt and you should be able to find me I haven't changed much.

When I got this picture, I couldn't stop staring at it. It brought back a lot of memories. But one of those memories relates to my current reality.

In a little under a month, I will offically be a college graduate. I will have proven to myself and everyone else that I am smart enough to make it through college (and hopefully with an ok GPA).

At the time of this picture (around the age of 16), I wasn't sure if I would have what it took for college for several reasons...of course at that time I didn't think I had what it took to really get through life much either.

I don't know what Dale saw in me, or why he cared like he did when so many others had already wrote me off their list; but I'm grateful that he did care so much and that he did see something in me and kept trying to speak life and value into me.

Yesterday as I was looking at this old picture, I began crying because for the first time it really hit me that Dale won't be here to see me graduate college. I want him to know that I really did it. That I didn't drop out or anything, but I did it. I don't know if I am what he saw, but at least I'm not who I was at 16. The past two days, I have been praying that God would tell him that I did it, that all his effort wasn't wasted...lol but I don't even know if God does that.....

Right now I am wearing the hoodie that Rae gave me and it still smells like him; and as stupid as it is I'm trying to figure out how long I can go without washing just so I can keep that smell