You may have noticed that I have been working on tagging my archived posts with labels. This has proven to be quite a trip back in time. I would like to share two posts that I wrote back in 2005 about my youngest brother Nathan. It made my heart smile to re-read them, and I hope it does you too.
Might also explain how it is that his death coupled with my Multiple Sclerosis has just about convinced me that this current world is not God’s plan for us.

My Dates With Nathan

Nathan’s first car was a 1960 something Cougar. In the first several months that he owned that car it sat in the driveway with bricks behind the tires while he spent every spare minute crawling all over it to get it running.

A Glimpse

My dear Grandma made the comment to me over the Christmas holiday that she felt as though blogs were too much like the saccharine newsletters so many send at Christmas time and that she couldn’t get on board because she didn’t feel as though she was getting the whole picture. I understood where she was coming from, to a degree. I spent my junior year of high school as a functional quadriplegic and remember well the letter we received from a distant cousin telling us about her biggest drama of the year: her new yacht was too large to fit at her boat dock and they had to build a new one. Mom and I still chuckle about that letter. Mostly because it seemed so out of touch with whatever might be going on in the homes of the receivers of her year-end wrap up and report.

I think that blogs like mine can have the same effect. I make it a point to only touch on the fabulous, funny, cute, or warm fuzzy inducing moments and I generally leave the heavier topics out of this public forum altogether. I am deliberate about that decision, and I feel like it is worth it to me to explain just why that is. To do so, I will have to bare just a little of the heavy, so try to hang on just in case my heavy looks like my distant cousin’s boat dock next to yours.

After my younger brother died suddenly in 2003, I spent about two months in a cocoon like seclusion. Eric kept the coffee pot going and took care of the kids while I huddled over a space heater in our garage and watched religious television on a tiny black and white set. I spent hours hollowly watching preacher after preacher, and I realize now that I was searching and waiting for someone to make sense of why I had been so gutted. Why was my brother dead while other jerks were walking around with their jerk brothers? At the same time, my body began to slip a little deeper into M.S. deterioration and I was feeling like the chains of this fallen land’s darkness were tightening around my wrists and ankles by the second. I was completely bound by the reality of living here and the depression of that fact was more than I could withstand.

It was during this time of desperate searching for relief that I read John’s account of Jesus’ return from the dead.
¹⁹On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” ²⁰After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

Did you see what I saw? The door was locked and suddenly Jesus was among them. He was real flesh – they touched him – and yet he was able to appear through the wall. Why would he do that? Why appear through the wall? Why not knock on the door? Why be so deliberate about suddenly appearing among them? As I read those words way back in my cocoon, I heard Jesus tell me, “The wall is not real. I am real.”

“Your brother’s death is not reality. I am reality.”

“Your failing health is not reality. I am reality.”

THIS WALL IS NOT REAL.

It was almost deafening; this voice telling me what reality is. It was a notion that gave me such peace that I stood from my spot, and slowly began to live and breathe again. I was firmly rooted in reality for the first time in my nearly 27 years of life.

This past year has found Eric and I facing all kinds of walls that tempted me to shudder at their reality, but I was always reminded of the simple truth I learned in my little garage cocoon: The wall is not real. I am real. I know, beyond any shadow of doubt, that Jesus lives. I know that He is preparing my eternity with Him. I am so confident of my reality, that it makes whatever happens around me seem almost silly to take too seriously. I still grieve, and I still wince at the sting of certain blows, but I know the truth. And the truth has set me free.

So, while you are wrapping up your thoughts on all the high points of this past year and maybe wincing at some of the low points, take a moment to thank God for the heavier, less than blog worthy points. Thank Him for exposing the truth of His reality.

And now, with all due apologies to my Grandma, we will move on to our regularly scheduled saccharine.

Saturday would be Nathan’s 26th birthday. My Mom and I have set up a My Space page for his friends to visit and share their thoughts and memories and I wanted to make it available to any of you who would like to visit and remember him with us.
I get asked pretty often how we are doing in the grieving process and I can say, that for me at least, it never gets easier to bear. It has been three and a half years and I think it gets harder the longer I have to go on with the only sure end to my grief being my ultimate death. On Mother’s Day, my Mom asked a woman who buried her own daughter some fifteen years ago if it ever gets less bitter. Her simple answer was, “I hope not.” I can’t disagree with that. As long as I grieve, Nathan will be on my lips and I never want to lose that.

Nathan and I used to revel in “your mama” joke competitions. We would sit for a long time and make jokes, disregarding the fact that we shared a Mama. For his birthday, I would like to open the competition up for everyone. I will start with some of Nathan’s favorites, and then you can leave yours in the comment section. I will let Mom choose the winner. Please keep it clean. I may be rated R, but I still have standards.
Your Mama’s so poor, her door bell just says “ding”.
Your Mama’s so fat, a cop saw her on the corner and said, “Allright, break it up.”
Your Mama’s so fat, a doctor diagnosed her with a flesh eating disease and gave her eighty seven years.
Your Mama’s so fat, she jumped up in the air and got stuck.
Your Mama’s so fat, she has pesos in one pocket and euros in the other.
Now it’s your turn.

Sometimes I like to Google my youngest brother’s name just to see what the Nathan Dodds of the world are up to these days. This morning the first page presented to me was actually about Nathan. This is a report from the Navy (he was a Marine, the chagrined appendage) regarding an award and program that was set up in his honor. Nathan doggedly looked out for his underlings and this was a feature not lost on his commanding officers.

I did not write the following. My Mom kept a journal in the days that followed Nathan’s death and these are some of her thoughts about one of Nathan’s finest traits: His heart for confession.


One of the many lessons that Nathan taught me was honesty, honesty before our God and honesty with each other. His conscience would never let him live a lie. It still amazes me to this day.

Every Sunday morning I get up and put on my Sunday best so I can go to church and look at someone else’s Sunday best. We smile and greet one another “How are you?” “Good, me too” and take our places in our pews, sing, pray and go home. At home we walk into the secret world of a struggle with sin, pain and disappointment. Nathan’s conscience would never let him do this.

One Sunday morning Nathan was to lead prayer at service. He asked his brother Kevin to lead it. I thought it odd. It was later that I learned why. It seems that the night before he had partied with friends from school and he participated in activities that he knew was unbecoming to a Christian. He would not go before the congregation and lead a prayer dressed as a Christian on the outside; it had to be on the inside as well. If only we could take our sin as seriously as what he did.

He confessed to us that afternoon, and he told us that he would speak to his huddle group later that night. I wanted to protect him from the harsh judgment that could have been placed on him. I even had the nerve to say that he had confessed to us; that is all that needed to be done. But Nathan being Nathan taught me more about being honest about my own sin. He told us no way could he not confess to his peers at church. Every time he did something wrong he would confess it. His sin could never be used by Satan to drive a wedge between he and his God nor could Satan get the satisfaction of exposing the sin.

Nathan knew that looking clean does not make you clean. When we sin we have a tendency to be so disgusted with ourselves. Our plan of action becomes “putting on our Sunday best”, “I will clean myself up” or ” I will just stop doing ________” and no one will have to know how filthy I am. Satan loves this plan; he can do one or two things with it. Help keep it a secret until just the right time then expose it when it can hurt and destroy more than just one person. Or, he can help keep it festering in your heart until it grows like cancer destroying both body and soul. Yet, God calls us is to confess, repent (return to the higher place) stop ignoring the cancer. It will steal your joy in the Lord. God wants to perform surgery on our hearts and free us from the cancer within.

This is what Hebrews is saying in 4:12. “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” The Greek word for sword is “makaia” a tool used in various occupations such as a priest or surgeon. In the case of the priest, this tool is used to cut up the animal into parts, for the purpose of placing the carcass on the altar. It is different from the instrument used in slaughtering the animal. It is a tool not for the purpose of killing but for healing.

I love this picture, because Jesus is our high priest and our great physician. As a high priest, He pleads our case before God and as our physician he cuts the cancer caused by sin from our hearts. But before He can do this we must expose ourselves to the surgeon, lie naked on the altar before God as He performs open-heart surgery.

Then He can take our diseased heart and give us a heart tender toward His word full of life.
Being naked before God and our brothers\sisters takes courage because we know that in doing so means that others will see our flaws. I wish I could say that there will not be repercussions from the exposure but that would be a lie. Nathan knew that there were those that were leery of him and they would watch for signs of failure because of his struggles.

However most of the uneasiness came from adults not his peers. It was the adults that voiced most of their concerns not to him, but to others and it always got back to him, it stung but it did not stop him from being real before his God. He continued to confess his sin and I praise God for the peers in Nathan’s huddle group, they were the ones he trusted the most to help keep him accountable to God.

I will forever be grateful to his huddle group leaders (The Johnsons and Gideons) and every huddle group member that spoke and wrote words of encouragement to Nathan. These were the people that provided a safe place for him to bare his soul. He cherished every letter of encouragement from his huddle group leaders as well as fellow huddle classmates. All of the notes and letters were kept in a shoebox and traveled all over the world with him. Many of them are worn from reading and rereading these words of encouragement many times over.

When Nathan was in high school he loved going with the youth group from church to Kadesh at ACU. Money was sometimes (usually) tight around our house so he would work to earn the money to pay his own way. It often bothered him that kids who had no money were unable to attend what he felt was a very beneficial camp.
When he was stationed in Japan, unbeknownst to most people, he dipped into his meager private’s salary and funded the camp experience for at least five kids that we know of. Nathan was the loudest of comedians, and the quietest of servants. He did it for no other reason than that he wanted other kids to feel what he felt at Kadesh.
Since his death, a fund has been set up at Westover in his honor to cover camp expenses for kids who can’t afford it. My Mom commented that she felt as thought these kids were in some way Nathan’s spiritual children. He never lived to marry his love and have children of his own, and still he remains to gently guide these spiritual offspring and support their spiritual growth. I think he would be quite surprised at the attention his quiet service has received. In his memory I am placing a link to Westover. From there you can contact Rick McCall, the youth minister, and help keep the fund alive.
Nathan was a kind man and as the time has passed since his death we have heard so many stories of his compassion. I am honored that his legacy has been picked up and continued in so many ways.

Nathan’s first car was a 1960 something Cougar. It spent a good deal of time just sitting in the driveway in the beginning, though Nathan loved it.

One night I was in the house when I heard the sound of a honking horn. The sound was followed by Nathan running into the kitchen exclaiming, “Did you hear that? I got the horn to work!” He went on to tell me to get gussied up for a date because he figured he could get the radio to work too.

I waited in the living room for my signal. Sure enough, I heard the blaring horn. I ran outside, fluffing my hair and yelling back inside that my date was here. I got in the car and Nathan immediately set about getting ready to go.

He adjusted his mirrors, fixed his hair, and fiddled with the dials on his working radio. He put his arm on the back of the seat and began to “back out”. He kept his arm around my shoulders and took me for a nice little drive through Nathan’s World. “Oh look, Amy. There a circus car with clowns getting out!” I would laugh and my laughter fueled his stories. “Hey Buddy! Can’t you see I’m driving here? I’m on a date! Sheesh. Can you believe this guy?”

We went on many dates in the driveway. I relish my memories of sitting in the car with him and feeling like the most important person in the world to him for that moment. If I could thank him for anything, it would be for letting me be a part of Nathan’s world; not just that he let me, but that he insisted.

My paternal Grandma lost her sister about 15 years ago. She told me often how hard it was to let her go because they were so close. She told me once about a dream she had about Jodi and in this dream she could feel Jodi’s flesh and even smell her. She said that the dream was refreshing and brought her much comfort.

About a year after Nathan died I laid awake, finally fully aware in one instant that he was completely gone and that I was to for the rest of my life be lonesome for his touch. I wanted so badly to feel him and see him again.

I remembered my Grandma’s dream and begged God for the same small bit of relief. It was some months later that I woke up with tears soaking my face and the feeling of a deep something inside of me that I couldn’t place.

It was one of those dreams that sits right at the front of your brain all day and just on the tip of your tongue until finally, a word is spoken, an image is flashed and the memory of the dream comes flooding back. I was on the phone with Mom when she said something that triggered my memory.

I had dreamed that I saw Nathan. He was in a building that was under construction and he was wearing a suit and a hard hat. I knew somehow that he was in charge of the construction, like a real estate mogul or some sort. He didn’t say anything to me and I didn’t say anything to him, we just embraced.

I could feel every muscle in his arms and I could even hear the deep thudding of his heart. I started to weep, loudly. I cried with a loud, mournful and yet joyous wail that I could actually see reverberating off the walls of the building and then outside into the world. I saw the echo of my cry repel off canyons and skim the waters of the ocean. In one instant I saw the surface of the entire universe, and I saw it all get bathed in my grief and my joy.

When I woke up I had this sense calm and peace that had no tangible identity. It was as though I knew the truth, but I wasn’t sure what the truth was; a feeling of all at once wholeness and longing.

At the remembering of the dream, I realized the word for what I was feeling: Eternity.

That was the feeling deep in my gut that gave me that peace. For just an instant I felt Nathan, I smelled him and I felt the eternity in which he waits. Eternity is the only comfort the grieving have. It is the promise that death is only for a little while and grief knows an end.


I am not sure if any of this makes sense. I just really needed to write about this dream.

A lot of you know that I have three brothers and you know that my youngest brother was killed in a car accident on Dec.26, 2003. His 24th birthday is approaching and I thought I would share a few memories that I have of him; perhaps in some way to introduce him and revive him if only for the length of a moment.

In Nathan’s younger years he was a goofy kid who found himself the butt of many a joke. He was often the outsider trying to wiggle his way in; only to find that he wasn’t welcome when he got there. I often admired him for his resilience and strength of character through that time.

As he approached his teenaged years, Nathan was put in the position to get the ultimate nerd’s revenge. His teeth straightened out, his acne cleared, and he developed muscles he never knew he had. Nathan was a star. Every guy wanted to be his friend and every girl wanted to date him. I would often watch him from a distance and marvel at the person he had become.

One such opportunity that I had to observe Nathan was at a high school pep rally where he was, of course, the captain of the football team. Before the rally began, Nathan was in the front of the stands chatting with a group of students. I watched him and realized the kids getting Nathan’s full attention were the special needs kids. Nathan knew their names and had inside jokes with some of them.

To begin the rally the cheerleaders announced that there was to be a dance contest and asked for volunteers from the crowd. One of the kids that Nathan had been talking to stood up and started to show his mad dancing skills. The crowd started to laugh and boo.

Nathan stood up from his spot with the team and started to cheer for the kid and soon the audience followed suit. Before I knew it, Nathan had changed the mood of the whole room and everyone was rooting for this kid to win and he did.

Nathan had the chance for the ultimate nerd’s revenge. He so easily could have taken his new found popularity and lorded over the “insignificants” among us. Instead, he played it more like the outsider with insider privileges. I am humbled by his example, and honored to have been that guy’s sister.

Stayed tuned for more from Nathan’s world.

Nathan’s senior picture.