Page 4 - Glory & Grace Issue 4: "Small Wonders" Nov 2021

PAGE 4
Don and Barb Badt joined King of Glory in the Fall of 2019 after moving from Sidney, MT to be closer to their family. In late August 2020, both Don and Barb became ill with COVID-19. Donald Badt, 68, devoted husband, father, grandfather, brother, and follower of our Lord and Savior, passed into his heavenly home on October 3, 2020. With courage and deep faith, Barb shares how God is sustaining her as she faces going forward without Don by her side.
I am not extraordinary, but I know One who is.
The last text that Barb received from her husband and partner of 50 years, Donny, contained a well- loved phrase that the two often shared, "Onward I Go." Now, after his death, on the pergola he never got to see, hangs a sign that their children had made that reads, "Onward We Go."
"Grampa got it right," Barb would later write to her grandchildren, "Onward I Go! Grampa knew the direction that life takes us is forward, and he was not afraid to go there...with me, with you, with his own Creator when the time came."
In her own words, Barb writes, "True bravery is not found within those things which we choose to do, to satisfy a need for thrill seeking or an adrenaline rush of excitement, so to speak. I believe that the truest form of bravery is born by faith, in the heart and soul of our beings. It is the response summonded up when real fear grips our lives. Fear so great that it brings us to our knees, to the realization that what is required to be truly brave is created inside of us, and comes to fruition only in our times of greatest need...I regard the bravest thing that I have ever been called to do is to face my life going forward without Grampa by my side."
"Above all," Barb writes, "I am sustained by my faith in the love of our Heavenly Father. It is He alone who created us, fashioning us out of Love, and planting Love in and around each of us...in our family, our friends, our neighbors,,,and showering us with all that we need for our journey here. We are then called on to share ourselves with each other...our strengths, our compassion, and all of the abilities given to us to lighten each other's burdens. We are gifts to each other, members of God's Big Family and we need to be brave together."
We can be certain of the outcome of our faith, Barb says. "It's a promise. A promise of eternal life...God is my guide, and so the outcome... Oh, the outcome! It is life forever with my God, and with my Donny, just as our hearts are pledged. So indeed, Onward I Go!"
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