“Your dots are right where they need to be,” my dad often said to me.

It began many years ago when I applied for a job that required a personality test as part of the hiring process. The results came back with pages of charts and dots mapping out my strengths and weaknesses with codes of numbers and letters. It was complicated, and I could barely make sense of it. I showed it to Dad because I was excited—I had gotten the job!

We both laughed at how confusing it all looked. However, he didn’t need an explanation. He saw more than charts and graphs and turned it into one of his most consistent ways to encourage me.

Whenever I told him about a decision I was making, a challenge I was facing, or even just the everyday ups and downs of life, he would remind me: Your dots are right where they need to be.

Those words became his playful way of pointing me back to my identity in Christ—that even when life felt confusing, God’s design is always good. A reminder that if I followed God, I’d always be right where I was supposed to be.

And looking back, it wasn’t just something he said to me—it was also how he lived.

Three years ago, I lost my dad to Alzheimer’s. Even in his hardest season, he wrote, leaving behind examples of his faith in words.

In 2019, he wrote one of his last poems, “Alzheimer’s Hope,” in which he talked about not wanting to be a burden in life but looking forward to the reunion in heaven. Just days later, he wrote his final poem, “Where There Is Hope,” reminding us, his family, not to fear, because God would be with us, and there is always hope.

His words written then echo encouragement to me now: Our dots are never out of place with God.

Back-to-school season makes me think of Dad even more. He loved his five grandkids fiercely and would have been so proud to see their smiling faces heading into new school years.

I miss him every single day—his encouragement, his joy, his words. But I also see now that even his journey with Alzheimer’s was part of his “dots.” The disease was not something we would have chosen, yet it was still within the boundaries of God’s plan for his life. And just as he always reminded me that God didn’t make a mistake with my dots, He didn’t make a mistake with his either.

That’s the mystery and the comfort of faith: God’s sovereignty doesn’t end where our suffering begins. Even through Alzheimer’s, Dad’s life pointed to Christ. His last poems were filled with hope, not despair. His faith was tested but never undone. And in the end, he handed down to me not just words of encouragement, but a testimony of trust in a God who is good even when life is hard.

Julie Criscuola is a writer from Fort Worth, Texas, where she lives with her husband and three children. Through storytelling and Scripture-rooted reflections, she explores faith, family, and God’s presence in the grace-filled, ordinary moments of life. This is a beautiful story about her late father Richard Grisham.