Rose Colored Glasses

Years ago someone very close to me once ( or actually several times) said that I viewed life through "Rose Colored Glasses." While that may have been true then, I have found that sometimes life needs a little help to look better than the hard realities that we face day in and day out. I have discovered over the years that we all need encouragement that we are not in this alone. We only get to live this life once and I want my life , imperfect that it is, to be an encouragement for those around me. Do I get it right every single day?!?........."Absolutely not!!!!" But "His mercies are new every morning," and for that I am eternally grateful and forever hopeful "rose colored glasses" and all.

Saturday, May 31, 2014

Life and Death

It’s 3:41 a.m. and I am awake on a Saturday morning! I have been awake most of the night. My thoughts are all over the place. You see, I lost someone today and though my body is tired, my mind is in overdrive. This is not our first loss this month. On mother’s day weekend, one of our aunts lost her battle with pancreatic cancer. While we would never want her back in the shape she was in, there is now a void…..an empty place at the table…..an absence of one who was never still for very long….one who was talented and creative…..one who loved life and her family. My heart hurts for her sweet husband, her son, her grandchildren, her siblings, her in laws! I know in my mind that she would tell us that she is fine…..that she is beyond happy…..that she is bouncing down the streets of gold as I type….talking with Jesus and all who were there before her. I know all this in my heart and in my mind….we all do……but still we grieve!! We grieve for her presence here….her laugh….her willingness to help with whatever needs to be done…..her advice….her direction…..I miss you Helen!! Today’s loss is someone very dear to me……someone that feels not like a cousin, but a brother. It is unexpected as death sometimes is…….it is so very sad…..it is the very thing that awaits all of us at some point! As I have tried to wrap my mind around the idea that he is gone, I have had so many memories come flooding back. Memories all the way back to early childhood…..my entire childhood was so intertwined with him and his sister and brother, that I have no memory of a time when we weren’t together. I have been so blessed to have been raised with an extended family of cousins that you could never really tell where one of us stopped, and the other began. We were family….we could play, and work, and fight, and love like nobody’s business!! Some of my earliest memories with the cousins are of playing in the soft powdery dirt under my Granny’s front porch, and later on catching tadpoles in the deep ditch that you had to cross to get from their house to the old home place. Riding bicycles and horses, swimming in the creek and singing into the old metal blade oscillating fan, that one of the cousins had painted with bright glow in the dark paint. Walking bare foot after dark down the dirt road with no real destination in sight, just because we could!! Later on sneaking off to town and riding dirt roads. There was never an absence of something to do…..we played hard, but we worked hard too. One thing our childhood taught us was a work ethic. Living in the country, on a farm there was always something to do. Character was built as we worked in chicken houses and hauled hay and fed cows and plowed fields. We may have done a little complaining then but we grew up knowing how to work! As time passed and we went our separate ways….we didn’t see each other much, but when we did….we could just pick up where we left off. That’s how it is with people you love…..the miles and years can separate us, but those bonds are deep and true! I will always love you Dennis Paul…..and I will see you again!!! Death has a way of stopping us in our tracks…..it can happen so fast that we are left just trying to hang on. The fact of the matter is we will all come face to face with this at some unknown point. It is vitally important that we all prepare for that day. As the preacher who spoke at Helen’s home going celebration stated…..it is all about the dash…..that little mark that separates the date of our birth and the date of our death. What we do with the here and now will determine how we will spend eternity. I have wasted a lot of time in my life with things that were not really important in the big scheme of things….I don’t want that to be the rule of my life…….living my life in light of eternity is how I want to do it….knowing that one day soon, I will cross over and as soon as I see my Jesus, I’m going to be looking for those that got there before me……what a reunion that will be!!! If you don’t know my Jesus, ask me…..I would love to tell you about him!!! “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” Rev. 21:4