Tears

Sometimes.. the tears just flow. This week we had Stefani home for the funeral of her best friends little brother. He passed after a long, debilitating decline. His family served him so lovingly. The service was a peaceful reminder of his beautiful life. It was so special, so tender, so exquisitely painful in it's beauty.

Then tonight, we received news of another death in our small community. Shelby's Laurel teacher lost her husband suddenly. 5 children, now fatherless. It is and was still unbelievable. My kids really struggle with the context of this senseless death.

And when these things rip into our lives and tear us to shreds we HAVE to take inventory of what we have.

We really have so much. Our marriages, our relationships, our families and our stewardships are fragile. They can be taken from us in a heartbeat. We just cannot let them slip through our fingertips. We must live and love to the fullest and put the pettiness of the world behind. We can glimpse heaven here and we must. We must see heaven in the imperfectness of our attempts at growth. We must see it in our messy homes and our misunderstandings and our tears and our stumblings.

When we love we hurt. It is just the nature of love. To care so deeply is life's gift to us. To know the frailty of human existence is to hope in the promise of a better tomorrow. A tomorrow of loving reunions and a restoration of all that has been taken and lost.

We can not let their deaths be in vain. We can live and love for them. When we want to throw in the towel we can smile and soldier on for their memory. What they have been denied we can embrace.. for them. How can we not? How can we waste the precious time and relationships that they cannot now have?