Good morning... "I came home from the beautiful memorial service," I wrote in my journal, "exhausted from listening, exhausted from crying, exhausted from socializing. But as I sit still with myself right now, I realize that the most exhausting thing for me is knowing that these could be our grieving children. With their three kids born in the [...]
Good morning... "This is not God's will," the minister said at the celebration of Eliza's vivacious, twenty-eight year old life. "This is outside the will of God, but not outside the love of God," he tried to explain the deep mystery of grief. But I had just written in our blog post, "I entrust Eliza’s life to God’s [...]
Good morning... I was deeply touched by the song performed at the celebration of life for twenty-eight year old, Eliza. When I got home from the reception following the service, I googled the song title and found the music video below, performed by the original artist sitting at the piano, staring ahead, and singing through her own dark [...]
Good morning... I have been slowly walking beside a grieving friend as God tenderly cares for her faithful family flock. Today we will celebrate together the life of one special twenty-eight year old woman, a vibrant young woman who has shared God's living light with so many in our community. As God prepares my heart to walk in [...]
Good morning... This Memorial Day, I am drawn back to a story in one of my all time favorite books. I turn to page fifteen. Slowly I read again about the ravages of war and the trauma of abruptly losing a loved one. ****** Excerpt from The Hidden Life Awakened by Kitty Crenshaw and Dr. Cathy Snapp Betty [...]
Good morning... In God's great timing, I snapped this photo the day before I received an important email. I took a picture of this large, makeshift ark for a friend in Florida who was deeply touched by our grief podcast in December. Especially she loved our encouragement that God quietly builds for us a protective ark to live [...]
Good morning... My oldest daughter chose to give up social media for Lent. "Welcome to my world," I said, "it's peacefully wonderful." I don't twitter or tweeter, "snap a chat," "inst a gram" or "face a book," but I do love when friends send me nourishing nuggets. That's what happened on February 28th, 2021. The image above came [...]
Good morning... Five years ago today the spirit of a young man returned to the God who gave it and later in the week his body was returned to the ground from which we came. Our grieving community experienced with new eyes one of my favorite Bible verses: Then shall the dust [out of which God made man’s [...]
Good morning... This morning, I have no idea why my computer returned itself to emails from this very same week five years ago. Back then, a subscriber to our everyday blog had sent me the photo above from her back yard in Florida. In retrospect, now I realize I felt much like the silhouette of this lone little [...]
Good morning... I returned the tools to my master gardener friend after my husband and I shared our pruning adventure. Now we wait, we watch, we wonder, "What new growth will eventually appear?" As I shared in yesterday's blog post, The Power of Pruning, my constantly curious friend taught us about "restoration pruning." She added "Some call it [...]
