What do you feel when you lose someone? Do you remember? Do childhood memories somehow become sweeter? Clearer? Changed like adding. An effect to them like changing the effect on the photo you just took with instagram? Does grief filter your thoughts differently?
This week a friend's battle with cancer ended. We wrote together in high school on the school paper. She aspired to inspire.
Shanna, you are missed already. You achieved so much in 31 short years. I spent tonight reading through the lives you touched who have felt led to share on your Facebook page about the legacy you have left behind.
Prayer goes a long way. I regret not keeping up more and hope that the prayers I prayed had an eternal impact.
"He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end." (Ecclesiastes 3:11 ESV)
Thank you. For life. For hope. For love's sake.
I am inspired by the way you fought, by the way you continued to just breathe and love life.
Worth. What is your child worth? What is someone else's child worth? What if the child has the state making decisions for them? How much is that person's mental well being worth? Did you know that they cannot be denied things they request as long as they are legal for people their ages, even if you and I would deem it inappropriate or excessive. It's considered a right.
Now think about the things that constitute a child becoming a ward of the state and not being adopted. What kinds of decisions are these children capable of making? What kind of decisions do your children and teens make without parental guidance?
Is your convenience worth a child's mental health? To not consider others and the effect a decision you allow them to make without helping to see the consequence and the long term effects?
The reach we have on others is infinite and surpasses time. "Do into others as
you would have them do unto you."
Many of the sparse moments of reflection lately have been spent meditating on the love of my savior and my BFFs in my life. My family's life is more than sprinkled with the love of Christ. In fact it is like opening up your lunchbox and reading a love note written just for you or walking into your office and finding a trinket that only your best friend would know you would want and appreciate the meaning of. That is how special the last several weeks have been for our family and the Easter season has enhanced it! I do not make it through the transition of the seasons or through a holiday without some sort of celebrations, crafts, or forcing my family to do something in honor of it! And this year I found these great lessons for the 12 days of Easter Countdown here at http://www.shauna-lynn.blogspot.com/2012/03/seeing-as-easter-is-just-around-corner.html. This is not your traditional ressurection egg activity. We loved it. I used it to lead right up to Good Friday activities at our local church and used our study activities and prayer room focus through the weekend and today for our celebration of Jesus's ressurrection.
Music, like writing, is life to me. I frequently have a song playing in my head. I have some soundtrack for every season, day or minute of my life. As we have been focusing on Easter over the last two weeks, I found myself pondering worship and what my worship play list would be if I was a worship leader for a Good Friday serv ice and then for Ressurrection Sunday. Then comparing them. Maybe that's the teacher in me. I guess this is my compare and contrast paper. Over the course of my days, I meditated on what the girls, Mary, Jesus's mother, Mary Magdalene, and Martha, as well as the other women not mentioned would have had on theier iPods if Steve Jobs had invented them by then. What about Andrew, Peter, John and the other disciples and apostles? I took the songs from my playlists like, Switchfoot's song, "Redemption,"
and wondered if they could really see that their "monstrosities" fit inside those piercings on His hands, side and feet. Could they at that point see that they were forgiven? Could they understand the love as they were caught between the days of Jesus's death and resurrection? What about Kari Jobe's "Revelation Song" or "What Love is This?" How would these sogs look in light of the time between His death and resurrection?
And what of the worship Matthew speaks of in his Gospel account? As Jesus's body lie entombed for two and a half days, would your heart have heardened after having walked side by side Him? What would you have been like after having witnessed the sweat, tears, and blood of the Lord?
Here's some more of my play list. Happy Easter! Be blessed!
"Now More Than Ever" by Gaither Vocal Band
"Amazing Grace" by Chris Tomlin
"Like a Lion" by David Crowder Band
"Beauty from Pain" by Superchick
"I Believe in a Hill Called Mount Calvary" by the Issacs
