Missing

Missing my Dad this evening and wishing that I could talk to him on the phone just one more time. What I wouldn't give to hear his voice one more time say "Hi Kath, or Love you" or "tell Abby Maddie and Destiny we love them."

My dad wasn't a superhero, maybe nothing special to the rest of the world but in my eyes he hung the moon and stars. He never had an unkind word to say about anyone, he never felt that he had to be the center of attention, he went to work at his blue collar job and gave it his all every day, most of all he made me feel secure and loved.

I hate that his granddaughters will never know truly how much he loved them.

Maddie Grace and Grandpa

Why?

The question "why" has been wandering through my mind all week.   Why did God allow Heather, a young vibrant mother to be taken from her children?  Why did my mother-in-law pass away only six months after we moved here to Georgia and before my children got to really know who she was as a person?   Why did my dad die so quickly and of such a vicious disease and leave me here without the person who has always listened to me? 

I don't have any answers and I know that I probably will not understand it this side of Heaven.   My faith is strong though and  I do know that the one thing that has gotten me through all of these experiences and all of the hardships in my life is the knowledge that there is a plan and that God loves me.   

I read a blog everyday.  The blog is written by a single pregnant mother who has been told that her baby will not survive her birth.   What she wrote today resonated within my soul and so I share it here.   

She writes.....

But something I am more and more convinced of daily is that we were created with the intention that we would be together forever. We were given all of these deep and powerful emotions; love and compassion and memory and desire... The very things that enable us to maintain relationships forever. We have these things.
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So what happens when time is cut short? When life is taken? When death occurs?
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We grieve.
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Naturally.
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We question. 
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Naturally.
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We want answers.
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But what if the grief that we feel is that proof that we were never meant to be apart? And that longing, that heart break, that "homesick-feeling"... What if that is the proof that we will be together again?
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I mean, we look for answers. We look for God. We look for certainties, because everything is so out of sorts.
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But what if the grief is that proof?
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Proof (through our pain, and our unanswered questions, and our longing) that this cannotbe it. That life was not meant to be this way. That this was not God's original design? What if our pain is the very proof of the very life to come?

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What if the grief is actually part of the hope?

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I've said it before, and I will say it again... I know this world is not our home. That becomes clearer to me every day. This world just can not be it...

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Some days that is hard to cling to... Other days it is all you've got.

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But all days, my hope and faith are in Christ. And that grief along the way? - Oh, it still sucks. Kind of like my stone choice - "Blue Pearl," two words I never want to hear together again...

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Sigh.

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For now, I grieve in gray, and hope in pink, and know that regardless, when I am home, and I mean really home, I will see that the pains of this world were used by God, very intentionally, to make me exactly who I was supposed to be... Even if it sucked while I lived it.

So here I am praying that all the grief and heartache that has been experienced thus far is being used to make me exactly who I am.