June 6 2015

June 6 2015 Greetings My Friend It is once more that time of year I find myself stopping and taking a look back. I don’t plan on it but it comes anyway my nephew Doug died 24 years ago as a young boy on a field trip at school. With time the questions fade such as “What would?” In my mind he is still the 12 year old who left on a school science camp trip. I can’t even begin to form the teenager or the young man he would have been. I try to have anger at the school and it won’t come. It isn’t that I have a defeated attitude it is more like “he is gone, I/we miss him and time has covered the massive pain.” We have pain still but the pain is sad pain, I miss him pain and then with a sigh I let go and move into the day. Mom, Dad and Grandma’s anniversary of their death comes and I do take the “time out” to ponder and reflect. Dad and Mom died fairly young but not at a tender young age. They had their life story and I am able to recall the lessons and of course I am sad because we could not work out all that was between us. Same goes for my brother, I wish I knew how to fix such a struggle in our lives. My brother was young too but had lived to be in his 50’s so his life story is there as well. Doug’s life story was so full of promise and that is the hard part it was so short. He left an impact in those short few years though. Sometimes I hear from kids now adults that knew him and they often tell me what a caring young man he was. That feels good. I think of his sister Mary who was only four at the time and how she missed him, how she tenderly kept going to the casket to touch her beloved oldest brother and later how she carried a picture of him in her little girls purse. My heart feels for his sister and brother. I still feel his mother’s grief, his Dad’s grief. My own parents struggled too and I hurt for this pain again for them. Slowly as I walk through each of these moments I begin to reflect on his cousins grief before allowing my heart to move on. For some reason it is important to me to remember this young man to celebrate in some form the short life he lived. Today’s projects begin to fill my mind and I leave Doug again. I am sad because I am moving on and I am grateful to busy myself at the same time. I also find an urgency to talk about salvation to all I meet. The end will come and we will have had to choose Jesus or not either way we will have an eternity based on our choice. My desire, my love compels me to reach out with the love of the Gospel the best I can. I am not as concerned as I was for years that I may offend someone. I care too deeply to let it hinder me these days. To me I love people so much that I don’t want anyone to find themselves not in heaven walking with Jesus for eternity. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet