long overdo

I know. I know. Any 'peep' from us is long overdo. If you are even still checking in I applaud you. We haven't even been extra busy. For me, just extra "reflective." Therefore, I am unable to filter what I would like to update you on and choose to not update at all. This is a poor way to ever have any fans but it is the truth. So, new amazing and more frequent posts soon! Promise. In the mean time, please read below. As i always do, I like to post from a friend of mine's blog. It is actually her mother writing. Her words are beautiful and have been one of the true things that I listen to these days. Life will start to beat me up for whatever reason and then I will read an update and all is back in perspective, in God's perspective. Really, I can't write these days because updating you about our puppy whom we adore or our latest new restaurant just isn't enough for me. My heart longs daily....minutely....to just grab the people I love and the people God has placed in my life and just hug them with the biggest hug and hopefully shake into them how much more they are loved by God. I am so grateful that my heart bleeds daily for so many people in my life lately. I feel alive! I feel most alive when my heart feels most like God's. I am grateful that He would allow me to feel to this magnitude. Sorry. Enough of me. Read below and check back soon. I promise it will be light and fluffy.

46 June 24, 2008 at 04:02 PM EDT
June 24, 2008
Megan woke up laughing this morning, but crying another morning earlier this week. I gave her medicine and went to make coffee and wander around the garden to cry some myself. A bright “Heavenly Blue” morning glory bloom greeted me and I just paused to stare at it. Striking in beauty, but fragile and short-lived, I admire and enjoy it in the early morning before it is gone and will trust another will pop open for tomorrow. Nothing lasts forever. Everything dies. Henri Nouwen says that death must become part of our present. “As we break through our need to cling to what we have, what we know, what we possess, we can be liberated by trustful surrender to God. Then our anxiety will not cripple us, but point us forward in joy, point us even to what we cannot predict or fully see, even our own death. Indeed, the New Testament paints a portrait of an eternal life that begins now: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are…Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is” (1 John 3:1-2)”. (Turn My Mourning into Dancing, pg. 102)

I still feel disappointed when the morning blooms are gone so quickly, knowing fully that that is the way of life. Nouwen goes on to remind us that even Jesus cried out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” He quoted the words of the Psalmist who for all his sense of forsaken abandonment, still called upon God. “Absence and presence touch one another. The God the psalmist fears has turned his gaze away is still a God he can address. And will address. The One who seems far from our plea is the One to whom we still turn.”

So I cannot help but reassure myself once again that He is in charge of Megan even though He seems to have turned away some days. He loves her more that we do and is planning her day of entrance into Heaven (ours too). A visitor last week wrote a thank-you follow-up and mentioned the word “love”. It seems to connect everything we do – especially in death. She said, “I don't know what she experiences, what she understands, if anything, but I am sure that even though higher thought functions have disappeared, she can still feel the attention, and the presence of your love”. And the love that we offer is the love we have been shown from our Father in Heaven. And once we have that kind of love; it never lets us go – because we are called children of God. Even in death.

Today one of Megan’s caregivers said, “I love Megan. She has become my best friend and she has never said one word to me.” Her statement struck me and I know this to be true and have watched it happen. The only explanation for me comes from a verse in John that says, “He who believes in me…out of his heart will flow rivers of living water and hundreds of other lives will be continually refreshed.”

I told Megan this afternoon that I was so very proud of her for still being able to spread sunshine to all of us. God is not through with her yet.