When someone you really love is about to die, you think about things differently.  You think about things in the way you should always think about things.  With warmth and purpose.  So many in this world are afraid of death – afraid of the pain, afraid of the separation, and afraid of what will come next and the uncertainty of it.

The thing most apparent is that life means something.  We have a reason, a purpose for each day and some days we just ignore it.  Be busy, but be busy loving the people close to you.  Anything less just isn’t worth it.  Any other busy is just noise.  Any urgency that isn’t grounded in relationships with the other human beings here is fruitless.

When love is real it does not end.  The ability to express it may, but true things last forever.

What matters is our souls and their connections to each other and the Deity that reigns on high.  He cares and loves and waits for us, unconditionally.  He gives and gives and gives.  He sacrifices and he deliberates.  He gave his ultimate treasure, His Son, to us to save us and He watched us kill him.  But when the Son of God died He took our sins with Him.  He gave us that gift.  A gift is something you can’t earn.  A gift is something given freely in love.  All we have to do is accept it.

Those of us who have will be saved.  Death has no hold up on us.  Death is but the beginning of forever.  For the subject that has accepted the gift, death is not bitter, it’s sweet.  Those of us left behind feel both.

But I choose to focus on the sweet.  I choose to focus on the joy that is knowing another grandparent is on her way to where she belongs.  She’s on her way to meeting two of her great grand-kids she never got to hold here.  She’s on her way to peace.  She’s on her way to the One that never let her down.  She’s on her way to endless love.  She’s on her way to her Savior.  And she’ll be there when we get there.

God takes the best ones first.  I’d want her with me, too, if I was Him.

“Do not fear, for I am with you.”  I don’t understand much, but I know that not many things rival knowing that someone you love is going to a better place.  You don’t know faith until you feel something as strongly as this.

And in death, there is beauty.

 

Beauty

Beauty is an 87 year old woman

Laughing at my stupid jokes

Beauty is her smile

Even after all the prods and pokes

Beauty is her holding your hand

Because she needs you there

Beauty is a little woman

With faith and white hair

Beauty is a daughter

Massaging her mom’s feet

Beauty is family united

In celebration, not defeat

Beauty is in a struggle

Because it means so much

Beauty is knowing just how many

Lives she touched

Beauty is a life lived

Full of quiet, genuine love

Beauty is knowing beyond a doubt

That she’ll be looking down from above