This is unfailing love!

 When I was 6 years old I stood up in a Baptist church in Junction City Kansas and answered the question the pastor had posed of: "Do you know what your favorite scripture is?" with Romans 3:23 "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." ( I don't think he was really asking; I think he was making a point of do people really read and retain the word.) And a gracious older lady stood up behind me and said: "I'll follow that with: Being justified freely by his grace though the redemption that is in Christ Jesus!" There was laughter in the congregation. It is the FIRST memory that I have of church.  Later that year I discovered that redemption and became a Christian.  It has been a long, twisted, stumbling walk but He has never left me and never let me forget that I need redemption now just as much now as I did back then! 

When I got the call that Roy had died in a house fire February 14th it was hard to bear.  But even today as I sit and ponder life, love and the pursuit of happiness, its Ann's death that is still what brings me to tears.  I cry.  Still.  Mom has died since Ann's death, yet I can manage the milestones, the birthdays, the holidays the every day life without the liquid eye meltdowns.  But I can hear a song that transports me to a time, a memory, a moment with Ann and I can't help myself.  I cry.  Still.  I'm crying now.  I wonder if I’ll ever stop, or if I even want to stop, like if I stop crying will she be gone from my memory…from my heart.   I know that’s silly, of course she won’t.  But there are so many memories of daddy that I have to sit and think, try to remember his voice.  Lately it has been only the one bad memory that plays over in my head, from February 1979 that happened right after my granddaddy died in house fire just like Roy.  He asked and I forgave him…moved on.  Maybe it is just the situation being similar that has dredged up those old memories that I thought dead and buried. 

I know God loves me.  I know that He knows me.  I’m just not sure why I’m walking though this now.  I’m looking for the lesson so I can learn and move on.  My new job takes me away from church, family, my life here, and my home.  It’s only a 13-week assignment and I am entering week four.  I can do nine more.  I just miss everything, my friends, my church, my family, my cat, and Ann.  Some things will still be here when I get back, for everything else I’ll have to lean on His grace to see me though.   I do know one other thing to be a sure fact in my life; isolation opens up creativity!  One day, I’m going to have a house like Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings where I can sit and stare at the water, or my fruit trees and be free to write, or paint!