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| Gina and family |
Today I am experiencing pure joy because at last the idea took on shape as I read my friend Gina post.
www.anonymitydesireslight.com
I met Gina and family in 1991 in Bolivia, South America. We served with her family at the New Tribes boarding school as dorm parents. She and my daughter hit it off right away as they lived life in the high school girls dorm. These are the things I remember about her.
Quiet...
A reader...
A loyal friend...
Respectful...
One who studies people...
Thinks deeply...
Hurt deeply...
Never drew attention to herself...
A great writer ...
Gina graduated the same year our Tara did, came back to the states, went to nursing school.
She and her husband, now have four children, a full plate. But life happens and it draws Gina into writing not only about past life but the today. Her father died about six months ago and her raw, honest, deep pondering thoughts made their way from her heart to her blog. I have read several books and blogs on grief but this women words have caused me to think outside myself about dying and death.
It's been two years this past April since my Mother died and the grief has taken on different roles. So much of Gina's insight has put words to my heart feelings. In her July 26 post titled, Slow and Steady she made a statement, only 6 words about grieving that lit up my heart.
God is not in a hurry.....
He also is not afraid of disappointing us.
When I feel disappointed by God, it’s because at that moment there’s something I’m longing for more than him, whether it be healing, employment, a child, a wife. As good as healing, employment, children, and marriage might be, none of them will come close to satisfying me as much as God himself.
Psalm 34:10, “The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.”
Wait a minute God, what is the "good thing". It does not feel good to lose a love one. Paul helps us have the proper view of what that good thing is in Philippians 3:8 , I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
Knowing Him is the greater good, not just knowing about Him but actually knowing Him. He is the only all-satisfying good, the greater good. Those we have loss are not coming back to us but here is the good in our loss. If we know Christ we will see them again but even deeper than that we will see Him. Some cannot get past losing someone, they become stunted in their growth, sometimes become a recluse, their life defined by their loss instead of being defined by Him.
Gina called it right, God does not get in a hurry. He could have created everything in one day but He took seven, I mean He is God, not bound by time or pressure to hurry by anyone.
Someone ask me the other day about how long has it taken me to grieve my mother. Oh, I said, I am still there. Just recently I found some pictures of my mother with our daughter lying beside her grandma, just a few days before she died. I had not seen them…it stunned me, literally, she looked like she was dead yet I know she was alive then. I transferred them to my phone so I could study them, that did not work. It caused such mixed emotions in me. I don’t remember her looking so bad. Then I look at the picture of her in her light blue coffin, in her red plaid blouse that she loved so much and she looks alive, well sort of, but not like death. They puffed her face up, put make up on her, combed her hair, put soft lights on her, she looked pretty but those nine days before she died, she looked dead. But here is the greater good, I will someday see my Mom again and it will not be earthly lights that will transform her face but the light of Jesus. No more sickness, no more pain will cloud her face, just the glow of His love for her.
