July 24

Four years ago.....

It is amazing how a room doesn't change. The feeling, the colors, quite possibly even the air feels and smells similar all the while unaware and unresponsive to those who enter and exit.
We were here with mom then. I sat in the same chair and looked into the same bird cage....an egg that hasn't hatched during all this time. We were perhaps naive then...new to this process and journey. Boundless hope in all that this world might offer, do this, sign that, go here, go there....and it is all good until its not.

And it wasn't. I don't walk into this room jaded nor discouraged but rather realistic. Realistic, I think as being defined as being much aware of the possibility of different outcomes other than what we might wish for. Realistic being much aware that statistics only matter for those on the winning side of the statistics. Realistic having experienced both the deaths of my mother and my only daughter.

Realistic in knowing in every part of me that heaven is very much real and that death is not the finality of our time here.

This room reminds me of this world that tries to lull us into thinking that everything stays the same, all is well and will always be...but those are just facades nicely arranged and decorated. And when our time here ends, it stands ready to greet the next person, unchanged, unresponsive to the living world that it surrounds. Perhaps if we decorated a room that reflected the true journey of the people it houses the reality would be too severe. It would cause us to face our own possible mortality instead of purposefully assuming that we control all of this.

However, we do know Who controls it all.....and in Him we can find rest in the palm of His Hands covered gently as with the softness of feathers.

Thankful for the feathers today......