December 6th 2012
Dear diary, just kiddin'
I had the most wonderful night at my children's school. Angels Aware is my new favorite Christmas program! If you missed it I'll lone you the dvd, because you know I ordered a copy!
This past year has been the most excruciatingly painful emotional chaos I never wanted to experience! But that is right were our loving Lord placed us. I lost my best friend in January and my three young children lost their hero and daddy. Kenny Johnson was the most loving and devoted man. Everyone said he had the best smile and that he gave the best hugs. There just aren't enough words to describe how wonderful he was to me and his three children and all his family and friends. With all that said God numbered Kenny's days at 11,762. He was 32 years old when he died.
You can't, as hard as you may try, understand another person completely! We can however relate to people through similar experiences. People yearn to be understood and when we find those who can relate to us we tend to trust them more than others. I know I felt so misunderstood by everyone when Kenny died. I couldn't even understand myself and the plethora of emotions that clouded my every thought. The only person I truly felt comforted by was the one person who had suffered the loss of her husband in the same manner as mine. Misery indeed loves company!
That very same truth was sung out tonight by a choir of beautiful little children. God, the creator of everything, came down to His creation as a tiny baby. He lived through good times and bad, in sickness and in health. He experienced pains and joys, He knew love and he knew hate. He suffered through life because of His great love for us. He knew we would never feel like we could trust a God we couldn't relate to. His plan was to suffer through all the things we suffer through so that we could know He understands because we wouldn't believe it any other way!
I love that about our God! He is the only One who does understand you and me completely. How could he not, He formed us and knit us together.
He is truly amazing and I was so struck by the message in the children's Christmas program and the truths that they spoke and sang so freely. When the kids and I got home my youngest, Josiah, started to cry. He said, "Mom I forget dad and the duck, I don't want to forget them." Josiah is 4 and well, there isn't a whole lot I remember when I was 4. I don't know why that happens, God knows.
By the way the duck is a friend we discovered at a park one day who was not at all afraid of us and followed us everywhere including to the parking lot as we were getting ready to leave. I took a picture of the duck so the kids wouldn't forget him but Josiah remembered that I said we might forget him. there's a play on words for ya! Remembered that we would forget, anyways....
How strange that a 4 year old would even recognize that he was forgetting someone he loved. So we got out my laptop and looked at some old video's of them with their daddy. We looked at pictures and we looked at cards and letters and we laughed and we cried. Yes we did this all on a school night. Sometimes you just have to live in the moment.
But something wonderful happened. We saw how far the Lord had brought us, we pondered what Jesus suffered and we rejoiced for His unfailing love for us. That is an awesome thing to happen to a broken family in a dark and sinful world. There is nothing more important than seeking to know God more and discovering His love for us! There will be an end to this life and my children know that better than some adults now. We know life is but a vapor and that the truly important things in life aren't the things at all but the people and the relationships we nurture and grow. The most important thing is faith in His love, without that we are lost!
Lord thank You so much for what You have done. You have creatively and wonderfully worked out this miraculous plan to save us. We don't deserve You! You created us and we like children became arrogant in our thinking and decided to do things our own way instead of Yours. We messed things up over and over again and You still came and made a way for us to be forgiven and to be reunited to You. What a love story!
"...Death doth hide,
But not divide;
Thou art but on Christ's other side!
Thou art with Christ, and Christ with me;
In Christ united still are we."
