Greater Reality

I was reminded this morning of the plans we had begun to make about a year ago. Planning with you was so much fun, whether or not it came to fruition. I just loved being such a part of your life and dreams.

I think it was around a year ago when you approached me about sending my kids with you to stay the summer. I was excited and hesitant at the same time. We planned and had things working out. It would have been so much fun: the library, the waterpark, theme park. I wish it had happened the way we planned but God directs our paths in the end, despite all of our plans. It is obedient to go along with his plans, and that is what I have tried to do ever since they got cut short.

Passing time has allowed us to change to how things are different now. We are still sad to have such a beautiful part of our lives vanish, but we are growing with the changes. I don't think I have anger left. I did at first. I said it was so stupid that this happened. It felt so pointless and knowing that I won't know why was frustrating. Then I felt like acceptance was obedience and what God wanted, so I did that. I am comforted when I feel that God knows my pain and he hurts for me.

Some things felt too taboo even to write in an anonymous blog. I remember being so caught up in my sorrow and grief that I couldn't see much else. I was thinking that I would look forward to seeing my sister again, and then I was challenged by the idea that I would rather see my sister than Jesus. I knew I had allowed myself a little too much obsession with my grief. God helped me through that and I no longer feel that way, nor do I feel ashamed at having had those thoughts. I have learned that grief causes reactions in people that would otherwise never happen.

I have to work on being patient with people while they are grieving and with people who do not understand grieving. I am still a relatively quiet, introspective person who is usually slow to speak for fear of saying the wrong thing. It can be a good quality sometimes and sometimes causes me to not say anything at all when perhaps I should.

The fog lifts a little more each day; I can see more of the bigger picture, and it is amazing. I pray that I can live out the word and comfort those with the comfort I have received. I do not understand it all, but I do not need to understand it all to live.

Now, this chapter came to mind this morning as I was waking. What a reminder:

The Excellence of Love

1 Corinthians 13

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body ^[a]to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, ⁵ does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, ⁶ does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; ^7 [b]bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
⁸ Love never fails; but if there are gifts of ^[c]prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part; ¹⁰ but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. ¹¹ When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I ^[d]became a man, I did away with childish things. ¹² For now we see in a mirror ^[e]dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. ¹³ But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the ^[f]greatest of these is love.