Monday, April 23, 2012

Happy Birthday

He has been gone four years and my heart aches still.  How do you carry a child and forget?  I hear his laughter, see him in the yard and watch the drive for his motorcycle.  And my heart is pierced knowing this will never be.  The first year I needed to know... why my son?  Then I knew the answer would never come. And had it, the pain would still be there.

Today is his birthday.  Only thirty-seven when he left this earth.  He didn't know on his birthday four years ago that in a month he would die.  Do they have birthdays in heaven?  I don't know.  But my mother's heart remembers.

I heard someone say today that God can interrupt your life anytime He wishes, because He is God.
And I am believing that this interruption is part of His plan for my life and my son's life.

Jeffrey Mark Hood who is loved beyond words is missed.

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

When Years Pass

Does a day make grief worse?  Perhaps only in the remembering.  Four years is a long time to walk without the one you love and in the knowing on this earth never will there be what you had.  Time does not heal and yet time urges you on and in the onward walk life is found again.  Strange how God can heal a broken heart and give beauty for ashes.

On this day four years ago my life changed forever.  What I have learned is good out of the bad is possible.  He who is sovereign has rained down grace in my life and this sorrow has transformed my heart.  Looking back I see how God urged me on with life.  And I did choose life.  After all I had children and grand children who needed to see that my God I have spoken of so intimately was just as good in the dark as He was in the light.  So we are going forward and this is good.

My life is now what I never thought.  The loss of a husband and a son brought me to a hard place.

He who loves me so much still has a story for me.  A man has come into my life that also has suffered and he loves me.  This is a miracle that God could redeem loss and bring life.

So for Donnie Hood I say you are missed more than words can express.  And the years together were more than I could have ever imagined or dreamed of.  He held my heart for close to fifty years and then he left.  Death is hard.

If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.  1 Corinthians 15:19