Days of Rest

                     The walk is done and went well but I needed to shut down for a while.
The Out of the Darkness walk went well for us and in spite of only a month of planning we did good. I have been resting my mind since it was completed and have realized that this was much harder on me than I had thought. The struggle within is much more than I am not a planner or organizer it is that I have lost a son. The actual planning and organizing was the easier of this task because of the afsp director who helped in so many ways and the volunteers and family who made this happen. Now in the after days I am dealing with what brought this walk to be in the first place ~~ my precious son who is no longer here . This time of year is always hard on us as a family . While others are planing and thinking of the upcoming Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings we are in a different place. Whether we want to deal with it or not it arrives in a stronger more palpable push.
 You see my mom passed in October the same year my son left me . She left just two months before him taking a piece or two of me with her. The reality of that had not even sunk in and then the phone call and the horrendous blow of my handsome, and amazing, life living son was gone. I do not sit and dwell on this day after day as some may think,it forces it's way up and in my face many times .  I choose to live life. I believe life is for living and I want to live it just as that thought had come to me the very night I realized my son was gone and by his own hand. I still believe that thought was a gift to me and maybe God forced that thought deep into me that night as my son knew it in reality from his vantage point above . A gift from the Giver of life and my son I believe .
  So I have been resting and praying and studying the Word of God in these last days since the walk. But the rest is not without memories of my loss and the time of year. I still look forward to family together and the gift of these lives in our children and their life living and who they are. I am so very blessed ! I am so very thankful!  And yet deep within I am so very hurt and so deeply pained and struggling with Zeb's not being here. My mom is greatly missed too and this time of year is hard without her too. Moms are precious and so needed in every day life. As I settle in to this time of year with the cold and snow and all that will soon be upon us here in New England I must draw from the strength of support I have to get through. Already my mind is planning and thinking of  that night and the way we now hold a vigil at his grave lighting candles, talking of what we love about him and being together doing a more positive thing than sitting alone with our thoughts and memories of the way it went down. Some of us will make snow angels for him and mom that night. We take pictures and each year  plan some new thing we can do to memorialize yet another year without him.
And All the while we cannot believe another year has passed with out him , without mom.
    Prayer is an awesome thing and we pray and we sing even and move past that night with sadness but also joy they a family can meet in a cemetery and feel life where one would expect to feel death. We know that mom and Zeb are not there. Their spirits are not , their bodies yes. So we go to their bodies resting place to rejoice even in our sorrow, our dread, for we know we will one day see them again . We are believers in Jesus Christ and his resurrection power so we see beyond this worlds graves. John 11:25 says : " I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in Me will live, even though they die; ...  Our mom and our Zeb believed and so we know that one day we will see them again being believers in the Jesus Christ and his forgiveness of sins and his in dwelling Holy Spirit when we come to him for his power to forgive and remake us.
   Some may believe differently and that is ok but for us our salvation is in no other than Jesus Christ himself .