Hello, and welcome to another blessing Sunday. Traveling with me on this path are
Lynda Lambert who shared the idea with me, and
Abbie Johnson Taylor

Today is our eldest daughter Karley’s earthday birthday. She was the victim of a homicide in 2007. The killer was never apprehended. He wanders the face of the earth, and Karley’s life was snuffed out.

The loss of a child goes beyond words. It rips at the fabric of all we believe to be good and right. It violates the natural order that the parents should be the ones to die first. I once met a hospital chaplain who’d also lost a child and formed a support group called Sisters of Eve and Mary. Indeed all mothers who’ve mourned a child are members of this sad, but somehow binding, sisterhood. There’s a connection there that is strong beyond words.

Despite the many years, the pain of the loss is still very real. Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, it never goes away. Birthdays are reminders. Mother’s days, though happy occasions, are always tinged with great sadness, because there will be no call or card from her like she used to do when she was among us. And there’s always the strange aura Of what might or would have been that lingers every time I think about her. All moms I know who’ve gone through this say likewise.

And yet, God gave us the gift of her presence among us, and I will be forever grateful for that. I would be so much less of a person if she hadn’t been a part of my life. I hope in some small way the same might be true for her as well. And sometimes, there are those precious fleeting moments when I almost feel she’s here, dropping in to say hi. A puff of cigarette smoke, a familiar-sounding voice or laugh, the lady who looks so much like her it makes you catch your breath–a fleeting but awe-inspiring moment in time where the veil thins, worlds touch, and love is expressed.

It is true what Alfred Tennyson said. “It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

1 Cor 13:
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part,

10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.

11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.

12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.;

Happy earthday birthday, Karley. Say hi to Jesus for me. And know that though it brings me joy to know you’re with him, I still miss you mightily. But 2 weeks ago we celebrated His resurrection here, and that gives us hope that renews every morning.