How Do We Accept Loss?

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Today I found out that a very young girl, one of my first students when I started teaching, lost her husband today. It was quite unexpected. They are barely out of their teens and have a six month old baby. He wasn’t ill. There was no warning. She was in Wisconsin with her baby taking care of her younger siblings while her mother was in the hospital recovering from illness. Her husband had gone back to Idaho so that he could work and provide for his little family. When his mother went to wake him up for work, he had already gone on to be with Jesus.

Thankfully they are saved. We all know that this young man is in a better place, yet…

There are some parents without their son, some friends without their buddy, siblings without their brother, a wife without her husband, and a precious baby boy without his father.

How do we handle loss like this?

There are so many cliches, so many “Christian” sayings. None of them sound right to me, and I think some would even be hurtful. When you’ve lost someone, you don’t want to hear, “He’s in a better place” or “You will be with him again someday.” You want them here, now.

There are many reasons that people die young. None of them good ones. Sometimes we aren’t surprised because of a certain lifestyle or bad life choices. But this was a good man, a follower of Jesus, a good son, husband, friend, and Daddy. So we can ask ourselves “why” and keep going over everything, around the mountain again and again. We can get bitter, be angry at God, or this fallen world, or whoever and whatever. Or we can… grieve. Pray. Be there for those who are hurting. Help where and when we can. And if we don’t know what to say, be quiet.

I know life can be hard. In fact sometimes it feels like it isn’t worth it, or that the pain will break us.

But I also know this; there is One who loves you. He not only sees your tears, He experiences your sorrow with you. He hasn’t abandoned you to grieve alone. He has sent the comforter to you.

Sometimes the only thing we can hope to understand is this: no matter what is going on around us, no matter how tough things get, God is Good.

Revelation 21:4 (KJB), “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”

(Please pray for this young lady, Elizabeth, and her little man, Gabriel)

Book Review for “All Things Different” -Fiction

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I so enjoyed “All Things Different”. A great emotional ride about relationships, good and bad, loyalty, family and love. This isn’t an easy weekend read, you’d miss most of the undercurrents. The story is told through the eyes of a high school boy. Not a lot of dialogue, but lots of insight on peoples feelings and thoughts. You need to read this one with some Kleenex close by. I give it 5 stars and will be checking out more books by Shawn Underhill.
Still free on Amazon Kindle version.

Review for “Why She Left Us”

I was given this book by the author, David Dennis, to review. The story is written in the form of journal entries by several different characters. I have to admit that at first I wasn’t realy paying attention to the dates of the journals and got myself pretty confused, but once I backed up and started paying attention, it all made sense. The diary format was an interesting way to tell the story. This type of story isn’t my favorite, the ones that show the dark side of human nature, the writing style was good, the use of the diary to give us a picture of the characters was also wonderful. There was definately adult content, swearing and some sexual content, but nothing real explicit. I think if you like this type of storyline, you’ll love the book. I “liked” the story, but couldn’t love it. I give this book 3 stars. (I am quite confident that it will get alot of 5 star ratings).