Tripping Over Typeset

This week, school began and my life is a crazy mess.

Becoming scheduled and organized makes a mess before it turns around to smooth living.

It’s a jumble of activities, lists and coordinating agendas.

And today, I’m overcome with emotions.

Yesterday, I felt inadequate to write.  What words can I say that can even come close to conveying the enormity of what happens to our lives when evil happens?

I watched as people posted memories, videos, pictures and quotes in remembrance of 9/11.

My life seems small.

Today, I work school in the morning.  I fumble through and try to concentrate but something is eating away at me.

• sacrifice of heroes
• families ripped apart
• lives forever changed

My cell phone rings.  It’s my sister.  We chat and converse, sharing stories and moments of the everyday.  Yet something still eats at me and I can’t quite pinpoint it.

My home phone rings and I now have a phone covering each ear.

The new phone call brings news of one gone from this life and into eternity with Him…no more pain, no more sorrow…yet for those behind, grief begins.

The day is becoming too much and I want to retreat.

Dinner preparations begin and I snap at kids…it’s not their fault.  I’m on the edge –  I know it and apologize.

The evening is full of Bible study and youth group followed by a late night visit to the hospital.

It’s as I’m leaving the hospital that it happens.

I’m scrolling Facebook when it hits me.  A picture posted of my Mom, Dad and brother from Senior Night 1984.

It smacks me in the face and I’m struck back.

Memories flood.  I remember that night.  I hear the sounds of the fans in the bleachers, I breathe the chilly air and the night breeze blows across my face.

I remember and sadness sinks deep…

Sadness for loss –

• for heroes lost and families torn apart
• for a sister who raises her kids without Momma Green
• for a life gone from here but Home with Him

I’m taken back… emotions raw and exposed.  Tears flow like faucets and I can’t shut them off.

I take in the picture again and realize my mother is only one year older in that picture than I am right now.  My heart pounds and I’m cut short.  Time stops.

I hear my mom’s giggle and feel her arms around.  Her kisses flutter on my cheek and she whispers, “Don’t waste this life!”

I look at the ones around me.  The ones I just yelled at because I’m bothered.  I want some quiet, I want some resolve.

On days like today I feel overwhelmed.  I feel swamped, beaten up and trampled in the pile.  Yet in the bleachers, there is cheering and a prodding for me to get up…try again and keep pressing on.

Those who have gone before stand in the bleachers and cheer us on… “Keep going… keep fighting… keep growing…keep loving!  Because in the end, our loss is not so great compared to His reward.  It’s worth it all…He is worth it all!”

And I rise with new resolve.

A resolve to not waste my life… to hold close those who have my heart… cut through the minutia… and most of all, live out His game plan for me.  I will keep going…keep fighting…keep growing… and keep loving because in the end, He is worth it all.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders, and the sin that so easily entangles.  And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. ~ Hebrews 12:1-2