It's 2:15 on Thursday afternoon and I'm supposed to be at a funeral right now. I've never been to a funeral and am not in attendance because I threw my back out this week... but that is another story. My dear friend Robyn and my college roommate for some time, lost her little sister last week in a car accident. She was 28 years old with two boys, 1 and 3. The kids weren't in the car, but her husband was; he survived it and she did not. I don't know the details of what happened or when or how but I do know that she was not killed on impact. As I have thought about the situation often since I heard the news, and have found it hard not to personalize it.
I think about how her boys won't remember her at all. I think about my boys and how hard I work for them and how fiercely I love them and how all I am is funneled into their care and nurturing and that I do all of that hoping one day they will feel that love and believe it. I wonder if she had the chance to say good by. I wonder if she was scared knowing that she wouldn't be there to watch them grow up. They won't ever feel how much she has sacrificed for them and given up for them, not in a way that is resentful but in a way that is empty of self and full of joy. They won't know the extent of the love their dad had for her and although they will hear stories, they won't see it, they won't absorb it.
It makes me grateful for each day. It sobers me with the reality of our frailty and smallness. But it also reminds me of the importance and largeness of what we are called to do. As parents, spouses, siblings and children we are called to love and so we do with all our hang ups and hesitations. We move through life with our heads far away from what is real and what is now and occasionally we accomplish through the grace of God a true moment of love in spite of ourselves.
I'm broken hearted for those boys and their father, but I'm also mystified by the way God works. I know life wins. Right now it doesn't seem like it and I don't know how it will for Robyn, but I know that it will.
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