To quote Dickens, it has "been the best of times and the worst of times".  I am embarrassed to admit that it has been quite a while since I have last written anything of significance.  However, this past Summer has necessitated putting my thoughts down.  In part for my own need for clarity and in part to pay tribute to some amazingly important people in my life.  A good friend of mine encouraged me to write some things down not only for myself but also for my rapidly growing little boy, knowing that at the root and heart of who I am is a writer.  Writing has always been cathartic for me and I love that my friend knows and values this about me and urges me to do so, even when it's been easier for me to escape into life instead of paper.  So, here it goes.  My best attempt for the here and now.

The past two months in many senses have been amazingly good.  I've gotten to watch our little boy Aaron grow and change and reach those life mile-stones that are so pivotal to any parent.  He's only just turned 10 months but already he is walking everywhere and into everything.  It's been such a great joy to watch him thrive and discover life with new-found independence, even if it's meant my toes have been kept hopping trying to keep after him!  He has been an incredible amount of deep joy even in the presence of great sorrow.  The beginning of August saw the sudden departure of Ken Massey from this life into the gates of Heaven.  To me, He wore a myriad of hats.  He was my youth-leader, my foster-father, the man who discipled me and taught me so much about God and my position in Christ.  His life as well as faith and investment into my own life helped forge my own passion for the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, or, as Ken would have put it, "the Great God of the Universe".  Did that mean that we always saw eye-to-eye?  No, but that does not negate or demean the fact that I loved this man as one loves a father.  Men, myself included, are far from perfect.  We live this life but a vapor in the span of eternity and we fumble in our humanity and falter with mistakes, misunderstandings and our own ignorance and pride.  We should learn that in the Lord only, when we are weak HE alone is strong.  Our true place in Christ is one of humility, acknowledging God's ways and thoughts are higher than our own.  There is no amount of theological training, no amount of Christian service or "doing" that can EVER attain to the scope and magnitude of our God.  Men are men.  God is God.  We should never reverse that order.  We are to acknowledge our limitations, yet we are also to forgive as we have been forgiven, love as deeply as we have been loved, serve not to our own selves or interests, but to the glory of our King, who alone is triumphant and exalted.  Yes, Ken left a legacy of passionately serving God and always pointing the way to Him.  He bragged on Jesus every chance he was given.  I will miss him more than I can say.  All I ever had hoped to do was to make him proud.

Thus ushered in September.  Just one month shy of her 90th birthday, my grandmother, Wilma Pabst, passed away as well.  A friend of mine reminded me of what her name means.  In Dutch, "Wilma" means: "resolute protector".  It's English origins mean "determined protector".  My grandmother, to me, was very much that.  Throughout everything I have experienced, through all the ups and downs, my grandmother had always been there.  In many times of doubt and uncertainty I NEVER had to question whether or not my grandmother loved or supported me.  Her love was unconditional.  Even at times when my own was selfish or demanding, her's never was.  She was a force of stability on which I clung to the value and love for family even when as a young girl my own was so fractured.  She was strong and tenacious, kind and compassionate.  She instilled within me so much good.  A love for the outdoors, for animals, for the farm, for creatures that were otherwise unlovable.  Yes, even a large accidental turkey (she received him in a litter of chicks) and fighting roosters.  Together we nursed many of these misfits back to health.  We would sit with them toweled in our laps in her living room on the farm, seated on the couch or my grandpa's recliner.  Sometimes we would talk, other times we just enjoyed being together.  I also fell in love with old Audrey Hepburn movies.  I learned embroidery and how to play dominoes around her dining room table.  I still have a cheese cloth with an embroidered rooster we worked on together in my kitchen drawer.  I also learned how to drive a stick-shift out in gopher-infested pastures and to climb trees, as well as scale a barn roof much to the dismay of my grandmother.  Times spent on Grandma's farm were precious moments as I look back now.  I was afforded the opportunity to just be a "kid" to Grandma.  Everywhere else in life at that time had forced me to grow up faster than any child ever should.  There is no doubt in my mind my grandmother loved me, or that I loved her "to the moon and back".  To say I miss her is wildly understated.  I am so proud and thankful that she got to meet my great joy, my little boy Aaron.

So, it's been a full two months of introspection, of loss and grief and of joy too.  The reality of grief, at least for me, is that it alters one's reality.  There will never be a moment where these two precious individuals are met again this side of heaven.  I have found myself pilfering at times through boxes in a desperate attempt to locate just one coveted photo or two with it's ability, much like a Rolodex, to transport my mind back through precious memories, special times, important moments.  You see, God used my Grandma and Ken to help shape who I am today.  Honestly, I'm still discovering who exactly that is.  Their passing and the disruption it has caused in life for the present has brought a good amount of introspection that has taught me a fair many things - good things.  One is that growth should always be a life-long process and, as God reminded me through our pastor's sermon on Sunday, should never become static.  If anything my Grandma's and Ken's passing has solidified within me a deeper desire to know God more, to continue growing, changing, and discovering.  I want to be pliable and teachable.  As much as I would love to have the answers to all my questions in life, and believe me, there are many, it is simply not for me to fully know.  However, I rest in the assurance that I am fully known and seen by my God.  He has not forsaken me and He has not stopped working.  He is the same today as He was yesterday and will be tomorrow.  In times of loss and rapid change He is a powerful constant.  In all things, even those things for which I lack understanding, I can trust fully in my God's large and encompassing hands.  As Ken had directionally been a spiritual rudder so to speak in my life and my Grandmother had been the glue, so God has always held all things together and still does.  For me, for this day, for the past two months, that is enough.