tBlog - Lessons Along the Scenic Route thru Purgatory

A mother's job is to nurture and protect her children. From the moment that they emerge from the womb, a mother's mind is engaged in the pursuit of their safe keeping. They hold their hand across the street, stop them from running with scissors, pick through Halloween candy looking for razor blades and tell them horror stories about what happens to children who talk to strangers.

You want to see them walk through the door healthy and happy and if by some terrible chance there comes a day when that doesn't happen...you can't just turn all of that off. That is my greatest battle and despite how badly I miss her, if I could glimpse into Heaven and see her smiling face, getting beyond my grief would be a great deal easier.

There have been times when God has shown Himself to me in profound and inexplicable ways. It reinforces my belief and strengthens me. I hope that someday I will come to the place where that is enough. On my refrigerator is a magnet that ALi made. It says BELIEVE. When I look at it I sometimes feel that she has been betrayed by her faith. I allow myself to think it for a minute and then I let it go; because, while I am a rational, thinking human being...I understand that my sight is limited.

When Ali was dying, she asked me if I really believed in Heaven...and I do. I told her that we are afraid of death because our knowledge is limited...much like when people thought the earth was flat. They saw the horizon and were filled with terror, because they believed that they would get to the edge and fall to their death. Only when they got there did they realize that the world was a much larger place than they ever considered.

Life is eternal, and love is immortal, and earth is only a horizon, and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight. --Rossiter Worthington Raymond 1840-1918