Hope

Dear Friends,

A continued thanks to you for your prayers and emails. I've considered not posting and even thought about closing down my blog, because to me, blogging should be fun and light-hearted, but then I reminded myself that what we are going through is part of life. There are mountain tops and valleys in each of our lives.

I do want you to know there are parts of each day which feel lighter and more hopeful for continuing on in some sort of normalcy (as much as possible considering...). There are times when we fall apart and the pain feels too much to hold in our hearts. I know this is a part of the grieving process, and it will take a long time. I know our lives will never be the same...a part of each of us died when Poppy died. A piece of us went with her. That's just the way it is. Someone told me our lives will never be the same, but we can live again. I know this is true.

Poppy's mommy (our middle daughter) and her two other precious girls (our granddaughters, ages 13 and 11) all live with us now. We are tightly woven together, helping one another survive this ordeal in our lives.

So while we continue this journey of loss and healing, please know I'm going to survive it....it's going to take a very long time. Thank you for being here with me during this time. It means a lot. I could not make it without the hope Jesus gives us for eternal life with Him. We have a little angel waiting there for us....

Thank you

Dear Friends,

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all your messages full of love, prayers, sympathy and hope. This has been the most painful time our family has ever gone through, and we will be going through it for a very long time yet.

It still seems like an impossible bad dream we wish to wake up from. How can our little angel of 1 year old no longer be here? How can we see her little hand prints on the glass, find her toy under the couch and find water still in her sippy cup....but she is no longer here? How can we still be here trying to go on without her and she is resting in the cemetery heavily laden with flowers and tokens of love, only a mile away? How could this even happen, and why?

Our hearts are broken, our laps are empty, and we did not know our bodies could continue producing steady streams of tears for over 40 days.

Once in a while on a sunny afternoon, we feel maybe we will be able to go on...forge ahead in our lives and feel like living again...then it hits us all over again.

I know God is with us. I know He loves us. I know He feels our pain and offers His comfort. I could not manage without Him...none of us could. We still hurt....we still deeply miss our Poppy Jo....we still feel overwhelmed with confusion on how this could happen. There is no explanation. No answers.

Somehow we must go on, even if we don't feel like it. We really have no choice.

One thing I know....heaven seems so much more wonderful now, and as for this grandma, I cannot wait until my time comes to go be with the Lord, live with Him and see our little angel again. Until then.......I wait.