April showers

Oh April, How I wish you would just go away!  Have I shared how much I dislike this month?  It has seen the most pain for me.  I lost my dad on the 21st in 1994, I lost my mom's mom on the 20th in 2001, need I go on?

I can always feel it coming, March finishes up and I feel the dread, the foreboding, the grief starting up.  I know in my heart that this day/month has been created by my God and it is good, but man do I struggle with living like it.  It almost sneaks up on me, I feel sad and I don't know why, and than BAM!  Yep it's April!

Does sadness haunt you?  Depression?  Fear?  I thankfully don't struggle with these things daily like I have in the past, but this month I am.  Truthfully the reason, what am I dreading more than normal? my nephew who was born in April is having his birthday on the 21st this year, so I'm going to my brother's home.  The one he died in, the one I have NO good memories of him in, to celebrate my sweet nephew's birth, on the day my dad died. Seems silly to those of you who haven't suffered loss, get over it I bet you say, deal with it?  Not on this day, the memories come flooding back the visions of death that this visual person (that's me) sees.  I see the semi hitting my dad, crushing his body, freeing him to be with Jesus.  I see, I hear in my mind the shot that killed my brother, I see him fall, never to rise.  Those are my memories of this day, this house.  And I must be there and be happy on that day.  And wow is that I tall order for me.

So there it is, out here in the open.  And I feel better, knowing someone somewhere will read this and be like AMEN!  Why is this stuff so hard?  Why do I have to continue doing what I don't want to do?  I don't have the answers to those questions, but I do know what God has given me in his Word, here is what I'm praying for myself and my family who on both sides are struggling with tough stuff this month.





Eph 3:14-21 For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.