Jealousy

It will be 4 months tomorrow, and it's hard to believe that much time has gone by. The last week and a half has been the hardest since the funeral. On July 16, Ryan's grandmother passed away. We were with her as she stepped into eternity. I have recently read a book where the author states, "suffering and loss make life a little less sweet and death a little less bitter." This statement is so very true. You know that your entire outlook on life has been flipped upside down when you watch someone pass away, and you find yourself being jealous of them. When she took her last breath, she was stepping into the presence of our Savior and my daughter. I desperately long for the day when I can do the same (don't worry- I would never cause that to happen). His grandmother's funeral was extremely difficult; all the raw pain and emotions were multiplied. I felt like I was experiencing Macie's funeral all over again.
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Besides the funeral, we are also dealing with some extended family disagreements, a conflict with a neighbor, and to top it all off, Macie's headstone still hasn't been delivered and set up. A dear relative told us to look at these circumstances as God given distractions. These trials force us to take some of the focus off the intense pain and direct it elsewhere. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how distracted I will be with Maice's birthday approaching. August 10th should be her 8th birthday. Please keep our family in your prayers as we approach another difficult day.

4th of July

We are now home from our trip to Michigan, but before I get into that, you need to see this amazing picture below. I wasn't paying much attention to the date when I took it, but I later realized this occurred on June 27th (3 months after Macie left us). We were enjoying time as a family, watching the kids catch lightning bugs, when this beam of light appeared. It stayed for about an hour. We couldn't tell where it was coming from, but it was shinning near the accident site. The trees in the picture are in our back yard near the creek. This is the east side of the house, and the sun had already set in the west. It is hard to see how pretty it was from the picture, but there were beautiful rays of pink, purple, and blue.

Back to the trip...It was very relaxing and enjoyable. The kids had an absolute blast. It was refreshing to watch them smile all the time. We spent most of the time at the lake where Ryan's family camps during the summer. The weather was a lot colder than we expected, but the kids didn't mind. We still went out on the boat, and the kids even went tubing. It seems like Kaylee is trying to fill the role of the dare-devil now. She loved tubing and wanted to go faster, but Jordan wanted to go slower. The hardest part of the trip was watching the fireworks. Macie loved fireworks and the 4th of July (it was one of her favorite holidays). The day before we left, we went to Grand Haven to show the kids Lake Michigan and watch the sunset (too bad we missed it when we were looking down, cleaning the sand off of the kids feet). Kaylee was really cute; she had to pack some sand to take to Macie. She put together a little jar of sand and shells for the cemetery. Ryan and I felt guilty most of the trip being so far away from her body- I know that seems silly, but we both had this urge to be at the cemetery. We know that she was in our hearts everywhere we went, but we still felt like we were leaving her behind.

On our way home, we went to Chicago to take the kids to Shedd's Aquarium. They were having fun, but we were all ready to get back home. As we were leaving, I took some pictures of the skyline. There were rays of sun peaking out of the clouds, and it was beautiful. Macie always called them "Jesus clouds."

We were so glad to finally be home, but the knot in my stomach returned. Being surrounded by all of her things and pictures again, brought back the reality that this is permanent (at least on this side of eternity). So here we are now, continuing to walk in faith everyday.