I didn't stay over....

at the Harry Jerome Track last night. I was in bed by 1 a.m. .....sleeping whilst my team mates weathered the cold night air and the constant wind. I trust it settled down by the early morning hours for them all. I managed to sleep in until after 8:30. Woke up with aching joints and sore limbs, nonethless.

I still haven't heard the financial results of the Relay for Life but I'm trusting they made a pile of cash.

Today we just did errands after we went for breakfast.

The breakfast conversation consisted of thoughts of the man who used to sell his wife's baking at the Farmer's Market here in town, Bill Ewashko. Bill died last year of cancer. Husband and I recalled going to their home to pick up some of his wife's great buns and bread, stopping in for a chat and them telling us about their daughter having cancer too. She died this week.

I don't know about you, but I'm not sure just how folks manage to pick up the pieces of their lives when they have such tradgedy. I know God sustains us....somehow. I've been there. But a husband AND an only daughter.....well, that is what we talked about over breakfast. When we think on these things, wondering what would happen if those kinds of things befell our family, and when we wonder about the hows and whys, we say "no, I could never survive that, nor would I want to!!!"

But you know what??? We do survive. We do go on. Somehow, within the deepest part of our being, comes tiny shards of hope, like the first slivers of light at day break. There is a different look to the sky just before sunrise. There are no rays, just an ability to see things around you a bit more clearly and then as the earth progresses on its path, the first rays touch the tips of the highest buildings and trees and then it shines full force, right into your bedroom window.

That is how I could describe facing the pain of death. It's like God only allows our hearts to take in minute amounts of pain at a time, slowly (probably to allow us to get the details of funeral and burial over with)....ever-so-slowly and then in a flash, it hits you full force, hard enough to blind you. Well, you're blinded with the pain for a time but as the sun rises and the earth continues on it's path, away from the sharpness of the noonday light, it becomes less harsh once again until it reaches the softness of the night.

The earth may make it's orbit once every 24 hours, but the pain of death can make it's orbit every 24 seconds..........or less........

I'm glad that God lives in that beating, inner part of me, the part that offers the hope of a new day...of a new moment.

Sometimes a moment is all we can handle.