Thursday, October 23, 2014

Life instead of death...


Today, marks two months exactly since the day Brian died.  For two months I have mourned his death in every way imaginable almost every minute of every day.  Today I want to remember his life.  I want to think about something good.  I want to remember him and not the tragedy, the injustice, the horror, the disbelief or the loss.  Those things are still here but so are the memories of who he was in life.  I don't want my memories of him to always be about his death.  There was forty-one years of his life too.  So today - I will think about and laugh about and write about his life.
Brian was my youngest child of three.  He was goofy and fun as a child and always kept us laughing. He had a great sense of humor and was a great source of amusement most of the time.  He was a funny child and grew into an even funnier adult. 
He ran track in high school and was one of the star runners but as an adult he was not big into sports.  For a while though he got interested and loved the NASCAR races -- just long enough to get my husband hooked.  Thank you for that! Apparently, also passing his love of cars to Paxton as well.  Talladega was Brian's favorite track.  His driver was Tony Stewart.  He liked his attitude.  For Donald’s birthday this year he bought him tickets and took him to the Talladega race.  He had never done anything like that before.   It was a good day and such a sweet and thoughtful thing to do.
He looked very young for his age.  He was 41 years old and still looked pretty much like he did in high school.  At 35, he would easily pass for 20.  He got great genes from somewhere and he just never seemed to age.  And because of that he had the illusion that he would never look old and he was definitely not a fan.  It was kind of his claim to fame that someone was always thinking he was still a kid.  He had his oldest child while he was very young and at the school when he would go to check him out or meet a teacher he had to show I.D. to prove he was really his dad.  They looked more like brothers than father and son.  He still got carded when he went into a club and could not even buy a pack of cigarettes for my elderly aunt without showing I.D.  He told the 19 year old girl behind the counter as she asked for his I.D.  "I have got a son your age!" 

He loved his work and he was very good at it.  He was always amused at the truck owners that would come in and see him working on their $150,000.00 truck and ask “Who is that kid you’ve got working on my truck?!  I’m paying you for an experienced mechanic and do not want some kid messing around under my truck!”  He would sometime have to show them his driver’s license to prove his age or all of his certifications to prove his many years of experience. 

His biggest claim to fame were his practical jokes and he would go to great lengths and plan for months for his next big joke and he could get very creative.  No rubber snakes for him.  He pulled out all the stops.

At work, he has glued his bosses desk drawer shut or took the wheels off of his desk chair to watch him shove himself backwards and hit the floor.  He once pulled a co-workers stereo out of his car, rolled his window down and sprinkled broken glass beside the door - the co-worker hit the roof thinking someone had broken out his car window and stolen his new very expensive stereo!  Brian and all of the other guys were literally rolling in the floor laughing.

April Fools’ Day was his favorite day of the year and he could pull off some doozies.  Most all of our funny family stories centered around one of his infamous practical jokes or the resulting paybacks for one of his practical jokes.  One year he took sidewalk chalk and wrote on my daughter’s roof in letters four feet high – SEE ROCK CITY  --April Fool’s Day 2002.  It was huge - you could have seen it from space!  All of her neighbors were stopping their cars to look at it and laugh and take pictures.  Another year at 7:00 am my daughter’s neighbors were calling all upset that she was moving!  She said, “I’m not moving?  I don’t know what you are talking about.”  They said, “Then what is the For Sale sign doing in your yard?”  He had borrowed (…stolen) a Real Estate sign and put her house up for sale in the middle of the night!  He has taken a weed eater and cut enormous “Crop Circles” in our back pasture leaving my neighbors mouths gaping with wonder.  But probably his most infamous practical joke was when I came in from work to a supposedly empty house and found what appeared from my hallway to be a man leisurely reading the newspaper on my toilet!  It totally scared the stuff out of me!  Once you got right in front of it you could see that it had no head and was just his jeans stuffed with newspaper and a pair of his tennis shoes with a newspaper stretched from one wall to the other and taped but from my hall – it looked exactly like a man sitting on my toilet!  Another time I came home one April Fool’s day to my living room and dining room completely reversed!  All of my living room furniture had been set up completely in my dining room - rug included and my dining room furniture set up in the living room.  I took his house key after that. 

Until the last few years he and I had always been very close.  Anytime he was upset about anything or things were not going well in his life –we talked.  He, like me, had insomnia and he was a one on one kind of person.  As long as there was anyone else around he was never serious so most of our talks were in the middle of the night.  Before he and Kara married he was divorced for twelve years.  He spent a lot of nights at my house talking.  I knew his inner thoughts, his dreams and his fears because we talked - a lot sometimes all night long until daylight.  I knew what he believed in and why.  I knew how he felt about God, raising children, his hopes, his dreams, what he felt about marriage, his love for the bible and his fascination with the prophecies.  More than either of my other two children – we talked. 

He loved dogs but did not always have a great deal of patience with them.  On the other hand he had all the patience in the world with his kids.  He was a very loving and dedicated dad and his kids could do no wrong.  They played together and did everything together.  After his wife left and took his kids he almost lost his mind.  He only had his children four days a month and he made up his mind early on that those four days belonged to them.  He had 26 other days to work, clean the house, go out with friends or do laundry but on those four days - they played. 

He took them to movies or he rented movies and popped popcorn and they watched them together as a family.  He took them to the park, swimming, hiking, to the laser show, to Six Flags, to the lake, on picnics, to the beach, to the Tennessee Aquarium.  They rode bikes, they built things together, they played games.  He learned to skateboard, he had tea-parties and he even played with Barbie dolls.  I called him one Saturday afternoon and asked what he was doing he said, "Something I never thought I'd be doing - I am trying to button these ridiculously tiny buttons on a Barbie doll dress! I just hope and pray none of the drivers at work ever hear about this I will never live this down!" 

I recall an exchange he laughed and told me about when he was trying to learn how to put pigtails in his daughters hair.  One day he had fixed one pigtail only to have the ponytail holder slide right back out as he gathered up hair for the second one - In his frustration at the baby-fine hair that eluded him, he told his daughter, "I think I might need to wet it a little bit first." in her
frustration she answered him with, "I think you might need a girl!" 














He made sure they always still had their same rooms as they had before the divorce because he wanted them to have that security, stability and continuity in their life.  He learned cook so that they had regular meals.  He did laundry.  He redecorated their rooms for them when they asked.  He was both mom and dad to them for twelve years.  And he wasn't a bad mom but he was a really great dad.




Thursday, October 16, 2014

Justice - is not like Burger King, you cannot have it your way...





People wonder that I am not angry at Brian.  I think most people expect me to be and I know when my sister lost her husband to a heart-attack she recalls being illogically angry at him for leaving her.  According to the Grief Share program we are attending that seems to be a pretty common thread.  And maybe those days will come when the devastation of the deep loss lets up some but so far I haven't really been and I guess it is because I have never been able to believe he did this. Could Brian have been suicidal?  Yes.  Absolutely.  It is the murder part that does not make sense.


In the Grief Share program tonight we were reminded that God chooses our time to die and He knew it before we were even born.  That is something to think about that maybe in the near future will bring me some comfort.


It's funny when you look at things from a different perspective how the way you view the outcome can be so different from your initial take on things...


I had been really upset by the unfairness of all of this.  For sixteen years Brian was literally tormented by his ex-wife after they divorced and yet at my insistence and constant reminder that "vengeance belongs to God"; he always did the right thing.  But during the time of his divorce I have seen him to the point of suicide several times because of all she took from him.  I have talked him off the ledge many nights as he paced the floor at my home until daylight.  She took his entire life from him and I watched as it slowly ate away at him.  His life, his innocence, his ability to trust in love changed forever.  I used to try comforting him by telling him: "There is a God and vengeance belongs to Him." and that if he kept doing the right thing he would someday see justice as God righted those wrongs but "only in God's time."  The first spark of anger I had was the thought that God had allowed this to happen and where was the justice in that?  By all accounts, it appeared I had told my son a pack of lies for years.  As I looked over in the Memorial Service and there on the front row --sat his ex-wife.  My child is gone, and there happy and healthy sits the one -- that took his children and everything he had from him and made his life so miserable for more than sixteen years. 


In the beginning although I did not have anger at him; I had anger for every person that had ever hurt him.  I had anger at gun distributors, I had anger at God; mainly over the fact that in my faith I had lied to Brian all these years.  Then tonight the lady that leads the group said, (like I had never heard it before) "Your loved ones are in Paradise tonight."  Now on some level of course I knew that and several people had said it to me before but it just sounded like a trite consolation prize.  But tonight - I guess God opened my eyes and ears and let it sink in and the first thing I realized was -- there really was justice after all. 


It did not come in the manner I expected but it seldom ever does.  But there is Divine justice in the fact that all three were together in Paradise sitting at the right hand of God.  Resting in joy and perfect peace where there is no more pain emotional or physical while she was sitting on the front row of the church just like the rest of us --facing her own mortality in a sinful, evil world that is fading fast. 

Maybe her justice comes in staying while his peace was found in leaving?

Monday, October 13, 2014

What exactly --could be worse?

I had a very full day today.  I actually went in to work again and I definitely can see the benefits to getting your life back to some small semblance of normalcy.  Afterward I went to the hospital to see my sister.  She had a rough weekend with the dreaded "fever" 103!  She was better today thank God.  So I just visited a little while, picked up her dirty clothes and ran home to wash and dry them so that I could send them back clean with her husband when he got in.


I finally got a therapist to return my call.  She actually tried to talk me into going to someone else because she didn't have an opening until next Monday and she did not think I should put it off.  It has been six weeks and she is the first one that has returned my call - I'll take whatever she has open.  So I have an appointment next Monday afternoon.


The Sergeant at the Sheriff's office emailed me that the autopsy was back and that he wanted to see me so that he could discuss in further detail "all" of my concerns.  He said Tuesday was the only day that he had any time available so I had planned to go back and meet with him again tomorrow but he has never responded to my email asking what time.  So much for that... 


I'm quite sure it will be another wasted trip anyway where he assures me that he did everything he was supposed to and that we would never know the answers to all the whys but that it absolutely was a murder suicide and thank you for coming.  We are done here.


Wasted trip or not, I will go because I will do whatever I can do to get any closer to the truth. I remember after that first week when we were all going crazy trying to make sense of all this - my son in law asked me to please stop searching for answers.  He was afraid the answers that I might find may just make it worse.  How?  What could they possibly tell me that would be worse than this? 


What could be worse than them saying my son killed his beautiful 29 year old wife and their precious baby boy and then himself?  What could be worse than everyone in the free world thinking that my son is a murderer?  What could be worse than my knowing how very much he adored them and was absolutely not consciously capable of this and yet "this" is the official determination that we all have to live with?  What could be worse than not knowing what to say when someone says "Oh my God, what happened?"  Or in the case where they already know --"What was wrong? What was going on in his life?  He must have had a lot on his mind.  Had he lost his job?  Was his wife leaving him?  Was he depressed?"  And I always wonder if they actually believe any of these reasons would justify "this"? 


What could be worse than living in a small town and knowing everywhere I go people "know" and are pointing and staring at me until I am uncomfortable even going out in public in a town that I have lived in over 20 years?  What could be worse than having the people that have been my friends, my co-workers, my church family and my neighbors for many years - actually avoid me now because they do not know how to act, what to say or how to be with me anymore? 


What could be worse than having the coroner be so judgmental and have such a negative opinion about my son that she is rude and downright cruel when she talks to me about the death of my child because clearly she thinks that he "deserved" to die?  And I guess by virtue of our being blood relatives that we all deserved to have lost our family and do not deserve any compassion or respect. 


What could be worse than knowing that my son, up until that day, a loving and dedicated husband and father - was not even placed with his family in death but in separate states to be separated for all eternity from the wife and child he adored?  What could be worse than knowing we, as his family, were not to be a part of the Memorial Service for the daughter-in-law we all loved and the baby I had loved and nurtured since his birth?   


I would stake my life on the fact that my son did not consciously do this but I absolutely know that we, did not and yet we have all been punished as if we are all guilty of this horrific tragedy.  So, really, what could be worse than this?




  

Friday, October 10, 2014

"Suicide prevention line - Please hold..."

It has been several days since I have posted.  It has been a really crazy week.  My sister had the stem cell transplant yesterday and there has been an enormous amount of preparation in order to get ready for that.  I have not had time to post or do much else for that matter. 


She is in the hospital for now and I feel guilty that I did not go today.  I hated leaving her there alone but she is in good hands and is getting excellent care.  She had so many there yesterday we could hardly jam them in the room and today she is alone.  But I just could not go.  I feel like I am just before a total physical and mental breakdown and I am having really scary thoughts.  So I stayed put today.  I wanted to just sit here alone and scream and cry if I chose and not have to put on a happy face for anyone and not have to "do" anything.  I just wanted to feel what I feel and have no responsibility today.


Tomorrow - I will do better.


I have called about getting some counseling for the second time.  First time didn't work out so well.  Got put on hold, then got an answering service and then no one ever returned my call...not sure why I'd even bother again.  Great plan - like putting you through to voice mail on the Suicide Prevention Line???  And I don't know when I think I'm going to have time to go but I'm going to try before I completely lose my mind.  Maybe I can find a counselor that can see me between the hours of 3:30 AM and 5:00?  I'm free about then...


Things do not seem to be getting much better.  I did have four days in a row last week without a melt down --but we are back on schedule now.  I am still struggling with my faith and trying very hard to hang on.  We went to the second Grief Share meeting last night and then a friend sent me a YouTube video sermon by Rick Warren after the loss of his son to suicide.  It was almost a word for word confirmation of last night's session.  I did get one take away last night that stood out to me and I thought was really great. *** We worry because we question God and ask "why?" because we feel somehow that that is wrong and if we were really Christians we would not question or ask why - they said "But Atheists don't worry about that.  Only someone that fears God cares about what God thinks about what you say or do." ***  I thought that was pretty good.  Never thought about it like that. 


I don't know if it is helping my grief or pain at all but it does seem to be ministering to my feelings of doubt and hopelessness and Lord knows I need that and sadly, I do not seem to be able to get it anywhere else.


The video was great.  Here is the link http://youtu.be/gaQ_oTp7tKY if anyone is interested.  It is long - but worth it. 


I was headed back to bed this morning at 5:30 with some serious dark thoughts and decided I would check my Email for the Blog and had a very kind Email from one of my readers that had been through a similar experience.  She has no idea how much that helped. Just hearing about the similarities in the way the investigation was handled, the legacy that was left so different from who they really were and the stigma attached to it that makes it even more difficult to live with. It made me not feel so alone in this and gave me hope knowing she lived through it and came out ok on the other side of this.  Thank you for taking the time to write.

Monday, October 6, 2014

How long?

Tomorrow I am actually going to "try" to go back into the office for the first time.  My baby sister is coming up here to sit at the clinic with our sister that is scheduled for a bone marrow transplant on Thursday of this week. 


We are now renting a house twelve miles from the bone marrow clinic and my sister and her husband moved in it with us back in July.  The BMT treatment center requires that she live no more than 30 minutes from the clinic because should she get a fever of 100.5 we only have about thirty minutes to get her to that treatment center or she could die - no pressure there.  I am absolutely heart-broken over my sister facing a life-threatening disease like leukemia and a daunting year-long (also life-threatening) treatment. I am also her designated care-giver which requires about six hours a day five to seven days a week sitting in the BMT clinic while she goes through heavy doses of chemo-therapy, gets blood transfusions, platelets, fluids, antibiotics etc., it also requires: that she be in as germ-free an environment as possible because she is so subject to infection, monitoring her extensive medication regimen and preparing her meals a certain way so as to not expose her to chemicals or bacteria, getting her prescriptions filled and driving her to the clinic, doctors, the hospital and the cancer center for procedures and as if that were not devastating enough, one month into this year-long treatment --I lose three of my children?


Needless to say, I have not been at my best where her care is concerned and she has been caring for me most days instead.  I am so not mentally, emotionally or physically where I need to be in order to be all to her that I need to be.  And the transplant is Thursday and that is where the real challenges begin.  I feel useless and cannot do one thing about it.  Most days I don't feel like I can hardly put one foot in front of the other.
We went to the first session of a 12- week grief seminar last week.  I don't know how much it will help but we are desperate for something. 


There were maybe a dozen people there.  We watched a video on the stages of grief and some of the things that we could expect to experience.  Looks like I have finally found something I am doing right.  Except that my "stages" seem to jump back and forth and sometimes come all at the same time. Unfortunately, no where did it say when this would get better.  No where were there answers to all of my whys.  Mostly, though we said very little, these were the questions on my mind....  The scary thing was that the lady running the seminar had lost her son almost four years ago and she and her husband, though better I'm sure ---were still crying.  That was not encouraging.


I did have four days last week in a row that I did not cry.  That was something. 
It has been six weeks since we got the awful news.  And six solid weeks that I have woke up every single day at 4:00 A.M.
August 23rd, the day before my children were all found shot to death in their home.  Saturday morning at 4:00 A.M. I sat straight up in bed from a sound sleep and burst into uncontrollable tears for no known reason.  It would be Sunday evening before I discovered the reason...and I have been waking up at 4:00 A.M. ever since. 
How long --I wonder will that go on? 


How long will I just be carrying on life as usual and suddenly burst into tears in Walmart when I pass the toy department; the shoe department; the baby clothes or the Halloween costumes? Oh and as of late it is also included the drug store, grocery store and even Tractor Supply...


How long will I be working along and my phone will ring and I think --"Oh that's probably Brian." and as I reach for the phone I realize - It will never be Brian again?


How long will it be before I stop looking for text messages from Kara with the video of the day of Paxton to add to my treasured collection?


How long before I can walk into a public place and not feel that everyone in there "knows" and is staring at me and fight the urge to turn and run out?


How long before I can walk into my living room and not cry over the sofa pillows?


How long before my mind and body stop acting like I have just found out making me constantly relive the worst day of my life - over and over and over?


How long before I can stop flitting back and forth between screaming, crying and raging anger?


How long before I give up trying to find the answers to how and why this happened; turning scenarios over and over in my mind to find that none of them still make sense?






How long until I stop feeling like God has a grudge against me?











Friday, October 3, 2014

Time marches on...

It is October, always my favorite time of year.  It usually seems forever getting from the sticky misery of August in Georgia to the cool crisp refreshing relief October brings.  This year it seems like it has been one really long week. The days turned into weeks without my notice and now September is a memory. That seems impossible.

The world has pretty much resumed business as usual and I have made a halfhearted attempt at rejoining life as much as possible.

Leaves are already changing and fall is coming on early this year.  Normally I am looking forward to Thanksgiving --my personal favorite holiday.  At the hospital yesterday the magazine I was killing time with had recipes for Thanksgiving meals.  That  normally would have caught my eye and been good for at least a half hour of time-wasting in a waiting room planning and dreaming about our holiday meal. Instead it made me remember last year.  The first Thanksgiving in over twenty-five years that I did not cook!  Being my favorite holiday it was tough to give that over to someone else but doing all of the holidays had gotten  pretty tough and I was really wanting a break.

Kara, like me, loved to entertain and volunteered to try her first big holiday.   We all agreed to pitch in with a favorite dish but she did the hard part and baked the turkey and agreed to have it at her house. Our family is pretty big (17) and that is no easy feat. I could not believe at her age she really wanted to tackle that but tackle it she did! And did a great job and truly seemed to enjoy it.

The turkey was the best I'd ever tasted; tender juicy and delicious. She was so proud until at the end of the meal when she discovered the bag of giblets still in their paper wrapped and cooked thoroughly while tucked neatly into the fold of skin at the neck! She was embarrassed and looked like she might cry until we all said we should have thought of that years ago if we'd known it would have made it that good! Then we all started laughing and telling her that made for a great family funny story to tell at every Thanksgiving from now on and assured her it was still the best turkey we'd ever had!

The table was set to perfection.  She had worked for days. Only a mom that has done this for forty years can appreciate all the work and all the love that went into that meal.  It made me very proud and made me feel that our family holidays would carry on.  Something I had worried about because no one else had ever wanted to host them and I was getting old and tired.  Probably forty years of huge family holidays accelerated that process.

I really was amazed at a 28 year old taking on such a big family and though she said she was nervous she pulled it off and made it look effortless.

Thanksgiving will mark the first of our family holidays without our whole family. My favorite holiday, my favorite time of year -- forever marred. As I understand it the first year is the hardest. Because of all of the "firsts" that you go through with an empty place at the table. Ours will not be "an" empty chair. Ours will be an overwhelming emptiness as three empty chairs leave the table and our lives - feeling like a dark hollow cave.  One...any single one of them would have been devastating - all three? - There are no words that can come close. How do you find a "new normal" with that? There is nothing normal about such great a loss.

Brian, our funny, cut up, keep everyone laughing kid. The one everyone gravitated to; the practical joker; the family goofball. The center of all the funny family stories...

Kara, the beautiful breath of fresh air that was graciously blown into our family bringing love and laughter not only to Brian's life but into all of our lives...

And Paxton, our funny, wild, energetic little surprise baby that taught me so much about what was really important in his short sweet life...

It is going to be difficult to feel Thankful this year - but we must because we still have precious loved-ones with us. I so wish we had been more thankful for all we still had last year.




Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Feeling grateful

After having one of the worst weeks yet tonight I am feeling grateful. Grateful that I am able to have hope and grateful for the love expressed by so many in so many different ways.


Last week was melt down after melt down, screaming, raging, throwing things and fierce intense anger like I have never known.  This week God has seen fit for some unknown reason to show me such love, understanding, peace and comfort.  He has allowed me to see His love and kindness through the efforts of His people. Things that have been done by co-workers, church members, family, friends and even total strangers --have literally blown me away. 


I have continued even six weeks out to receive sweet uplifting cards, texts, emails and calls.

My Supervisor has communicated with me through email some of the kindest most uplifting messages of devotionals, love and understanding.

My Department, my company as a whole and the department that I worked for the previous six years have all three sent a wonderful meal every other night for this week through a company called "Instead of Flowers".  I had never even heard of them - but that is the greatest idea! My co-workers have volunteered to donate PTO to me if I needed extra; they have taken a lot of my work to give me time to grieve; they have called, emailed and texted. A friend and co-worker in another department has visited, brought flowers and made my favorite muffins.  And yesterday I actually got an angel in the mail!  Another co-worker's mother had hand made me an angel doll.  It is so beautiful and so special to me.  (And actually that is the second angel I have received in the mail.)


Kara's mom sent me a memorial necklace that held some of Kara and Paxton's ashes. A beautiful way to keep them always close to my heart.  What grace that took!  While I do not believe what they say about what happened  - it is all she knows and yet she was so thoughtful and kind as to do something so special for both me and my daughter.  I will treasure it always. 


Last Saturday my daughter's Sabbath-School class sent me the most beautiful and thoughtful "Comfort" basket filled with an abundance of lovely thoughtful items; a soft cuddly throw, a beautiful new coffee mug with 'Peace... Fall into the arms of God.' on it, inspirational books and books with beautiful photography in them, a daily scripture  dispenser,  wonderful chocolate covered cookies, flowers, picture frames, candles and everything you could think of to pamper me, fill me, inspire me and bring me peace and comfort. And I do not even know these people! 


Sunday I found one of Paxton's "Binkies". 


My daughter has done so many things for me until I cannot begin to even name them all.  Besides just being loving and supportive, she and my son in law took on the awful and gut-wrenching job of overseeing the clean up of Brian's house.  Making trip after trip over to get Kara's things out to send to her family, take the kids in to get things that were special to them, remove garbage, clean out the refrigerator and freezer, get his bills and make a million phone calls to the appropriate parties to get the business stuff taken care of.  All things that had to be done that I was absolutely incapable of taking care of. 


My sister who is sitting here awaiting a bone marrow transplant has listened to my ranting and screaming and crying and held me and cried with me daily and when I should have been taking care of her - she was nurturing me and listening when I know at times she wanted to slit her wrist and bolt to the nearest exit.  My brother in law has come in from working all day long and cooked dinner for us.  My brother after working all week long went over with my husband to cut the grass at Brian and Kara's home.  My youngest sister drove hundreds of miles leaving her own home, her family and her job to stay by my side during that most awful week of my life and many times since.


My own church family providing tons of food, paper goods (and yes, even toilet tissue!) drinks, ice, and one even offered to bring us an extra refrigerator if we needed one to hold all the food!  There has been a steady stream of calls, emails, texts, cards, and gifts as well as the prayers and endless hours sitting with us through that first awful week. 


People in my community that I do not even know have sent cards and money and have offered up prayers for us.


My three closest friends have taken time from their jobs their families and their lives to come long distances to be with me.  And they are still checking on me - trying to help me get grief support and counseling.


My sister's church family bringing lunch to us one day and providing dinner for us another as well as cards and the little angel pin for my pillow.

I am absolutely overwhelmed at the love people have shown us. 


Even in my darkest hours when I called on God and could not find Him; when I was unable to hear His voice or feel His presence He was working to take care of me.  When I was so angry, hurt and disillusioned until I, like Rachel, refused to be comforted, He sent His people to carry me.


What an awesome God we serve!