Lesson Of Loss

I attended the funeral of Edna Gampp this week, a sister in christ, and have given some thought to the lovely words, music and words of sympathy given during this service. I will always remember Edna's smile, her pleasant personality and kind words.

I want to share the following conversation with you that I have read many times in the past:

Thank you, God, for the wonderful lesson of loss.
The arms of my friends console me, the love of my family surrounds me. The goodness and kindness of my neighbors sustain me like a staff.
Though I am prostrate with grief I am supported, as by a great shining column that rises up within me. I can lift up my head, I can walk upright. I can even smile.
For their sympathy is also like a lovely pool in which I see glimpses of goodness and beauty never revealed before. In it my agony is smoothed, the ache of my heart becomes bearable and will, I know, one day heal.

Surely if human beings can surround and help and support each other in such times of sorrow, then your love, oh God, must be even more great.
I feel your kind hand upon me through the touch of theirs. I feel your promises fulfilled.
I see my dear one fresh and new and whole, free of pain and problems, spared of all distress. I see that dear one lifted up into some new state so joyful and free and ongoing that excitement fills me.
I sense that blessed presence saying, "It is true! It really is. Believe this, oh believe this and don't grieve."
I am enriched by this loss. My faith is renewed. I am a better person for it.
God of our creation, God of our ongoing, thank you for this wonderful lesson of loss.

Remembering the family in prayer and love.

This is my garden, God, this is my garden, my own small precious portion of the earth that you have made.
I will dig and hoe and tend it, I will grub in the soil that is cool and moist and scented with spring.
I will find you in that soil and as I crumble its clods or press these small seeds deep into its dark flesh.
What a joyful thing, the feel of your silent soil. It clings to my fingers, It is hard and certain beneath my knees.
It received my little offerings-these tiny plants, these slips and cuttings, these infinitestimal seedlings, with a kind of blind, uncommenting magnificence. I am a trifle awed before it, I am filled with an amused humility.
How insignificant I am that I should be entrusted with this miracle to come. No, no, the earth will surely reject my arodous efforts, my foolish hopes. Yet I know a happy patience too. Wait---only wait upon the Lord, as the Bible says.
And sure enough. The silent, teeming forces of creation set to work, and soon the miracle has come! Onions and lettuce for the table. Shrubs to be trimmed. The incredible colors and fragrances of flowers.
I think of that first garden where life began.
I think of that final garden where Christ prayed. ("In my father's house are many mansions," he said. I feel sure that among those mansions there are many gardens too.)
How marvelous that man's existence--and woman's--began in a garden. Perhaps that's why we feel so wonderfully alive in a garden. And so close to you.

"I've Got To Talk to Somebody, God" is one of my favorite small books that I have had for a long time and love to read. This book was written by Marjorie Holmes and is for every woman, every day. It is a woman's conversations with God. The above writings is one of my favorites entitled "Garden".