Someone I Loved Died

Picture me sitting down in front of my little silver laptop and cracking my knuckles over this page. Ah, where to begin? I feel like I've experienced an entire lifetime in the past month, but how do I explain it when I am yet still processing it?

Found here
On December 12th, I lost a family member--my uncle, my mother's brother, the father of my 3 teenaged cousins. He was only 10 years older than me and 13 years younger than my mom. The loss is devastating.

The funeral was a week before Christmas eve, smack-dab during the most wonderful time of the year.

It's very hard to make merry when you are in the midst of that pain, even for a follower of Christ. While there may be joy in the season, there is sorrow of the heart with the knowledge you won't have a chance to see a loved one again in this life.

And it was exactly as bad as I always thought it would be to explain death to my little guy. We've shielded him from that harsh reality of life up to this point, but there was no way around it. He knew Uncle T, and he understood the conversations happening around him. Of course during our short discussion, the dreaded question came: "So will you die, Mama?" I managed to keep it together until I left the room.

Ugh.

I have some great pics of the kids from the holidays that I'd like to post, but I can't do that without first acknowledging that this Christmas was a very hard season for my family.

Here's to 2016 being a year of hugging loved ones close and finding joy. I continue to say, "Truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken." (Psalm 62:6)

If you ever need a resource, our preschool minister provided the book Someone I Loved Died. It's an age-appropriate biblically-based explanation of death and going to heaven for the believer in Christ.