Iron

Dear Carter,

I have to admit it.  There are some days when I simply can NOT wait to get to church, and there are others when I tend to drag my feet.  There is a pattern here, and typically the dragging of the feet is because I just know that I'm going to be reminded of your funeral.  On the other hand, some weeks this is welcome because it's the last place that I felt like we were really "with" you. Sometimes I don't even understand how my crazy mind works!

Our lesson in church today was about how we can be compared to a piece of iron.  Some may think of God as a hammer, or an axe, or a saw....just trying to form us into what he would want.  The piece of iron will withstand those tools, so instead we should see God as a tiny flame. It may take some time, but that tiny flame will GENTLY bend the iron.  Isn't this just so true? Sometimes it may take more than a tiny flame to mold me to do what He wants, but hopefully He is patient with me.  I also have to say that losing you didn't feel like a tiny flame to me, but God knows what he's doing.

I started to think about how God has placed certain people into my life, knowing that even if they may not help to "mold" me at that moment, maybe they possibly could later in my life. It became even more obvious to me as I was going up to get my blessing, and found that my High school counselor was the one who would be giving it to me.  If you didn't know it before baby boy, I was a bit of a trouble maker in High School.  I got bored, and decided that I didn't need school during my Junior year.  My High School counselor did everything he could to help me to stay in school, but I was just too stubborn (and maybe a bit lazy), and instead missed most of my Junior year which I had to make up during night school in my Senior year.

So here he is, fifteen years later, and he gave me a blessing today....and I was remembering the long talks we had about how you can't give up.

You just can't give up.

And those words affected me more today than they did back then.  I kept on remembering his positive attitude, and how he would tell me that he believed in me and he knew that I could do it. Not that I feel like giving up on life (no panicked phone calls please), but more like I want to give up on trying to be unselfish about wanting you here with me....about not being angry that you aren't here.

Although he certainly wasn't talking about my journey without you, it felt as though that was the case as I was reliving those conversations today.  Today, he had no idea who I was as I received my blessing and walked back to my seat, but he somehow gave me a much needed pep talk.