Here

I feel like the words have been taken from me.  Buried in heavy silence and too afraid to resurrect.  Photos make me break.  I'm scared to look, to really look.  To remember.

Girls Night.  Sheila, Di Anna, Stephanie and Christy.

How can you know when you sit and laugh with loved ones, that in a moment, in a word, things change?  The first friends you made in a brand new life...have moved away.  Or unthinkably.  Passed away.  And the only comfort you have is in knowing that you knew every moment you had with them was an immense gift and not a one of them passed you by.  That, and the hope that there will be an eternity of moments ahead one day...an eternity that will swallow up this life.

It would be easy for me to get stuck in those past moments.  To clutch those treasures so tightly that I miss every single gift the Present has to offer.  Settling for emptiness, eye candy, mere things, the
styrofoam of life.  All bulk and no weight.  Because it's too hard to let go.  It's too hard to love and lose.  It costs too much and the risk is too high that I'll ever find that treasure again.

But I remember the words you said, dear friend, as your insides were dying and your spirit grew bright like dawn.  Words like a nail in the cogs of my brain, catching every time my thoughts turn round.
Bringing me to a halt.  I will never have this moment back to trust Him.

So I will live.  Moment by moment by moment.  I will learn to let go so I can embrace what is here.  Here is the only place I can love Him.

September 21, 2011.  A teary-eyed picnic.