I tend to look for signs. When God tries to tell you something, He usually doesn't hit you on the head with a rock (although sometimes he does). He mostly will send you a sign.
- A dish falls to the floor for no reason and reminds you of an aunt whose dishes you loved as a child. Three days later you hear of that aunt's passing.
- You accidentally call someone a name from your childhood, and you hear news from that person the next day.
- A squirrel runs across your path on the way to work and you suddenly decide to take a different route. Then later that day you hear of the accident that might have been you if you had driven your normal route.
- You suddenly have an urge to flip through the TV channels and end up watching a show that helps you solve a current problem in your life.
- A bird lands near you, looks up at you, and sings a note so very pure that you know your life is on the right path.
I believe all things happen for a reason. God talks to us every single day, but we don't always listen.
God usually tries to prepare me for bad things. He'll send messages to me from the lips of others, from nature, from television, in dreams.... He loves me and knows I suffer when I lose those I love, but when it is their time, it is their time. When it is my time to leave this life, it will be my time to leave this life, and I will have to go.
When it is my time to change this life, then the change will come. I can choose to prepare for the change, thus making it easier, or I can choose to wait and let the change yank me out of my comfort zone. Not pleasant. Either way the change will come.
When God wants you to make a drastic change in your life, you can easily do it yourself, or you can wait until your circumstances force you to do it, but it must be done.
It is hard to leave your comfort zone. Leave the support system you have built over many years. Leave the things and people that you know and love. It is difficult, but sometimes it must be done. People must leave, and we must accept that.
Most of the time when people leave this life, they really don't want to leave. They'd rather stay awhile longer, but I believe when it is your time to go, then your task here is done and you must leave.
It is easier for those left behind to accept the leaving if it is by God's hand, but sometimes people leave this life by their own hand. This is hard for me to accept, but I try not to question God's will. It is not up to me to judge because I know my own life could easily turn to something terrible enough to make me want to leave it. But for the grace of God, go I.
I've personally known more people that I care to think about who died by their own hand. The very first person I knew who did it was not a friend of mine or a family member. It was my Mama that he knew.
When I was a young girl, back in the 1960s, a male friend from my Mama's childhood visited her. He was tall and nice looking with a ready smile and a pleasant manner. Mama had not seen him since they were children. That bright sunny summer day that I met this man, he and my Mama were in their 40s or 50s.
We all sat on the front porch and drank iced tea in tall glasses. Mama and the man talked and talked and talked. They laughed so much remembering things that happened when they were young.
The next day that man took the lives of his wife and his three children, who were all close to my age. Then he took his own life.
Mama was devastated. She could NOT believe he could have done that. She cried and cried and nothing we did could comfort her. She wailed at the loss of her childhood friend, and then she wailed at the loss of her belief of who he was. She became horrified that she had let him sit on the porch with her own children. She said he could have killed all of us, and she was horrified that she had trusted him.
Eventually the grief passed, but Mama was a little more wary of trusting people after that.
Later Mama learned that he had visited all the friends he loved most before he killed his family and himself. He wanted to see his friends one last time, I guess. Everyone was so glad to see him. Not a single one of them thought him capable of doing what he did.
Not a single one.
That was a season of loss in Mama's life. She had several such seasons, as do we all if we are fortunate enough to live to be old, but this season of loss disturbed her the most.
Yes. The past few months have been a season of loss in my life. A winter of unprecedented unwanted change. In the past six months I've lost two brothers, a life-long friend, and a friend and neighbor that I will miss very much.
But I know the spring will come. The sap will rise. The flowers will bloom. I will sell my house this spring and move back to hill country...mountains. I will keep all my present friends, but also make new friends and live a new life. I will grow and learn. I will make mistakes and I will have unexpected success.
Life will go on without the people I have lost these past few months. I know this from all the other seasons of loss I've had in this life. I will miss them terribly, but my life will go on. Until we meet again...and we will meet again. One fine day. When my time has come....
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