Changes

Once again, death faces me in my thoughts and memories. On April 14, 2015, my spiritual papa, Bob Lichty passed away. About a three week warning with just being diagnosed with lymphoma, a small stomach ulcer and a small hiatus hernia. His body continued to get weaker and ended up in the ER. After a pet scan and a cat scan, they found a perforated intestine saying he needed emergency surgery. Paul and I headed to Williamsburg, barely making it there before they took him back for surgery. He was supposed to wake up, but the next day, we needed to say our good-byes.


So, once again, I face changes in my life. Changes that I would have preferred not to have to deal with but changes. As I look back and reflect upon this past year, Bob and Vicki were very much a part of my settling in Virginia Beach. Almost all the holidays, birthdays, etc. revealed photos of them joining us. Markings on the calendar of them spending a day or two or however many days they would stay. A week in Myrtle Beach over Christmas, memories of mine and Paul’s first anniversary in Nags Head with Bob and Vicki coming to a couple of nights.

Once again, my life has changed. When there is death, life is around the corner, but yet, I’m still looking and waiting. New life, as some like to say a ‘new normal’ but I myself don’t like those words.

There are still boxes that remain unopened from my life altering moments of deaths before. Stuff that still needs to be sorted through, but yet, they remain unopened. Probably a reflection of one’s life with all that we live through, it is the way we deal with life and compartmentalize our lives. Full of stuff, some good, some bad, and others that we wonder why we kept at all.

Purposely and intently needing to set the time a part once again for sorting and making sense of a life that God has deeply touched, but yet, needs continued healing.

All during this same time period, we had workers here siding and fixing up our house. As they side the house and make it all pretty, it is still the same house. All the changes have not changed the location, the shape, or what it is. It is still a house. It still functions. It has just been fixed to preserve the life that it has and for the purpose the folks who live in it.

Some changes are good and some changes are bad. But it is what we do with the choice that we have to face each day. God has given us life. He gives us grace and strength in times of trouble. On the outside, we may look as though nothing has changed but on the inside we may be crumbling to the ground, looking for answers to make sense of the path that lies before us. While yet, living life to the fullest.