Goodbye...for a while, dear Melissa

This morning we wake up and Benno reads the emails...Melissa is in the hospital...

We chat with Linda on Skype and wait, and reflect...

We go to church, and reflect...

As a congregation, we are standing and singing.

Pastor David has spontaneously begun to sing a worship song...

Oh oh oh oh... here we stand,

arms open wide;

I am yours, and you are mine ...

I immediately have a picture of Melissa, standing before her savior, arms stretched out, as His are stretched to her... Arms open wide--as He is receiving her into His presence, His arms open wide, where she can finally rest from this so arduous journey, from all the sadness, all the loss, all the physical and emotional pain that she has endured--all the mental confusion; and as His arms enfold her, she can finally be at peace.

To Melissa (on your leaving)

Together we have all traveled with you

on your path of pain

This arduous journey now closing

The path so long and difficult

Together through all the rough and rocky places

we have held each other up

each in our own way

some close by,

hands holding

lifting each other up

feeling love’s burden so heavily

directly upon them

but carrying it

and we, so far away feeling the pain

in a different way

but knowing that God hears all the same

And now we all come to this place

standing at the very edge of eternity

with you

as you wait to be released

into this other reality

at this place

where our paths now diverge

from yours

for a time

we know, at this place,

it is the time to let you go

to say our farewells

for a time …

For we know that when

this earthly tent

we live in is taken down

we will have a house in heaven,

an eternal body made for us

by God himself…

Corinthians 15:1-2

Wendy

12:50 p.m. our time we hear that Benno's 22 year old niece, Melissa, has passed on, six years after being diagnosed with cancer. We mourn, but not like those who have no hope...