It's Been a Day

The funeral was today. As I was sitting there watching all the people around me I was thinking about the oddest things. I realized that funerals are a huge part of the release that is needed for grief. You listen to a thousand stories and try to find words. I love you is heard over and over again if you are blessed. My friend and her family were very blessed. You can tell a lot about the character of a person by their funeral. There was laughter and tears and years worth of memories lived over in a, too brief, moment.
As we sat at the graveside the rain that held for so long came pouring down. And it poured and poured throughout the graveside service. Then as we closed in prayer the rain dried and there was the sun. So it goes with life after loss. There will be moments after moments when the rain just pours in grief... then in comes the Son. I think the biggest key to funerals is just that. When we, as Christians, say 'goodbye' over a gravesight we really say 'see you later.' For us there are no true goodbyes. Soon the curtain will part for us all and He will call us home. I don't know about you, but I am going to run to Him. I believe right behind Him will be face after face last seen through a sheen of tears. For tonight I know those will be my last thoughts as I go to sleep.
Other than this - treasure life. I think we forget this all too often. Don't forget to live it every second, for all that it is worth. Make tomorrow count.
GB

Life meets football

What a contrast today. For days I have been waiting for a painful call and today I got it.
I've had a friend since I was 5 years old. We met on the first day of kindergarten. We grew up together. We cried over boys. Laughed over everything. We spent thousands of hours together. Her family was my family. I cannot count the talks with her mom and dad. The hours spent in the car with them. Trips to the grocery school. Rides to school. Nights spent over. It all blurs past me tonight.
This afternoon her dad went ahead of us to heaven. Even though I have been expecting the phone call for days, when it came I was still devastated. I flash back to 9 years old riding in the backseat of their car listening to him talk. Watching movies at their house. The time I got SO muddy at their house that I had to take a bath before leaving. Walks and talks, advice - love.
The last time I saw him he was in the hospital. And he brightened when he saw me walk in the room. He held out his hand to me. And I just stood there and held it. I got to tell him that I loved him. I knew he probably knew it... but I needed to say it.
So today, on the 25th row, seat 23 on the 35th yard line - Section 103 of Razorback Stadium, I got the call I was dreading.
The contrast is so stark, because I was sitting in the middle of a cheering crowd, looking up at the sky in tears. The game went on as usual. We cheered our team. And I sat in the midst of the crowd and remembered football games in high school, band concerts, dances and a wedding. Some people are so strong and such a force in your life that you don't even realize it until they are gone. And it really still doesn't seem real.
Our team won, barely, in two overtimes. It was a rollercoaster game and a rollercoaster afternoon. Football is not life and death. Teams win and loose every week. Life goes on.
Today will forever be tagged for me as one of my best college football days. And it is the day that earth got a little less satisfying and heaven that much more appealing.
I love you Mr. Anderson. See you there!
GB

It's not what it looks like

I've thought a lot lately about being an "adult." It's funny, to be the age I am currently and still not feel like an adult. I sometimes think that someone is going to put two and two together and realize that I am still faking it! And I often wonder how old you are before that feeling goes away.
No, I'm not old. And many people around me remind me of that all the time. I guess it's a perspective thing. It's who you are measuring yourself against that sets that perspective. So I'm hoping that you really are only as old as you feel. And that means I am young. :)
So lately the other thing that I am thinking about is how weird it is that I am actually about to graduate. Again, at my age people in school are usually on their second masters or a PHD or something. But I am reviling in finally completing this thing. I gutted this dern thing out. I mean stretching a 4 year degree into... well more than 4 years... it's an accomplishment! I will be throwing one dilly of a graduation party at the end of this whole deal. I mean heck, I'm not having a wedding shower anytime soon and I sure as fire am not having a baby shower. So the only party left for the single girl is her first LONG awaited milestone.
So get ready friends and neighbors! Get ready to party like it's 1999 (which ironically should have been the year I actually graduated from college. Ha!
I'm jumping around a bit I realize. But I haven't posted in a while so I have some ground to cover. Lately my other thoughts have been about the useless knowledge that I hold on movies and TV. Seriously, when people come to you to find out lyrics of theme songs, you watch too much TV. I think I need to put that "talent" to some good use. But I have no idea what such a useless talent could possibly be good for! Really I think my TV/Movie knowledge is stored in its own section of my brain. It doesn't seem to be taking anything away from the space needed to learn about the mechanics of psychology. So I think it must be safely tucked away in some region of memory that was designed especially. I think it is the "Cliff Clavin" area of the brain.
Ok that is enough piddling for one night.
Happy Monday everyone.
GB

Arachnophobia

I am not particularly scared of spiders.
I have never been particularly scared of spiders.
However, being pulled out of a nice quiet evening by screaming and walking in to find a giganto spider will make an arachnophobe out of anyone.
Seriously, the spider was like rat sized! Ok, maybe not quite that big. But it was ugly and large enough to requre a full force smash to kill. Ugly enough that my roommate shut me in the garage to kill it. :)
Yes, I kill my own spiders. Well she would have too, but she was the one who had to live through it walking between her feet! I read once that guys don't like girls who kill their own spiders. I am sure that is some kind of stereotype thing.
Rest assured if it is not a stereotype deal, and someone tells me that, I will learn to scream and jump up on a chair. Just like I do when here is a mouse... shudder... shudder... I hate mice.
When I was a teenager I was taking a bath, and a mouse had just eaten some poison out of one of those traps. And it drunkenly staggered into the bathroom and kept hitting the tub over and over again. I had to get my grandmother in to kill it before I could get out. ALSO I stepped on a poison drunk mouse once. This started the infamous broom flogging incident that my family still laughs about. Spiders = bad. Mice = evil.
I started out to write about the huge beautiful moon tonight but I have been completely derailed.
Oh well.
I see the moon. The moon sees me. The moon sees the gigantic spider carcass in my garage.
Night everybody.
GB