We sat and looked through years of pictures we have taken throughout our nineteen years together.
And something hit me and nearly took my breath away.
Sometimes love and pain live in the same vein.
Many of the pictures included people who are no longer with us. Each new season of photos brought emotions of love but also searing pain in the remembrance of lives lost. While many pictures show celebrations, achievements, new life, and growth they simultaneously elicit feelings of loss as life moves on with each picture but inevitably leaves someone behind who does not move forward with us.
I was overwhelmed with a powerful emotion of pain and love. Of gain and loss. Of life and death.
The reality is that just as life is enriched by presence it can be devastated by absence.
Grief is an ever changing emotion.
As we looked at the pictures we remembered the lives of those we have lost. The way they laughed, the words they said, the waves of impact that ripple through our lives to this day.
I don’t know whose pictures you are in but one day they will look back through and remember you. What will they say? What memories will make them laugh? What memories will make them different? What memories will draw the to Jesus? What memory will be powerful enough to give them a hope of a day of restoration?
Because of the death and resurrection of Jesus we have hope in a day where all that was lost will be restored. A day where we will be reunited with those who have gone before us. A promise of a life that will no longer be burdened with death.
I am thankful for the pain the absence of those I love brings. It is a reminder of their powerful influence in my life and the love they left behind.
Sometimes love and pain live in the same vein.