In a heartbeat

In a heartbeat your world can change. While trying to be sure grief didn't get the best of me and drag me down. While staying in motion, mission minded, with a focus towards being useful for my Lord. While striving to capitalize on moments with family - both sides - over Mother's Day especially in light of facts that my grandmother seems to continue to struggle. ...all of the efforts or momentum from just the conveyor belt of life abruptly stopped last week. My mother-in-law entered the gates of heaven quite unexpectedly for us. 

In one moment her heart beat. The next it stopped. And we all seem to be still trying to grasp this (yet another) new reality. I mourn. And the rest of the family mourns. And, specifically my husband, his sister, and his brother mourn. Although we know our mourning isn't without songs of joy and praise (because we are firmly assured of her presence being with our Lord and Savior today), we are immensely sad. 

We stand in the waking of this new reality and firm reminder that our days are numbered. It is firmly pressed upon us that there are so many things that we worry and stress over that are very non-essential. We recognize that our security by God's grace is sure and we should be resting and joyful in all the walks of life after moments like these rather than be so easily pulled off course by the things that all too easily distract and irritate us. 

Mostly, I wake to another stark contrast that this broken world presents when compared to all that our Lord is preparing for His children in heaven. The world yearns for a Redeemer and only the redemption that He brings. Praise Him that He has made that way. Praise Him for all the promises that even yet are to be fulfilled in the consummation and replacement if this broken and aching world with a new one.