Today I said goodbye to my dear friend Evelyn. She was loved by so many people, and yet maybe very few of us knew the real her. Oh we knew parts of her, and together the parts mostly make her who she was, but the inner parts, the secret parts, the insecurities, the worries and fears, were things most of us never knew. I was able to catch a glimpse of a part of my friend that I didn’t know existed. A part that made her the sweet person she was. How can someone who seemed so confident have been insecure? That took me totally be surprise. She worried that she didn’t measure up to those around her, and yet in that humbleness, she far surpassed many of those people. In her final days, when people were praying for healing, and she was ready to go home, she worried about “letting those people down” who had been praying for her healing. In her last days, she was still thinking of others, and how they would feel. No wonder she was loved so much, by so many.
Good bye for now Evelyn, my very dear friend.
Evelyn Joy Ennis
March 21, 1929 – August 2, 2010
The waiting is over. My friend, Evelyn has gone home. For us here on earth, death seems like a thief that comes in and takes away those we love, but for those in Heaven, it is a joyous day. The day that humans were made for. The Bible says, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.” Psalms 116:15. So today is a precious day to the Lord.
For Evelyn, today is the day that her existance exploded into the most amazing joy ever felt by humans. She is free from pain and earthly limitations. She is with our Lord Jesus and she has seen God’s face, a privilege saved for those good and faithful servants who have been made the righteousness of God through the death of Jesus on the cross. She is among the justified, as are those of us who have chosen Jesus, but now she knows true joy. The kind of joy that can only come from being in the presence of God.
So, why is it that we have such a hard time feeling even the smallest hint of that joy when we, who are left behind, think of our loved one. Humans fight to stay alive. Fight to keep our loved ones alive. Fight to win the battle against illness. But for what? Our earthly travels are filled with troubles. And yet, our very existance is a gift from God. I guess it really is about the circle of life. Every life has its beginning, its middle, and its end, which is really a new beginning, with no middle and no end. Eternity with God is an amazing day that never ends, in which we never tire, and darkness doesn’t exist. Is there anything better than that?
Today I was handed some shocking news. My dear friend from when my kids were little has lung cancer and is at the point of death. Her daughter is a friend on facebook, but I didn’t know she was Evelyn’s daughter until she posted that her mother was dying. It hit me like a ton of bricks.
Ours had been an unlikely friendship. We met at a really hard time in Evelyn’s life. Her husband was very ill, and she was looking at a long road ahead, caring for him, waiting on the love of her life to be slowly taken away from her. She was having a bad day, the stresses of the situation had gotten to her, and I just thought she didn’t like me. It would be weeks before someone would tell me why she was so moody. Once I understood that part, our friendship grew. She and I had bowling in common, and I substituted on her team many times. She was such a different person when she had the chance to relax and enjoy herself.
Our friendship grew and continued for many years. After she quit bowling, we lost track of each other…until today. I had thought of her many times through the years, but the time never seemed right to go look her up. Why do we wait too long sometimes? I was in hopes that there might still be time to go and talk to her one more time, but that is not to be. She is in a coma now and the opportunity was never made available to me, so I wait…for news, that I don’t want to hear.
Today I took my mom to a birthday party for her sister’s great granddaughter. Why were we there? Well it wasn’t because they are such a close family that they all attend each and every birthday party for their siblings children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. It was because the daughter of my mother’s great aunt, who is ninety, came into town and wanted to see some of the family. So why do we have the neverending desire to reconnect with family? Is it the need to save the memories of our past in our mind so we can pass them on to our children, or is it the possibility that we may never see some of these people again. My mother wanted to go to this event to see her great aunt, who she thought would be there, because she feels that at ninety, she may not see her again, and she was disappointed that her aunt did not come, rather her cousin was here for her class reunion and wanted to spend a little time with her cousins. While my mother was disappointed at not seeing her aunt, she did enjoy visiting with her cousin. I’m sure that my mother really would have been happy going to almost any event, since she doesn’t get out much, and she does feel the passage of time more acutely than I do at 20 years her junior. While I very much enjoy searching records from the past to locate lost ancestors, I don’t necessarily feel the urgency to reconnect personally as much as she does. Maybe I will in the future, I don’t know. In the interim, I will continue to take her to the gatherings with her family whenever they come about, and help her to gleen what she needs from each event, so she and I can live our lives without the regret of neglecting the responsibilities we have to each other and to family, distant and not so distant.
Having never had a blog before, I guess the best place to start would be the beginning. I am a Christian first and foremost, a daughter, wife, mother, and grandmother second. I love the Lord Jesus Christ, and I work to follow God’s leading. And I love my family more than any of them can ever imagine. I am slowly learning Hebrew, as I believe that this is the language that we will all be speaking in Heaven, and I find that facinating. It is a beautiful language. The names of God mean so much more when you know them in the Hebrew version. Our God is so powerful and so loving toward us. It is simply beyond our meager ability to understand His love and faithfulness. Since this is such a big part of my life, you will find that, if you follow me, much of what you read will be about my wonderful Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (Yeshua), God my Father (Elohim), and God the Holy Spirit (Ruach HaKodesh). I hope you find this as interesting as I do.
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