Sat out on the porch this morning. It’s just so humid! I’ve watered my vegetables and flowers and washed out the bird baths and filled them up with fresh water and my clothes are wringing wet. My eyes are burning from the sweat dripping down my face. I feel for all the outdoor workers, I know they are struggling in this oppressive heat. Well, the clouds got purple, it thundered and lightning bolted again and we didn’t get a drop of rain. I’m working on my Indian rain dance so if the ground shakes at your house and you hear off key chanting and bells jingling it just me dancing around and praying for rain.

I’m watching the most beautiful downy woodpecker, a male, eating from the peanut butter ball suet feeder. His starched white vest under his black and white checkered coat is just pristine and his little red beret is sitting jauntily on his head. Such a handsome bird specimen.

The heat finally ran me inside to the reading chair in the cool. I turned on the iPad to do a little research then decided I might watch a movie. I tried to watch Grease but it made me begin to weep. Rosie must have watched that movie a million times as a young teenager. Seems every time I went in her room it was playing. She and her cousin from Florida would get a carton of ice cream and two spoons and lie on Rosie’s bed, eating ice cream and singing along with the songs. I’d often find the spoons in the cartons of ice cream when I’d get one out of the freezer.

“Grief is the price we pay for love,” Queen Elizabeth II.

What I wouldn’t give to have a carton of ice cream in the fridge now that she left a spoon in. Twenty-two years since her death and I’m still feeling the knife to the heart. Parents shouldn’t have to bury their children. It’s a nightmare of grief. I pray every night for my friends who have lost children and for friends who are widowed, as they begin their journeys of grief. I pray they soon have some sunshine in their darkness.

The Chinese proverb, “The man who moved mountains, began by caring away small stones,” makes me think of grieving. Each day we’re weighed down by the stones of our grief and little by little we began to share the load with God and with his help slowly begin taking a few pebbles off the top pile of our grief. We never get over the death of a child or a beloved spouse, we just learn to redistribute the weight of our grief where we can manage to carry on with life. Every grief has its own timetable. It’s kind of like sunshine follows the rain and the rain follows the sunshine. Sometimes we’re sad with what will never be, other days we’re happy with memories, and some days we smile with the thoughts of a glorious reunion in heaven.

Life is a gift none of us earn. Life is a precious gift given to us by God. We’re never promised tomorrow will come. Each day should be treasured and cherished. If we don’t stop to appreciate life, one day we’ll look back and realized our life has passed without our revelation. “Never let your troubles blind you to your daily blessings,” Trent Shelton. We have the opportunity every day, through our challenges and sorrows, to find the beauty and truth of life. Life truly is a precious gift.

“Everyone can master a grief but he that has it.” — William Shakespeare