memories that bring healing...

it's been exactly 365 days since Ilne's memorial service. somehow it feels like a lifetime and somehow it feels like it was only yesterday.

a lifetime of change has happened since then and yet it seems like nothing has changed. the pain seems as intense as ever. looking at pictures of our angel in hospital, always chokes me up in excruciating pain. her dad and mom and grandmothers and grandfathers and brothers are each walking their own paths of woundedness and healing. not a day goes past that her brother doesn't mention the loss in his short life of four years. not a day goes past where one of us do not look at a pink dress, or a picture of a ballerina or the seven year old in the church pew in front of you, when you do not think of how much she would have liked it or what she would have looked like by now.

but amonst all of this, God is still present. for the small mercies of a church lifegroup that understands when i have to talk about her and the time we spent in bloemfontein again, to a friend that phones from england, just because she remembers with me, to a prayer that speaks healing and rest into our lives. from the dreary rain that fell a year after her leaving for heaven, a sunny day would just not have been ok, to the elders from CRC still walking with my family for coffee and support.

God hears prayers - still, even though we don't always see it, or even though we don't always think the answer is what we wanted or expected.

it stays sure... constant... loving. and although there is still no sense to be made out of the hurt, we know God is with us in all this.

He did say that He will never leave us nor forsake us... and He has been true to His word.