There really is something about presence that is meaningful. Its why people visit grave sites to leave flowers and a dozen other objects of meaning. Its why people keep a container of the ashes of a loved one in their home. We do what we must do to cope with what we can’t quite accept. Somehow, we navigate what is before us, even as we grieve. Amid my own recent grieving process, I discovered the following from Ann Lamott, an author with a rather unconventional approach to Christianity: \u201cYou will lose someone you can\u2019t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn\u2019t seal back up. And you come through. It\u2019s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly\u2014that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.\u201d During their own set of difficulties, Moses instructed God\u2019s people to refrain from taking advice from the wrong people but rather said, \u201cYou shall walk after the Lord your God and fear Him and keep His commandments and obey His voice; you shall serve Him and hold fast to Him\u201d (Deuteronomy 13:4). He might well have added, \u201cand even if you dance with a limp, you must keep on dancing.\u201d I\u2019m dancing with a limp today but thank God for the wonderful gift of memory and whatever it takes to keep it alive. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There really is something about presence that is meaningful. Its why people visit grave sites to leave flowers and a dozen other objects of meaning. Its why people keep a container of the ashes of a loved one in their home. We do what we must do to cope with what we can’t quite accept….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2346\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}