An Update and Memorial

I have started writing several entries over the last few days, but haven't been able to complete one of them for various reasons. Here is an update.

On Wednesday, my best friends mother passed away. You may remember me mentioning her in a couple of my writings. She has been fighting a battle of recurrent ovarian cancer with metastasis for many years. The last few months have been quite rough! I will write more about this in a moment.

On Thursday, I had a Sozo - which had been scheduled for a couple of weeks. Sozo is the Greek word for saved, healed, or delivered. The point is to uncover places of (spiritual) lies and allow God's freedom in that place, ushering in healing. If you want more info about this type of prayer ministry, try going to http://bethelsozo.com/ I will write another entry on this at some point. Bottom line is that it was amazing! God is so great! The Spirit is so wonderful to carry us through the places of brokenness and offer good gifts for healing in place of devastation! Oh, He is just amazing!

Friday, I came back to work and had this mixed feeling - euphoria from Thursday and sorrow from the pain of losing such a wonderful woman who has impacted my life. I made it through the day. That night was the carnival at my church - it was great. My group served ice cream. It was so much fun to watch children and adult-children alike trying to decide which flavor was the "best"! It was wonderful! That must be what the first day working at Baskin Robbins feels like.

Saturday I slept in a bit and then had a slow morning doing laundry and preparing to leave to drive four hours for the funeral service. I left that afternoon and had a safe drive. I stayed the night with one of my best friends from college, Summer. I was once again reminded of the blessing of friendship! I was thinking about it - we are about to hit the eleven-year mark on when we met and became friends! How amazing! We have been through so much together and when we see each other now, we just pick up wherever we left off the last time we saw each other - no matter how long that may have been! Our friendship is a true treasure to me! That night we stayed up kind-of late and watched a movie and ate ice cream. How fun!

Then Sunday was Summer's birthday. It was so neat to get to be with her on her birthday! We went to church. The teacher in the Sunday school class had been one of my professors in college many years ago. It was so surreal to be back in a "teaching" environment with him! When I walked in and saw him I had this little flash-back to 9 years ago. It was really funny! After church and lunch, I had to leave to drive another hour further north to go to the funeral. It was lovely - if that is ok to say. I walked in and saw Lisa (that is my friend) - she came over to me with tears streaming and gave me a hug. It was so hard to see the pain that she was in, but I was very glad that I could be there to support her. After hugging her, I went to her dad to give him a hug - that was the really hard part! He said something to me that meant so much, though! He embraced me and started tearing up. Then he thanked me for being there and for my endurance in praying for Sue through this ordeal. It amazed me that this is the word he chose, because this is exactly the word (endurance) that I have been asking God for and asking others to be praying for me in this! God is so amazing to provide what we need and then to confirm that He has provided what we need! After the service was over, I shared my condolences with the family again and then headed back home.

Now, I am back home. I am tired, and I have this very odd mixture of joy and sadness still. I am very happy that Sue is no longer hurting or suffering. I am overjoyed that she is now with the ultimate love of her life! I am very sad that we did not see the miracle that we have been waiting and contending for! I am very sad that we have lost such a wonderfully amazing woman on this earth! She has not gone without leaving a legacy. She will be missed, though!