Live Like Lucas

I fall so short sometimes.  I wake up with the best intentions and a heart just wanting and needing to praise and worship and I fall so short.

I am only human and I know God knows that and it comforts me.  He made me and he knows me and he loves me.

We sang Great is thy Faithfulness in church this morning and I love sitting in the very front and the music just vibrates through your whole body.  Every word saturates my soul and I pour it out to my Creator.

Great is Thy faithfulness!
Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided;
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!

The tears start to flow because I believe in that mercy and that hand that hath provided and somehow gotten me through this unspeakable pain.  I believe…I believe that God is faithful.

Yet I am sitting in the front of the auditorium and suddenly I remember being there before.  Three months ago.  With my little boys…his… coffin… he was in there. He was not supposed to be there.  He was strong and vibrant and a beautiful spirit and he was not supposed to be in a box.  Not in this church.  Not in this church where I sing of God’s faithfulness.

I run out with mascara streaming down my cheeks and I sob. And sob. Until there is no more.

I think about how I miss him SO TERRIBLY its like I’m missing oxygen, I’m like a fish out of water…gasping for breath.

I’m so tired of turning my back on my children because of my tear stained eyes and my voice catching in my throat as I answer them.

I feel sick because there are no pictures up of him in my house.  I feel sick because I cannot look at his beautiful angelic face.  It hurts like a dull butcher knife carving out my heart.  When I am on facebook I don’t look at the pictures.  They are there but I don’t look.

I hate that his room is closed up and I have not gone in there in three months and I don’t know if I ever will again.

His baseball shoes are sitting in the garage.  I don’t dare touch them.  I don’t want to move them and I don’t want to look at them.  Oh how I loved to watch him play baseball.  To watch him pitch- like poetry in motion.  To watch him catch a ball at first base his arms and legs seeming endless…he was supposed to play baseball.  He was supposed to…

I feel sick because I am so so angry because he is gone and I don’t feel like that is faithfulness. I couldn’t sing it.  I couldn’t.

I’m stumbling right now.  Sometimes it just hurts so bad I don’t know how to fit my suffering into the category of “God cares for me.” I hope someday I understand.

Love- I understand

Salvation- I understand

Suffering and death. I don’t get it right now.

Romans 3:23-24

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”

I haven’t written in awhile.  A whole 11 days.  I don’t know what to say, except “God help me, I hurt. I hurt so bad.”

That probably sounds very strange- I was writing almost every day the first couple of months, and ideas would come to me, things to write about, things that I felt like should be said…

Then the pain just got too much.  The sting prevented me from writing.  Grief is a strange strange animal.  I have found it to get more real, more potent, more like a barbed wire strangling my heart.

I still don’t even want to believe it.  I can’t wrap my mind around it.  Its been three months since my baby died.  I will never, ever wrap my mind around it.  You might as well tell me the earth is flat.  The fact that he is never again walking this earth is inconceivable to me.

I am still consumed by thoughts of that day, the horrific-ness of it all, unable to get past images and feelings and terror.

I have learned what it is to suffer.  To really suffer. It has changed my whole life.  To learn to live with suffering.

I have learned to feel closer to Jesus through suffering.  I think about his life on earth and all the horror that he went through.  I think of the world and all the pain and hunger and loneliness and grief- our fallen world that Jesus just wants to wrap his arms around and redeem.  I realize I am part of that plan.

That is the key- I am part of that plan.  Every tear that falls from my eyes and every day I wake up with my stomach filled with knots and my heart so, so heavy I am part of that big picture.  I can wake up just wanting to GIVE UP because its TOO MUCH and I can’t. I can’t give up. He tells me about His plans.

¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.” Proverbs 3:5-6

I am listening to God.  I am trying to listening as hard as I can through the noise and cacophony of the world and what I hear is “do what Lucas would do.  Do what you know his heart would want. Carry out his legacy.  I made him and I know his beautiful heart and it was meant to change people.”

It is a pretty powerful thing to feel God giving you a purpose.  I am so thankful for others who have helped me carry out Random Act of Kindness Day and Teacher appreciation day, who have donated to the Lucas Van, who continue to pray for us and our mission.

Suffering is a powerful thing.  It brings us closer to God. It humbles us.  It makes us realize how very little the things of the world matter.  Suffering makes us realize that our time on earth is but a grain of sand on a beach, our human life is so infinitesimally  small compared to the glory we will experience in heaven.  I will admit, yes I feel like heaven cannot come fast enough.  We feel like our earthly life is dragging so slowly when life is hard.

“I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:14

The suffering can be endured…because there is hope, there is a plan, and there is a prize. 

So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Isaiah 41:10

Today felt like black Friday. Cold, dark, desolate, hopeless.   I woke up with one sentence in my head. “He slipped through my fingers.” I tried to shake it off but I found myself slogging through my morning with that phrase running repeating over and over and over…

I had read it somewhere the night before.  It just was so heavy on my heart, that visualization of a priceless precious diamond, so rare it could be found no where else in the world, one of a kind- slipping out of my fingers into the depths of the ocean.

Except that diamond was a person, far more valuable than any object the world over, absolutely irreplaceable, and not just at the depths of the ocean.  If that were true I would search relentlessly, never ever stopping.

I felt lost and empty. Regretful. Hopeless.

So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

At one point I took a took a workout shirt of his that had just been hanging around that I kept throwing here and there hoping not to look at it- and I ventured downstairs.  To where his room is.  I have not looked in its direction nor ventured into it since the day of celebration of life.  I still do not know how I went down there to write the speech I had written that day.

His room is around the corner in the basement so I don’t have to see it unless I…walk around that corner.  I for some reason almost dared myself to do it, just approach the open door to throw the shirt it.  So I did.  The result was immediate scorching pain like a hot branding iron on my heart. To see the bed that had sat empty for nearly three months. That emptiness, that void that echoed my heart.  I ran upstairs sobbing.

So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

I know God is there.  I know it.  I believe it with my whole being.  I know he is there when I don’t think I can feel him.  Today I felt an absence, a “why couldn’t you save my precious diamond?”  I truly felt robbed.  I felt feelings that I haven’t completely acknowledged before.  It was a terrible, terrible feeling.

Tomorrow is another day.  Another day that God will be there to wrap me in his blanket of mercy if I will let him.  He has NEVER left and will NEVER leave.

My Sunday is coming…someday I will join my diamond. The bonds of death have been broken. He is risen.

Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay everyone for what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” Revelation 22: 12-13

Love is so powerful…the more you love someone, they say, the more you will grieve them.  Loving someone is taking that chance.  Giving them your whole heart with that possibility, that the unthinkable will happen.

That the never never never will happen to my child will happen.  We pour love into them, soak them in it…

then suddenly they are snatched away.

You are left, as I said in a facebook post, with the breath knocked out of you.

Traumatized.

Crushed.

What do you do when someone you have given your heart to is gone?

You keep loving them.  You can’t stop loving them.

I try so very very hard to picture him in heaven, to think of him in heaven, to make heaven his new home in my mind.  I just can’t.  Its not that I don’t believe he’s there.  It’s that he was JUST here with me.  My frail human mind still cannot comprehend what has happened.  I’m not in denial, its just beyond the point of my ability to cope.

I try so hard…to be normal…I took Brooklyn shopping for an Easter dress.  I was trying so hard.  The first thing we walked past in the store were men’s shirts and ties.  Right in front was a silvery grey shirt and purple striped tie like he wore to homecoming.  Then of course we had to walk through rows and rows of men’s clothes each step feeling more suffocating than the last.  Found a dress, then a quick stop in the kids department for socks.  Simple right? The boys clothes were front and center. Immediately a huge lump in my throat.  I thought of his childhood.  Just being a little boy.  My little boy who was supposed to grow up into a man.

He will never grow up into a man.  He was almost a man.  He looked like a man.  But he wasn’t.

I gave my whole heart to a boy almost man and I wouldn’t change one single thing.  About how much love I poured into him.  Every person I ever told about my son, while he was still alive, heard with a beaming smile how wonderful of a kid he was.  How he just amazed me with his maturity and kindness and how I had just really lucked out.  I told everyone how much I appreciated his helpfulness.  I could not stop the praise from bubbling out.  I knew I had something very rare in him.  I had an old soul.

It was worth it.  Not that I could have loved him any less if I tried.  It was worth every tear and every pang and stab of agony.  To have him for however long I could, to enjoy every smile and every hug and every “love you mama” even if it was only fifteen years.

I think…

If I could love him this much how much does God love us?

If my insufficient, meager ability to love feels this powerful how ever so much powerful is God’s love? The love of the God of the whole universe? The thought sends chills up my spine.

How greatly do we underestimate God’s love and his ability to care for us, as we bustle around like little ants only worried about the next problem and the next bump in the road.  It is a continuous struggle- the earthly pulling us down and the heavenly pulling us up.  We must let God’s love pull us up.  Lift our eyes to the heavens.  Feel his love bathing us.  That resplendent, omnipresent love offered to us purely because of his grace and mercy.

Jesus says, I give you my whole heart for all of eternity.

Psalm 103:11

“For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
    so great is his love for those who fear him”

“God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.”

-Augustine

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.  In the morning when I wake I pray the path of love to take. God bless Mommy, Daddy, Lucas, Brooklyn, Brenna, Bryleigh, and Brady…

The list goes on to list relatives, sick people, all the little children in the world…

My daughter Bryleigh’s prayer. It breaks my heart every time.  I wish I didn’t have to write about my broken heart EVERY time I sit in front of the computer.

Oh God, Why? Why? Why?

Not my precious boy. I cannot fathom a lifetime without him and I TRY so hard not to think about it.  I try not to think about the next day or the next or the next but I can’t help it.

Today was a beautiful spring day and I played outside with the little ones for hours and I missed him EVERY second of EVERY minute.  The outside screams Lucas to me.  The outside sings Lucas to me.  The outside pulsates with everything that is Lucas.  The garage is filled with baseballs and his pitching helmet.  I can see him shooting baskets at the hoops. I see him in the lawn throwing the ball up in the air and hitting it with his bat nearly across the street.  We have a huge lawn.  The back yard where he shot his bow and arrow for hours at a time and shot his bb gun at squirrels.  It’s where he shot of fireworks, as many as humanly possible.

Then there’s the swing set where I will be spending much of my summer.  Where he pushed Bryleigh and Brady so many times.  So many times I would say when he got off the bus, “hey buddy can you push them for a little bit while I put some laundry in?”

He can’t be gone.  He can’t. He can’t. He can’t.  Oh God I loved him so much so much so much he can’t be gone I loved him so much.

He was the most beautiful soul.  This note was found in his room after…

Dear Papa Doug,

Thank you so much for being the person you are.  I look up to you, respect you, and I think you are the best grandfather I could ask for.  I am so grateful for your wisdom, selflessness and compassion. Thanks for being such an important part of my life, Lucas

God bless Lucas.

If I could only have half the heart he had…

II Corinthians 12:9

And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”

I will keep praying for God’s power to be perfected in my weakness.

Dinner time…the hardest.  Setting once less plate.  Not having that deep 15 year old voice reprimanding Bryleigh to get back in her chair and eat her food.  He was better at that when I was.   He was always telling me, “Mom don’t let her get away with so much.” Well to me, just getting dinner on the table and everyone around it was exhausting enough.  Then Brooklyn would start acting silly and Lucas would basically just shake his head at her, tell her to cut it out, ask her when she was going to start acting her age.  He never really understood acting one’s age.  She at 11 years old was acting exactly her age while he was always 25. 30 maybe.

Then he would help me clean up.  Every night.  I can’t clean up dinner without crying.  I can’t sit at the table without tearing up.

Just a constant ever present pain that soaks down to the marrow of my bones.  An ache.  A deep deep ache.

Lately I’ve been having these kinds of “life flashes” where I picture him as a toddler “mowing” the lawn, as a kindergartner reading the prayer at his spring program, all the precious little smiles on the first days of school, baseball games, orchestra concerts, it just all comes as a flood and the regret is agonizing.  That I can’t remember better.  That I didn’t enjoy every moment as much as I could have.  How having each child limited my time with him more and more.  Even though I never could have gone back anyway, now I can’t add to that precious time or make more memories with him.

No one should have to go through this.  I think that probably too frequently, that such suffering simply should not exist.  I think of the Isaiah 53:3 “He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.”  I cannot fathom the suffering that Jesus went through.  I don’t know what it was like for him but this feels like a special kind of hell.

I just don’t know what to do with it right now.  Trying to think of others going through this, well it helps a little.  Yet it is my pain, I own it and no one else can feel it nor can they take it away.

It seems to me a paradox- as time goes on I feel the pain in more detail and more clearly.  Little things that he would have done or said come to me more often and cause such sharp wounds.  Yet I need to continue to function and live and be a Mom, I cannot falter. Well I can, but my kids need me so much and no one else can be me.

I am just a walking wound.  I am trying to do good things with my wounds, instead of hiding under the covers I might as well walk around showing them proudly.

More so I want to make him proud.  I want his life, short as it was to mean something.  I want desperately to make a difference by building upon what HE was.  The sweetest purest most honest soul there was.  His deep, deep compassion.  Whatever he did with his life he was absolutely going to help people.  I have to do what he would have dreamed and envisioned.  I have to run with it and I am passionate about it.

I am going to Guatemala in July with the same church group that he went with last year.

I want to see what he saw.  I want to do what he did.  I also want to help carry out a mission that I know he would have been so excited about…

A Live Like Lucas medical van.

Some doctors from Holland have had the vision of raising money for and building a medical van to go to the outlying villages in Guatemala.  Right now medical care is almost nonexistent.  Hospitals only exist in major cities and for thousands and thousands of people there is just no way to get there.  Or they are too afraid to go.  It is a huge need.  This group of doctors also want to build a medical clinic.  The ministry that is in Guatamala and ministers to the people full time is called Grace Ministries.  http://www.aglimpseofgrace.com/

I believe the Live Like Lucas legacy begins here.  A medical van- that will ease the pain and suffering of thousands.  I want to use my pain to help others.

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

Matthew 25:40

I have started a go fund me to begin the fundraising for the Lucas Van.  The hope is to get the “shell” of the van purchased in late summer so that it can go to American RV to be outfitted in the fall.  The total cost of the vehicle will be about $150,00.  I realize that sounds like a lot of money but every dollar will help.  Every journey starts with a single step. Please consider donating:

http://www.gofundme.com/q7g7as

We went to Great Wolf Lodge Sunday and Monday with my family- Mom, Dad, sister, brother-in law, cousins.  What excruciating joy.  The trip was given to us by a kind friend who won it in a raffle.  It was something we had thought about doing but then – Boom! It appeared on our doorstep.

We needed that fun time with the kids.  This has been every bit as difficult for them, or at least some version of the process, though they show it in different ways.  For one daughter her grief has displayed itself every day in anxiety, frustration, irritability, just not being able to cope.

The same way I feel many days.  I just don’t (usually) lay down on the floor and kick and scream.  Or refuse to put my shoes on.  Or go and hide in a closet.

So they needed this.  It was a blessing, one of a bajillion we have received.

It was hard for us, Rich and I.  So terribly painful. Yet with glimpses of joy.  To be on a family vacation,  without our whole family.  It kind of cemented it in us that we are an earthly family of 6.  In my heart I will always have 5 children but 5 children did not check into great wolf lodge.

As I went down slides and tubed through the lazy river I would feel my heart start to ache, so much aching, and I would just pray “God get me through this.”

We are both so broken, Rich and I.

After a couple of hours we went back the room and cried together.  He said, “I just feel so dead inside.”

That feels so, so true.  Yet I don’t want to say I feel dead, I want to feel alive but wounded and crushed and bleeding.

I feel like if I am dead inside God is not there.  I know he is there.  He knows how excruciating it was for me to take my kids to Great wolf lodge and from somewhere deep inside I found the strength to do it.  Even though every teenaged boy I saw there brought tears to my eyes.  Every single one I asked myself “why can’t mine be here.”

I kept picturing Lucas the way he looked at Kalahari, another water park last year so muscular and tall with his wet blonde curls.  Every year for the past few years we went there because there was a ton of fun older kid stuff.  He would spend nearly the entire time on the flowrider where you could surf.  He was so dang good at it.

Difficulty and suffering are going to be part of me.  Part of my being.  I know I will never completely heal from this loss- how can I? How can my heart be completely whole after the loss of this beautiful amazing boy, who loved God and was compassionate and good and kind.  He was smart and wise and knowledgeable.  He had the golden touch at pretty much everything he did. He was my comforter, my right hand man.  He was a piece of me.  I will never be the same.

I am not the only one who has lost and has to learn to deal with excruciating pain.  Pain is life and life is pain.  Yet the darkness will not overcome. When Jesus was telling his disciples about his death, he was trying to explain it to them without really coming out and saying it.  They were confused.  They thought he was talking in riddles.  They could not comprehend their master who they loved would be taken from them.  Jesus said:

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
John 16:33

He has overcome the world. Even then before his death he knew what the end result would be.  He would be our Savior.  No matter what trials and tribulations, not matter the pain and sorrow we have peace in God.  He will be the calm in our storm.  If we truly embrace him and trust him, cling to him with everything we have.  Everything.

He has overcome the world.

Such hard days.  People don’t understand that as the shock wears off it gets more painful.  It is not getting easier to bear the pain of his loss.  I feel strangely guilty talking about it still, and then I remind myself this is my blog.  I can talk about whatever is on my heart, and strangely people will listen.  I don’t know why but they do.

At first you are so surrounded and inundated by people and food and flowers and cards and expressions of love.  You are still in shock, not even really realizing what has happened.  Even a month later, you feel a certain kind of deep sadness but your brain is still protecting you from the full realization.  Its not that is doesn’t hurt then, it does, but its just different.  Still you are buffered by people helping you and being there at your every turn.

Just like anything, time simply goes by.  Its no one’s fault.  Its just the way of the world.  No one concentrates on one thing forever.

Except I am the Mommy. Who feels those stabs of grief like a hot poker in every minute of every day.

I get up and get oatmeal for Brady.  The instant packet kind.  In the back of the cupboard is Lucas’ plain “real” oatmeal.  Just sitting.  No one will eat it.

He’s not coming back.

As I do laundry I begin to fold the socks and make a pile of all the black ones.  Lucas used to wear them and now Rich does.

He’s not coming back.

I decide to reorganize the bookshelf and find books about chickens, birds, his goodwillie yearbook, novels that he had read for school, books about baseball.

He’s not coming back.

I run out to the garage today to try and find a pair of tennis shoes to fit Bryleigh that one of her sisters have worn.  As I dig through the bins there is a very large pair of size 12 baseball cleats still with the dust on them from last years baseball season.

He’s not coming back.

The yearbook teacher at the high school asks for pictures and ideas for a tribute to him in the yearbook.  I pull out a stick drive thingy my sister has given me and see pictures of him I don’t even remember seeing.  My beautiful boy.  Over and over in every picture.  It KILLS me.  Stab. Stab. Stab. Stab. Stab.

He’s not coming back.

Why God, why this agony, this suffering, this unbearable unbearable pain? I feel I am at my breaking point.

But he’s coming back.  God. He’s coming back.  That’s all I have left.  That is what I pray for.

Matthew 6:9-13

This, then, is how you should pray:

What a wonderful day.  To see so many people sharing in something beautiful; to feel that connection with others for a higher purpose; to have a whole day to celebrate being “unselfish.” To be the kind of people God really wants us to be.  I am so truly honored that so many chose to come along side with me today.  Not even just to do acts of kindness but to feel their support and love as we remember Lucas.

Some days I feel like one mother mourning one child.  I know people are praying for me, for Rich, for the kids, but grief is so isolating.  Today I felt so blessed that so many others were thinking about him, celebrating the person he was, feeling his loss like I do.  Even those who never got a chance to meet him but have been able to get a sense of who he was and his heart.

To a grieving mother one of the greatest worries is that her child will be forgotten.  That he will simply disappear from this earth and it was like he was never here.  Today Lucas lived on and that gives me great joy.  It gives me even greater joy that God could be glorified through his life and the inspiration he gave others.

Still it is painful.  I almost always am caught off guard by the moments where I feel something really good happening through “livelikelucas” and then I find myself wracked with pain. I forget that it is going to remind of how he was so compassionate, how he comforted me, how he was there for me, how that was his ultimate act of kindness.

As time goes by the grief changes in ways I don’t know how to describe.  It is more of a continuous aching sadness.  Its almost like its clearer and more precise.  It seems I remember him better and thus it hurts more.

And then there’s the forgetting.  Today I was outside playing with Brady and he was trying to make baskets in his little tykes hoop and I thought, “I can’t wait until Lucas comes home and can play outside with him.”

I remember he’s gone and I can’t. Breathe.

Its been two months, two long months to some people but like a second to me.  The grief so fresh it could have been yesterday.  I don’t know how long it will be like this.

Right now I carry in my whole body at all times “I have lost a son.” It never leaves my mind, my heart, my soul.  An unending pang. Loss like a bitter liquid dripping through my veins.

God is still taking care of me.  I have people.  I have comfort.  I can lay in my bed if I want to and sob endlessly.  God loves me.  He never said it was going to be easy- any of this. Life. Not easy. I never understood before, never had a clue- what hard was.  Not a single stinking clue.  Now I would live in a mud hut in africa and eat wormy rice just to have my Lucas back.  I would give every one of my limbs.  Anything.

Life is not the same and will never be the same and I know for the rest of my life I am “mother who lost a son.”

I also know life is not always about happiness and comfort and sunshine every day.  It all boils down to one thing- I was created by God and given this life so I can serve him.  Lucas was his gift to me.  He was on loan to me.  I will praise him in this storm.  I will strive to be a wounded healer.  I was created to be God’s instrument..

Ephesians 2:4-10

“But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, ⁵ made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. ⁶ And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, ⁷ in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. ⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast. ¹⁰ For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

I just spend an entire exhausting wonderful day preparing for Random Acts of Kindness day on Monday.  The 16th.  The day that will never be the same for us.  I am so bubbling over from the bottom of my heart in excitement for what this day will bring.

Just in the schools we are working in alone (Ada, Central woodlands, Central Middle, FHC) there will be over 3,000 kids thinking about the impact of kindness.  Thinking about what they can do for someone else.  Thinking about how they can make someone’s day, put a smile on their face, put a little spring in their step.  Putting others ahead of themselves.

Each of these kids is going to write their act of kindness and put it on a blue strip of paper which will join hundreds of other strips to make a chain. A chain of kindness.  If only…the world could be a chain of kindness.  Passed on from one person to the next, to the next, in an endless circle.  If only.  Why not start here.  One branch of Forest Hills Schools.

I saw a commercial while waiting for a movie to start the other day where the girl described “throwing her heart out in front of her and then running to catch it.” That really resonated with me.  I think about it all the time.

Why not? Just throw it out there.  Put aside your reservations, your in inhibitions, your self-consciousness and just go for it.

I have the “club no one wants to be in” perspective.  I wish everyone had it.  The “it could never happen to us” has happened.  I have no reason not to go “all in” because I truly understand how short and fragile and fleeting life is.  How very little time we have to make an impact. I will use my son’s life as an example and a springboard until my dying breath.  I believe God gave him to me for that very reason. It was his act of kindness to me. Lucas was my gift.  I am going to pass him on.