In case you missed it in the previous post, Levi spelled his name "Evil"...several people told me that they hadn't noticed, but that is why we found it so comical.
Anyway, back to this post. When I was working full time, a staple in my day was listening to the Glenn Beck Program - I loved it. Unfortunately, my life now does now allow me to listen to a 3 hour radio show, but I still have some time to read. Glenn wrote a book called the Christmas Sweater and I picked it up thinking it would be a nice little feel-good holiday book full of Glenn's humor.
**Minor Spoiler Alert**
Not long into the book, I quickly figured out that this book was not exactly a happy one. The story is about a little boy who loses his father to cancer and then his mother to a car wreck. I know that children are supposed to bury their parents, but the boy in the book buries them at 10 and 12. The whole premise of the book is how this boy deals with his new life without parents. I think I started crying on page 10 and never stopped.
What got to me so much was thinking about Levi and Kara growing up without Garet or I. They are so young right now and I know at this point in their lives that they would have very few memories of us. That thought just tore me up!
While I was contemplating all these things, we received word that a close family friend was near death. He has 3 boys with the youngest being twelve (the same age as the kid in the book). Our friend passed away shortly after Christmas and the hardest part of the funeral for me was seeing the boys. All the words from the book just kept flooding back into my mind and I just wanted to scoop them up, hug them, and tell them it would be OK. (I consider them my "babies" anyway - I babysat them for close to 10 years and our families did countless things together over the years. The middle child was our ring bearer and Garet said he officially felt old when he could talk to him at eye level!)
Despite the tears over the holidays, the events did cause me to give a few more hugs, say a few more "I love you's" and spend some more time with the kids. I know that I can't control the future (thankfully God has that one covered so I don't have to worry about it!), but I can choose to be more purposeful in how I spend my time.
5 comments:
Alison, I think those moments are from God - precious reminders of what is important in life, reminders that we don't have all the time in the world, and that we need to make our relationships a priority today. thanks for sharing.
I completely missed the "Evil"... That's great.
OK. I cried just reading your version of the book. I don't think I could have handled reading it.
I agree with you that we need to be more purposeful in how we spend our time. God has given us the gift of children and we need to take the time out to appreciate them. Thank you for the reminder
I read the Christmas Sweater too. What a great message! By the way, Scott is about the biggest Glenn Beck fan there is. He's always saying "Glenn says..", etc, like they are best friends. :)
I just read a chapter from the book I am reading that absolutely echoes what you just shared. No coincidence to me...Point taken, Lord.
I was going to post about it but it would be a bit long for an excerpt. And your post here does the job just right.
Thanks for sharing!
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