Living Through My Love

Having someone to spend Valentine's with is sometimes something we take for granted. While I was preparing for the evening, I spread out the flowers in the vase on the table. I remembered the verse in Matthew 6, about the flowers of the field.
Then I thought about some of the people I've met this year, some who've had the experience, very recently, of losing someone that they cared for and loved very deeply.
I know it's never an easy step in life, but I think maybe if we look at it from another perspective, we're are 'losing' no more than the Summer loses the Spring, or the Winter the Fall. This precious time here, it's a season. And it's changing always. And what we do with this life has a meaning, a time and a purpose.
Rest assured we will all someday have this experience. But I think it's Love that truly binds us. I believe that with all my heart. And while this moment in life might be very bleak, it doesn't mean that we've ended the story. Only that we've closed one chapter, and opened another.

Remembering that made me appreciate the time I got to spend with my wife last night...

I wrote this some time ago for someone who'd lost a loved one. It has always seemed to help, and for some reason I feel like someone might need to read it.


Living Through My Love

I remember the day I didn't think
I'd have the strength to go on.
I drove to your grave and curled on the ground
then I stayed there until the dawn.

The groundskeeper came and asked my name
as he helped me to my feet.
He brushed from me the fresh laid soil
and straightened my tie neat.

I thought about your smile then.
That's when the tears began to flow.
And there I stood upon the earth,
a lost and desperate soul.

As the old man brushed my hat
and set it back upon my head,
he looked into my heart somehow
and this is what he said,

"Your world has fallen down.
I know what you're going through.
It wasn't long ago
I lost a Love, like you.

You feel you might as well
be lying there by their side.
Your life seems just a living Hell,
your reason for living has died.

But in your journey, keep in mind,
your Father has a master plan,
and though the reason's hard to find,
you must try to hard to understand.

Turn from your faith now
and you will have lost the chance
to hold her in your arms again,
to smile and Love and dance.

Hold on to what you have
and keep her Love there in your heart,
because Up There we look the same...
only Love tells us apart."

Then the sun broke through the clouds
and gave my eyes a blinding glare.
I turned to shake his hand,
but He was no longer there.


Daniel C. Elliott
Copyright 2000



"That's why I'm telling you to stop worrying about your life-what you will eat or what you will drink-or about your body-what you will wear. Life is more than food, isn't it, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds in the sky. They don't plant or harvest or gather food into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. You are more valuable than they are, aren't you? Can any of you add a single hour to your span of life by worrying? And why do you worry about clothes? Consider the lilies in the field and how they grow. They don't work or spin yarn, but I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them. Now if that is the way God clothes the grass in the field, which is alive today and thrown into an oven tomorrow, won't he clothe you much better-you who have little faith? "So don't ever worry by saying, 'What are we going to eat?' or 'What are we going to drink?' or 'What are we going to wear?' For it is the gentiles who are eager for all those things. Surely your heavenly Father knows that you need all of them! But first be concerned about God's kingdom and his righteousness, and all of these things will be provided for you as well. So never worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."
(Matthew 6:25-34)