Let’s Remember

We’re celebrating a three-day weekend. Usually there are really great Memorial Day specials promoted. The Indy 500 Race takes place. In the NorthWest, we’ll celebrate the beginning of summer and many families will go camping for the first time this season.

Memorial Day or Decoration Day, was originally set aside as a day to decorate the graves of soldiers who gave their lives in the Civil War. Later it became a day to remember all of our loved ones.

Normandy Beach Memorial, France

Little Bighorn Battlefield Memorial

When I was in my early teens, I loved to wander in a cemetery near my home in Brush Prairie. I enjoyed the sun-dappled place where I could read the names on tipped headstones more than a hundred years old. I wondered who these people were and what their lives had been like.

This year, we’ll come back to that cemetery. First we’ll go to the husband of my youth. Bill. We’ll have an oreo cookie in honor of him, for they were his favorite.

G. William Rudberg, Jr.

An Extravagant Gesture of the Creator

(headstone inscription)

Next, we’ll stop at baby Carrie’s marker.

We’ll walk north to see my parents grave sites. We won’t be able to visit other loved ones graves for they are located too far away. But we’ll remember the people. Especially on this day. I read this today:

 

The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever. Isaiah 40:8

Aren’t you glad some things stand forever?

I’ve thought a lot about my parents and my past. How tenuous life is—even if we live to our nineties, as my mother did.

I don’t know the future but I know I can trust my Savior. He brought me through the very hard times I’ve experienced. God is with me in the joyful times too. He is with me when I celebrate birthdays or anniversaries, when I travel with my Jim, when we have new adventures, and when we make love.
There are nigglings of fear that creep into my thoughts. What if Jim dies? Can I make it without his love and care?

We pray that God will grant us many years together but we know that our lives are truly in His hands, not ours. We can trust in the God who loves us more than we love each other or ourselves.

So we do just that. We trust.

And He’ll be there when He takes each of us home to Him.
But today, while we’re here on earth, we’ll give thanks to God for life. For love. For His golden presence in our lives. And  hope for the future in eternity.