The halo around my son

There are days when you are just amazingly surprised!

By noon yesterday, I was basking in my amazement.

But not everymoment is pure awe...

 ...yesterday i woke with extreme sadness

... 6/23 is the anniversary of my son's death.

when you lose a child, you are forever changed.

you, the former, simply cease to exist.

 you, the former, are replaced

...with unbearable grief and disbelief and your broken heart settles heavy on your head like a helmet ever present, that cannot be removed.

what was once solid ground beneath your feet has turned into quicksand

 your entire being is undermined and the new you even welcomes the topple to earth that you know will come, so that you can be buried too.

the entire life that you were striving to create has disintegrated right before your very eyes despite every living moment that you try to create.

your very breath is shattered and failure reigns in your heart instead of hope. for me, the evil simply hung in the air at eye level like clouds breathing sorrow in and out with every breath.

the new me lived with the helmet of grief and the broken heart for well over 2 years.

there came a day when i woke up and my heart did not hurt.
 it is the body's attempt to do it's job, the striving for balance.

then i was able to think and i had the thought, something dumb like,
son why did you leave us. and that thought hurt

but not like the broken heart.

time is a river, you can't stop it. it rolls and rolls.

we were blessed with the birth of our first grandson and i was blessed with my first healing moment. i can remember the feeling exactly when i looked into our grand baby's perfectly perfect face.

when we would baby sit for the new mom, we (dear hubby and me) would not put grand baby down. even when he was sleeping, we would not put him down.

we simply gazed at him. 

i can't  put into words the feelings and why it was so healing, but it was holy, and i guess that is the reason why it was so healing.

because there was a knowledge that it was a gift we were holding not a squirmy baby. we knew a different meaning for the term' new life' not just an infant, but but for us a breath of life, not death as we had been living with.

and yes time is a river,

so yesterday i was out in my backyard with my grand baby, (now grand son) five years after that first healing moment and he said grandma! there's a rainbow around the sun, look!

and in fact there was.

they call it a halo around the sun and i am thinking as i unload these pictures how amazing and mighty and absolutely huge is my God in heaven, that he would allow this amazing moment in my life to occur.

 on the 7th anniversary of my son's death, to give me a halo around the sun.

my mind leaps to the fact that my son now has a halo.
... and because my grandson, my new breath of life,
...because my grandson said 'look grandma', i didn't miss it.
i was told once (once? many times) there are no coincidences.

we are all in this river and God alone knows what is around the next bend.

and i do pray for Grace on a daily basis.

 unmerited favor from God,

to get me through the times of quicksand when i am sinking fast.

And He is always faithful to answer that prayer.

Can you believe these pictures!! So amazing, I love the orbs and the anomalies in them. There's a little pink cloud that shows us in a few, and lots of refractions of the camera lens. They will all click to become larger for a closer look.