We miss you Darlene! Today would have been Nana’s birthday, our birthday’s were just 6 days apart so we would sometimes share a celebration with dinner out or cake and ice cream at Nana and Papaw’s house. It’s hard to believe it’s been 2 years already. My mother-in-law’s passing changed my life. As a wife and mother, I have had to realize that all I can do is serve God and do the best I can while I am here because in all reality, when I am gone everyone will move on. My children were so young, Parker not even born when she passed away, so only Foster and Katie have memories that are hard and fast right now. At first, this realization that a person could be a daughter, sister, wife, mother and grandmother and be such a central part in all of our lives and then just be gone one day was very unsettling to me. I started to have thoughts that perhaps all this loving and giving and sacrificing that you do in those roles is futile. Of course, nothing that God blesses us with, blessing or trial, is futile. The big picture is He is molding us and growing us to be like Him. And the touch and presence of Nana will always be here, in my husband and children, who wouldn’t be here without her. In the memories of funny stories and personal struggles, and her witness in how she reached out to others with her card ministry.

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; ¹⁴ whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. ¹⁵ Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.”      James 4:13-15