Beautiful

        So, this afternoon I endeavoured once again to "tackle" my back bedroom. This is a task that I find myself doing fairly regularly. Mainly because no one really uses that room anymore and so that's where all the "extra" stuff seems to find its way to. Papers, craft stuff, Jake stuff. Where does all our extra "stuff" come from anyway? ... but that's another issue for another entry. What I meant to write is this:

       As I was cleaning with my iPod on shuffle, a familiar chord rung in my ears. It's strange how such strong emotions and memories can be tied with a song. I think anyone who has experienced a profound loss knows this especially well. The song I now heard would have once made my heart flutter and jump for joy, but today it carried with a weight that wasn't always there. The song is Phil Wickham's You're Beautiful. It's the song that I walked down the aisle to on my wedding day. As I sat on the floor of my extra bedroom with a mess all around me, half of it Jake's mess, the other half mine, it seemed to me a very poetic scene. I sat and relished in the fact that I serve a GOD who can take jumbled messes and make them into something... beautiful.

       I thought also on this: that I am very very grateful that my husband and I were graced to be able to understand that our wedding day was not about us, nor was our marriage. I feel so blessed that we were able to approach and go through our wedding knowing that the ultimate purpose of it was to point others to the Good News of the Gospel, and that marriage was meant more for our holiness than our happiness. When I posted a picture of our wedding day to Facebook just three months before Jake went to be with the LORD, I wrote the following caption, "life is but a vapor, this wedding a shadow of things to come, this marriage a reflection of deeper truths!" How true that was when I wrote it, and how true it remains, though now it packs more of a punch... How thankful I am for truth that remains! Although Jake's vapor of a life has passed into eternity, Jesus is still beautiful. Although memories of my wedding now carry with them a sting, Jesus is still beautiful, and the Gospel is still true. In fact, the picture of Jesus loving His Bride that my husband and I were supposed to be painting for the world to see is even clearer to me now that the picture has been ripped away and I have only the reality to look to. I am thankful even for the sting now associated with weddings and all things bridal because that sting reminds me that they are just pictures, and it points me to the real thing. Christians, rejoice in your Bride status! One day our Prince will come for us. We'll enter into a place with no more suffering, no more death, and He Himself will wipe every tear from our eyes.
     And He is and will be beautiful!