December 7th... It's been 29 years...

Sometimes things happen in your life that change it forever.  I'm not talking about changes that tweak your path, but the ones that pick you up from one road and place you on an entirely different one. 

 

December 7th is one of those days.  For some who don't know my entire family history, 29 years ago today my 6 year old brother Michael went ahead of our family to be with Jesus.  After a painful struggle with bone cancer, on a Wednesday night, with my Dad praying over him, and my Mom and I there as well, he took his last struggling breath and was, I believe, carried away to heaven in the arms of Jesus.

Several things I remember clearly about that night.

I remember his last breath and the silence that followed.  My Dad looked up and said, "He's gone..."

I remember the tears that started all throughout our house and my Mom telling us to keep our voices down because the doctor had told her that a persons hearing is the last thing to go. (Maybe in the medical world, but in my world, I believe it was a swift lift into eternity.)

I remember our pastor reading us scripture about death.

I remember my Mom hugging my brother because she had not been able to hold him tightly for some time.

I remember laying on our friend Brenda's lap while she played with my hair.

I remember Michael's body being removed from our home.

And, I remember that after I went to bed that night, I woke up all night, crawled to the end of my bed to look across the hall into Michael's room to see if it was all just a bad dream.

My parents had been through a tough fight with this disease that took my little brother... and now it was over.

For me, there was a sense of feeling very lost.  For a long time our family was defined by our having a terminally ill child in it and all that it entails.  It felt like, "okay... now what do we do, and who are we?"  We don't have trips to Portland to make, no more of my Mom being gone all the time.  No medical paraphernalia to fill our house with.  What happens next?

This is where the path change happened.

  

Within a couple years, we had moved to California.  We left what felt like our entire support system behind and moved to a town I had never heard of, to a bunch of people who didn't know what we had been through.

Our family had been girl, boy, girl... Laura, Michael and Amanda.

Now it would be girl, girl, boy, boy.... Laura, Amanda, Darren and David.

To the heart of a young girl this is a lot to take in during those early years of tweendom and teenage years.  Lost actually doesn't begin to cover all the things I felt during this time.  

However, 29 years later, I have a different perspective on the path that was changed for us.  

Because of Michael's death we moved to California and gained an entire new community of friends.  These are the friends I went through Jr. High and High school with.  This was the community that I found my husband in, got married, and had 3 girls in.  This is where my sister grew up and had her sweet little Lucas.

Because of Michael's death, my parents decided to have more children.  Darren and David would not be a part of our family had Michael not died.  My sister in laws Holly and Sarah would be strangers to us, and my nephews DJ, Jared and Jax would not be.

Even though Michael was taken, much has been given since.  The memories I have of my brother are written on my heart along with another life that would have been much different.

I am so thankful for the life that God brought out of that tragedy... for the lives that exist today.  

Someday, my brother will meet all this nieces and nephews and the two brothers he never knew.  Someday, eternity will hold my entire family in it's hands, we will all be reunited.  This journey here will be just a small blip in time.  Until then I am grateful for the path that God gave our family and people and places it has taken me.  I am grateful for the 6 years He gave us with Michael and I am thankful that I have a brother waiting for me in heaven.   

Sometimes life changes and it's easy to see in the moment all that we have lost,  but we must always remember that our Father in heaven has good things for us.  We are safe on His path for us.  We can trust that path, even in the dark valleys.  Beauty from Ashes... that's part of His promise.