Turning points

It's strange...strange how things can change so much in such a short amount of time. It's just like what I was saying two(?) posts ago, where you can be just enjoying life in one location yet somewhere else someone of relation to you is doing the opposite.

I guess I might as well just come out and say it. She's gone...

But there are two sides to this. There's our side, and there's her's and heaven's. Although on our side, grief, loneliness and mourning reign...I know that it is safe to say that God and the angels are up there with her, partying. She's ultimately in a better place, a joyful place with Him in paradise. Especially in comparison with a depressing hospice where your sister repetitiously assumes aloud that you'd be unable to "do that," your nephew shows up just to play on his DS or watch things on the lobby TV, and your best friend can only show up on occasion. Where you painfully sat out the rest of your days knowing that you'd be sitting out the rest of your days in pain. Praise God that she had peace in her last days knowing she was going Home.

I was in a car the other night and a song came on with joyful lyrics announcing His return to be coming soon, which is sooo exciting. But with this coming also comes the end of the time we have to share His good news and His love with others who need it...are we up to the challenge? "Yes" we say, but then how many of us actually have been taking the steps to be fishers of men? Fishers in the time of Peter didn't "go fishing" like some do now, with all the time in the world and a single rod, waiting for hours on end for the fish to come to him. They pursued and gathered and put a lot of work into it. It's not always going to be cases like this, where the deceased had already entered into the salvation of Christ, and I know that there are ones in the past of whom have been mourned all the more, knowing that they would not be one of the people I'd be able to see up There. Yet I've been finding it an unnerving struggle to step outside of my "comfort zone" where I just "live the life of a Christian" with everyone around me knowing that "I go to church Friday and Saturday nights, and Sunday mornings." They all know that I have about 30-35 kids, all of whom I love immensely. They all know I'm not a swearing kinda girl. They all think I'm "really nice." But how do I take the further steps?

I'm scared.

But it says in Matthew that faith the size of the tiny mustard seed is enough to move mountains - your mountains of doubt, fears...of whatever hindrances they may be. I have to ask myself whether or not I've been forgetting that it is God who works, speaks and changes, not I. It's been too late before. Lives are at stake. The words of Leeland continue to stand true: "This is an emergency."