Wednesday, July 30, 2014

SURRENDER

The word of the day for July 30, 2014 is: surrender

sur·ren·der
 verb \sə-ˈren-dər\
: to agree to stop fighting, hiding, resisting, etc., because you know that you will not win or succeed
: to give the control or use of (something) to someone else
: to allow something (such as a habit or desire) to influence or control you

Today’s musing is not cheerful.

A week ago Monday, a man approached me in the parking lot after Mass to ask me directions to a breakfast restaurant.  He and his family are from out of town, and they did not particularly want to go to the IHOP twice in as many days.

As I was flogging my brain’s recalcitrant geography-vs-restaurant matrix, he mentioned that he and his companions were in town to be with his grandson, who had multiple brain tumors, while the boy “surrendered to the Lord.”

The boy, Frankie Eason, died yesterday (Tuesday, July 29, 2014).  He was eleven years old.

It’s a hard thing to lose someone we love to death.  It’s doubly hard to lose a child.  All the hackneyed phrases don’t cover our pain—barely fog the surface of the hurt. Yet, it is true, as it is when we lose a spouse, that only when the loved one’s suffering is over can we begin the process of healing ourselves.

 

Shortly before I heard of Frankie's death this morning, I caught this bit of a rainbow in the sky.  (Yes, I know my finger's in the frame, and you have to look really hard to see the rainbow just above the left side of the building ahead.)  So, because human minds try to connect things to make sense of them, I'm trying to come up with some analogy, but I can't think of anything apt.

Pray for Frankie’s family as they grieve their loss.


Our quote for the day is from Thomas Chandler Haliburton, The Clockmaker:

We can do without any article of luxury we have never had; but when once obtained, it is not in human natur’ to surrender it voluntarily.



:^(

1 comment:

  1. I would like to think that this straight rainbow was the young child Frankie shooting straight to heaven Jan. May God bless him and his family!

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for your comment. ;^)