Life Goes On

As you know, we sell worms, red wigglers and European night crawlers. I have an order to mail out Monday. This time of year the sales are slow. People are thinking so much about their gardens and composting as they are in the spring and summer. Still we have school teachers and those tenacious people who never are happiest except when busy. God bless them. They remind me to water and turn my worm beds.

Its things like this, simple as it may be, that keeps me moving when life comes rushing in. On October 27, at five pm, my Aunt Jean took her last breath. Thankfully, God gave my wife and daughter Amanda and her family, along with my son, Seth, time to get there to say our final good byes. Thanks to the marvel of today's technology, my daughter, Jessica, who is in her fourth year of pharmacy school and unable to get away, was able to Face Time Aunt Jean and tell her she loved her. She was grandmother to them. They loved her and she them. I called her often and she never failed to ask how each one was doing.

This woman, along with my granny, raise me and my four brothers. She never married, but instead dedicated her life to our raising. She saw to it we had all we needed and taught us how to work and live responsibly. She modeled her faith in God and our Lord Jesus Christ in her regular reading of the Bible and church attendance, but also in giving to the needy and serving those who were poor or shut in or in the nursing home. She lived her life for the glory of God. O how much she will be missed. I have one brother, Kenneth Michael, who I call "Moose" left. All the others who lived together on one of the knobs of Liberty Hill, Granny and Papaw, Daddy and three of my brothers, are all passed away now.

But life for the living goes on. So I thank God for worm sales and calls to haul someone's brush or trim a tree or fix a cooler or rake leaves. Work is good medicine for a sad soul.

In all this there is still joy. Joy in the riches of the love I have felt and continue to feel. Joy in the purpose of honoring God in my work and with my life and joy in knowing that there is a path to forgiveness when I mess things up. God is good and there is much joy in that.

I stood by my Aunt Jean's bed when she died. Just before she left us I began to sing "There's a land that is fairer than day," and my brother joined in low at the foot of the bed. "And by faith we can see it afar. For the Father waits over the way, to prepare us a dwelling place there. In the sweet by and by, we shall meet on that beautiful shore. In the sweet by and by, we shall meet on that beautiful shore." It is in this hope that I find comfort and joy. Praise God that we can live in hope of the Resurrection and a great reunion as life here goes on.