Over the past year or so mum, dad and Jim (Ruth's husband) passed away. Besides this a number of other friends and relatives have passed on as well. We haven't had a year like this and it has brought some great sadness as well as strengthening our bonds and communication as a family – and I believe, it has deepened our sense of life and its value.
Recently, friends of ours who we met through our jail ministry had a serious car accident – Chico and Mez. Chico is in jail and Mez has been trying to bring their 3 daughters up on her own. She had a car accident and their 6 year old daughter, Mimi had severe head injuries and died a few days later.
Bev and I went to the funeral and we shared some of a beautiful letter Angy wrote to Chico. Here is an excerpt of the letter. The whole letter is worth reading but too long to share here – but if you ask I'll send it to you.
(From Ang to Chico)
...one of my best friends, Faith, ... wrote me after she suffered a great loss when her Mum passed on from Huntington’s disease. She said: “I know now that it was part of God’s plan—a plan that He explained to me in a dream. In that dream He said, 'I bring tears into your life to water the soil of your heart. Otherwise, the goodness would be lost. These tears enrich your life and allow beauty to spring forth in My good time.' He showed me that if we didn’t have difficult times, our hearts would be like a dry, dusty desert where the sand is swept whichever way the wind happens to blow. Even the best topsoil must stay moist in order to bring forth the beauty of new life. God, our heavenly gardener, has a plan for each of our lives. Although He lets us go through difficult times, He never expects us to go through them alone and they are never without a purpose and a plan. He brings each season of “rain” to water the garden of our hearts.”...
I truly believe that Jesus really is the only one that can help you through this time. But I know that through everything we face, the trials the difficulties, we don’t come out unscathed. Often we complete the time of testing and trial with some sort of wound or scar to remind us what we have gone through. I read a book by Philip Yancey called “The Jesus I Never Knew”. It is all about the life of Jesus. In the book he said: “I take hope in Jesus’ scars. From the perspective of Heaven, they represent the most horrible event that has ever happened in the history of the universe. Despite that event, though, Easter turned into a joyful memory.
Because of Easter, I can hope that the tears we shed, the blows that we receive, the emotional pain, the heartache over lost friends and loved ones, all these will become memories instead of hurts, like Jesus’ scars.
Scars never completely go away, but neither do they hurt any longer.”... (end of excerpt of Angy's letter)
What an inspiration and joy Mum was and still is to our family! Her faith, love, intelligence, wit, musical talent, practical motherhood skills, - not to mention love/hate relationship with politics - and much more - live on in her children and grandchildren. Well, I don't know about the love/hate relationship with politics - maybe that was unique to her! Most of all the love and closeness that she and dad had over their 50+ years together. 
