Monday Mourning -- Permanent ... Yet Not Permanent

I had a strange thought the other day.

I was thinking about the future ... thinking about how much fun it will be to be a grandmother one day.  I've reached the age where some of my friends are now becoming grandparents, and if Hannah were still here on this earth, at the age of 21, she might be married (I was at her age), and just maybe I'd already have a grandchild on the way.  At least a grandchild would be in the relatively near future, Lord willing.

And as that daydream dissipated, my thoughts turned to Bethany.  She's only seventeen ... but in my thoughts, I decided that maybe in about five or six years, after she was finished with college, she'd become a mom and maybe make me a grandmother.  And surely Hannah would be back by then to celebrate and enjoy the new baby with us.

Wait ... What?  Did that thought really pass through my mind?

Hannah would be back?  Where did that thought even come from?

In all the time she's been gone ... four years now ... I have never once had a thought like that.  And it just came so naturally ... surely she would be back soon.  It literally stopped me in my tracks.  And it hurt.  It hurt to re-realize that Hannah is not coming back, at least not to this place.

A few weeks ago, my heart broke as I listened to a bereaved grandmother as she said she told God that she had learned what He wanted her to learn ... "Now, can this just be over?" she sobbed through her hands.

I think all of us who have lost children have felt that way at some point.  We just want our grief and pain to be over.

We want to know that our loss is not permanent.

But that's where the hope steps in.  While our childrens' absence on this earth is permanent ... this earth is not permanent.  Thank God this is not all there is!  We will see our children again, and we will spend eternity with them, thanks to God's gift of His Son.  Now that's the kind of permanent I can get excited about!

"For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."  2 Corinthians 5:1