Will I Be Forgotten?

When I arrived home from several days away near Colorado Springs for medical appointments, Jonathan, Crystal, and Danny had walked down the drive to meet Hannah and me. 

 

And when I came into the kitchen, this beautiful wooden message met my eyes.

"Today--Tomorrow-Always--I love you."

Jonathan had found it at the Runnings ranch store recently.  He had known a little of a heartache I had shared--the fear that if I don't make it through this physical battle, he and the children will be left without me.

And I was afraid that in an effort to forget the grief, they might forget me.

Like a young lady, Jill Riddle, with whom I went to college, who married, had two young daughters, and then passed away with ovarian cancer perhaps 15 years ago, who shared her fear of being forgotten by her young daughters, I was also afraid of being forgotten.

"I will make sure our daughters do not forget you," the young husband had promised Jill. And although he had remarried, he had made good on that promise. I have received more than one letter from one of those daughters through the years, one not that long ago.

Ever since Jonathan's mother passed away, I have hoped that I have been an example of remembering someone we cared about--by encouraging Jonathan's dad to buy wreaths to place on her grave, and then going with him to visit the grave.

We've remembered Mama also in little, happy ways. It doesn't have to be sad forever, the remembering. It can be happy once again once the pain of the loss is further in the past.

Like wearing Mama Lucas's lavender skirt last weekend for the first time, and when Jonathan told me my outfit was pretty, letting him know that it had belonged to Mama.

And in each other's arms together, for just a moment, we had just remembered.

Softly. 

This morning in church four cousins sang "My Heavenly Father Watches Over Me," one of my personal favorites, ever since a fellow missionary sang it to me over in Ukraine, when I was terribly lonely. This time, a young son sang as a solo the verse, 

"He makes the rose an object of His care,

He guides the eagle through the pathless air.

And surely He

Remembers me,

My heavenly Father watches over me." 

And I know that whether living or dying, there is Someone Who will never forget me, on Whose hands my name is engraved.

My heavenly Father will never forget me,

and He will never forget you, either.