Now I have to get something off my chest

Being the first time I have ever blogged twice in the same day, this is new territory for me. I know a lot of you have put up with some of my crap and nonsense, but recent events have put in to persepctive the year I am having and struggle it has been. Also, how much of a burden has been put upon my family and the weaknees I am now feeling from all of it. I feel like an ancient wall from years gone by, that has slowly started to crumble under the pressure of the outside world. Winds of change, the weathering of storms and the moving of the earth has slowly started to break me down and it's taking its toll. All of this starting with the Megan and the struggles she has had, and still has, to losing two close family members in 2 months. It's getting hard to deal with, so I am going to ramble here for a minute to help myself cope. The six months with Megan have been like being eaten slowly by an faceless monster, and now with the deaths in the family, I have hit with hammer twice, so naturally I am feeling broken and weary. I look at my wonderful daughter, and I see hope in her eyes. Hope that I sometimes do not feel. She smiles and I am comforted. I know and pray, earnestly, that she will overcome this mountain. I think what hurts the most is that I was not able to see my uncle or my grandfather, for over 4 years and also was not able to show them my kids and how they had grown. Time is precious and fleeting, and never rests. Moments are here, then gone with seconds that pass. If you come across an important moment, do not let it pass without doing something about it. I have missed many chances in my life to do something special, or to spend time with my family, and now I can not get those moments back. ALl I remember about my grandfather was that he was a cantankerous old man. I wish I could have know him in his youth, to see the man of honor my mom knew him as. My uncle, the same way. I wish I could have know him before he went to Vietnam and had his life changed forever. Before the turmoil of a country who hated him and wife who left him had eaten him alive. Throughout all of this I reminded of what will become of me, eventually and I remember a couple of lines from a movie, which will really show my nerdiness:

                PIPPIN
             I didn't think it would end this way 
		GANDALF
             End? No, the journey doesn't end here
                GANDALF 
             Death is just another path, one that we all
             must take.
                GANDALF
             The grey rain curtain of this world rolls
             back and all turns to silver glass . . .
             and then you see it . . .
                PIPPIN
             What, Gandalf? See what?
                GANDALF
             White shores ... And beyond . . . A far green
             country under a swift sunrise.
                PIPPIN
             Well, that isn't so bad.
                GANDALF
             No . . . No, it isn't.

I am comforted by that conversation knowing where my grandfather is now. He had scoliosis, and was hunched over at a 90 degree angle for about the last 25 years of his life, living in pain everday. Now, as of yesterday at 1:30PM EDT, he went to meet God and was able to stand tall, and straight for the first itme in a long time. Also, my uncle was able to breathe deeply, with no pain in his lungs from the agent orange induced cancer, for the first time in over a decade. I think about it and I hear Jesus whisper in my ear "And, lo, I am with you always, even until the end of the earth." Math 28:20b