Perfectly Perfect

A little over a week ago an unexpected package came in the mail. The return address warned me to not open it with abandon on the spur of the moment but to wait until I had time to privately engage with whatever lay inside. When I finally did sit alone in our office and slit open the envelope from Heather's mom I felt a mixture of emotions over the recipe book lovingly compiled by Heather's friends.

When I knew Heather the most - and by "the most" I mean comparatively to all the years of our friendship - hat would be the year that Hubby and I lived with her and her hubby. Heather was not the gourmet chef that she had become while living in NM. She could cook delicious meals, there was no denying, yet with our busy schedules we both reveled in sharing those duties, planning our weekly menu together and each only cooking a few times a week. At the time they were in the process of adopting their first child and she was working more than full-time as a therapist. When we moved in and I started cooking her husband was grateful to be off his steady diet of frozen pizzas as Heather often worked late. So it was with a little bit of a smile that I read these cherished recipes (some of which I was honored to recognize from my own recipe box) and imagined her throwing herself into them with the same zest and abandon she did any project she put her mind too.

I think I made it to the chick peas before the first tears started to fall. They were in the listed ingredients for basil hummus - the first recipe of the book. Her friends thoughfully filled in little side stories with each recipe and precious, precious photos of Heather with her children and friends. I sat weeping and reading it cover to cover before I could somewhat move forward with life and the rest of the scheduled activities for the day.

Lately I've noticed that when I revisit that place of grief with abandon, not just sideways glances as I distract my heart with the busyness of the day, it subconsciously puts me in an insecure and fearful place in my heart. I'm faced with the frailty of my own life and those I hold dear. I can't ignore how very little control I hold over keeping all that I love alive and well. The words from I novel I recently read echo in the background of my heart, something along the lines of, "...life is about change, it is like a river always moving forward, you can't stop it, you just have to change and bend with it." But what if life is so perfectly perfect you don't want it to change? And yet you know the futility of trying to stop it?

I know I must daily surrender my fear for the health and safety of my loved ones and consciously move forward to a place of peaceful abandon. And I know that even if I don't agree on what their number of days on this earth should be, God's Word says He already knows them. And I know that because of Jesus' death and resurrection the next life will be so so so much more perfectly perfect with no sickness, no death to interrupt and snatch away at our happiness. Yet here we are presently living in a state of flux, grasping at all the joy and happiness we can squeeze out of this life and yet living for the Day when we will strain no longer and enter into His Paradise.

I smile knowing she is already there, reveling in it. And I'm so grateful for all the time I did have with her that year that I knew her "the most" of all our years of friendship, though I hardly appreciated them then as I do now. As I look through the beautiful stories and pictures I'm so thankful for those who lovingly put this book together. And if I can stop crying over the chick peas I might actually get dinner made...or we might just have a frozen pizza. Either way, I think I'm honoring her memory. :)