Heaven

Honeymoon in Jamaica 2004

Two posts in one day seems necessary for me at this moment. I think partially because I can't stand posting with a picture to go along with it! Don't pictures speak a thousand words?
Getting the mail today I am so glad to see a couple of cards mixed in with my "paperwork" as I call it. It seems like whenever I open the "paperwork" it makes me re-live that day-January 5th, 2009-all over again. I am having a problem with that anyway. It seems like I go to bed thinking about the events of that day and I wake up around 4am each day doing the same thing. I have to consciously think about something else or pray. Sometimes I think about that morning and it feels like it had to have happened to someone else because it is to horrifying to think that it happened to me. I do remember in my fog of that morning how many people came to support me there in the ER. That was nice.
I feel like I'm rambling today.
I'm not quite through C.S. Lewis' book "A Grief Observed." (I'm not widely recommending this to everyone like "Tear Soup," but it has been really good for me as someone who lost a spouse after a relatively short marriage. We would have celebrated our 5th anniversary at the end of July. Although we dated for eightish years before that.) Anyway, it has really made me think about heaven and God in different ways. I've always heard about how great heaven is, but it must be incredible for Thomas to want to be there and not with Caroline, new baby and I. (Not that he had any choice of course.) I just can't imagine him not being sad being away from us. I would like to think about heaven as a place where time has no holds and so we are all there together already, but I also want to think of Thomas looking in on us so I don't know how that works. In the book I'm reading it says how different it must be in heaven because why would God take away what we already have and give it to us again in heaven. That makes perfect sense, but in my small brain--I want it to be the same, in some ways. I want us to be special to each other (as a husband and wife) and not love everyone equally as I have heard heaven explained to me. I know that must sound selfish, but that's how I feel.
I've said this a lot to my friends and family, but one of the million hard parts about this is how I used to feel like life is short, but now I feel like the next fifty years is an eternity. (I know I'm not even promised tomorrow-obviously-but I can't help but look down the road.) I'm already hit over and over at how commercials, school/education info, movies is aimed at "parents" plural. That's as it should be, of course, in a perfect world. It's just another constant reminder at how different we are now.
This all being said, I was thinking today-listening to the local christian radio station at how blessed I am to have found Christ and that He fills the hole left by Thomas. It still hurts, but I have the hope and faith that carries me through each day. I remember what that "hole" felt like before finding Jesus and it is such an awful place to be.
Thank you, Lord, for this day we, here on Earth, have together and for my children. I can say I am blessed.