The Summer of Tears

As I sat down to write this blog,  I wondered if people really want to hear anything about tears.  Isn't talking about tears a sign of our weakness?  If so, you will now see my weakness.  For those of you who have been faithfully reading my blog you will know what a busy summer we have had.  In so many ways it has been a summer we will NEVER forget as there were some huge milestones that came to pass.  I think what best sums it up for me is the "Summer of Tears".   Now before you feel too badly,  many of the tears have been tears of joy although there have been some tears of sadness mixed in there as well.  At the beginning of the summer my very dear Grandmother died.  There were plenty of tears of sadness with her loss as she was such a big part of my life.  However, there were some tears of joy as well as she was wanting to go to heaven and be out of this world of sickness and the pain, she was ready to meet her Savior.  As July approached we quickly moved into preparing for our family reunion.  And there were tears of joy as family members arrived we could hardly believe that the family reunion was really happening.  With family members living in six different countries it was no small thing to get everyone together.  We really did make some amazing memories together since it had been 13 years since we were all together.  Coming from a missionary family, our times together on this earth are few and far between.  We LOVED every minute of our time together.   Unfortunately all too soon it was time to say good-bye.  This was really heart wrenching for us to go through so many good-byes not knowing when we will see each other again.  A week later was Zachary and Elisha's wedding in which many tears of joy and happiness were shed.  It really was a wonderful time to celebrate God bringing Zachary and Elisha together.  Then the day after the wedding we faced more good-byes.  How very hard it was to say good-bye to Vern's parents as well as other family members.  But mixed in with those tears were once again the tears of joy of God making it possible for them to come all this way to be with us. We never thought Vern's parents would ever make it out to Ontario again.  But God blessed us with this special trip they made.  We are back home and preparing for our new students to arrive,  however, in five days we will be dropping Titus off at university in VA.  So our Summer of Tears continues as we will soon be moving into the "Empty Nest" stage of our life.  So I will be keeping that box of Kleenex close at hand.  (It is a good thing I bought a six pack.)  Although we have been on an emotional roller coaster for the past six weeks, how thankful we are for God's goodness to us and how he has blessed us beyond measure.   Life is GOOD and sometimes that involves TEARS.