A different life.........

My lovely son, contemplating as you sit by the candle light in your garden, the year that we lost you......
We are this week contemplating a visit from your widow.
Only she is bringing with her a new husband, also called Matthew. And her surname has changed.
I know that you met him, years ago, at the Christian festival Soul Survivor, and it is good that he knew you briefly.
She now lives and works in America, at the same Christian College as her husband in Dallas.

It is what we prayed for her, after the devastating loss, that she would one day meet someone again   with whom she could share her life.
And God has a way of being surprising at times!

BUT
We are facing a whole new different relationship, and with the sense of pleasure that we have to see her remarry and begin a new life, comes the immediate knowledge that it was because you died that the whole of our lives were altered and shattered on that awful night.

We are always in the process of rebuilding, and trying to make sense of where we are now.
But it is the "where we are now" that has to be faced each day that goes by.

This is another of those "first" experiences, in the same category as birthdays, anniversaries and Christmas.  

SO we greet a new couple this weekend for the first time, whom we have not seen since last year. Now almost married 12 months, and will negotiate the fact that it would have been your own Wedding Anniversary on Sunday. It seems so incomprehensible to grasp.
A bit like about to negotiate a minefield.........you never know how you are going to cope, or what will happen......except we have to go through it.

I miss you.

I found a letter someone had  written to us just after you died,
And I quote from it now......

" I struggle to make  sense of the death of Matthew and why you should have to go through such grief, But at the same time, I give thanks to God for the tremendous person Matthew was - his faith, his personality, his desire to serve God wholeheartedly."

We go on, without you, this weekend into territory as yet uncharted, holding Jesus' hand.  
May the Lord watch over you for us.

Mum  xxx