Life and Death

This week has been intense (and it's only halfway through).  

Tonight, Holly comes to stay with me until Saturday.  So I'm taking this opportunity (in my hour between supervisions) to write.  I have approximately 500,000 thoughts and photos from the past week that I'd like to share and document.  But I'm going to take it one event/thought process at a time and do several shorter posts rather than one massively long one.

I'm starting here.

Please pray for the Wilkins family.

I never met Levi in person, but I knew of him through my cousin, Ashley, who is close friends with this family.  He survived a rough battle with cancer that included several surgeries, long hospital stays, chemo and all the pain that comes with it, etc.  I donated and wrote cards to them during that season, and he wrote back.

He and his wife, Emily, adopted a little boy named Owen.  They have three young kids.

Levi is a writer and I've followed his blog for a while now.

I appreciate his insight and resilience and his perspective on life and faith and what really matters.

His last post was about how life begins on the other side of despair... writing with gratitude to have made it through the cancer journey, regaining physical strength and ready to get back to the things he loved.

....That list included time with his family and time in the great outdoors, as he enjoyed rock climing.

He died in a climbing accident this past weekend.

To be honest, I've thought about that almost as much as I've thought about Babah's death this week.

I'm not sure why God allowed it to happen this way.  He survived so many hard things that could have killed him, then he was killed while doing something he loved, leaving behind a wife and three kids who were so happy to finally have him back at full strength and energy.

Anyway, I'm still in a bit of brain fog from the overwhelm of this past week... it's been a lot, and I can tell I'm not thinking at 100%.  I keep having to re-read the same paragraph repeatedly and it's a struggle to take in new information.  But even when my mind is back at full focus, I probably won't have any answers or a neat way to tie this one up.  

But I know God loves them and I believe He has a purpose and plan in all of this.  I know heaven is real and that our hope in Christ is real.  I know that the way we live and the relationships we build matter greatly, even after we die.  I believe he had a strong and positive influence and a good circle that will be supportive for their family.  Please join me in praying for peace and comfort and for a strong support system surrounding Levi's family right now. 

❤ ❤ ❤