What a gift life is! I am incredibly grateful for every little thing in this perfectly imperfect, messy, beautiful life. These last ten months have broken my heart wide open, to truly be in awe of the fullness of life. An exclamation mark to accentuate the many lessons grief has taught me these last nine years without my dad.

For many years I sought perfection, excellence, improvement. I exhausted myself trying to prove myself worthy or win approval or get it all done. But in the end, none of that matters. (Love is the only thing that matters.)

If you go through life looking for those things, all you’ll find is flaws and imperfections and things to fix. The work is endless and thorny. Your eyes become jaded and bitter, and your heart becomes critical and numb.

Grief opened my eyes to a way of living in the Light, a new perspective of seeking beauty and wholeness and healing. And praise God, grace can cleanse the eyes and the heart and provide a new way of seeing the world.

If you search for these things, you will be in awe of all the beauty; in people, in relationships, in all of creation. The work is inspiring and humbling. Your eyes become gentler and forgiving, and your heart becomes full of gratitude and praise.

The joy of the Lord has been my constant source of strength these past nine years, and especially these past ten months. I planned my funeral, not knowing what day would be my last. It’s a humbling experience, this unknown of how much time we have left to live this precious gift of a life. I hope and pray God’s grace keeps me in the light of looking for beauty over perfection, wholeness over excellence, and healing over improvement. More than anything, I hope to continue becoming closer to embodying the fullness of God’s love so that all will know their worth & belonging as a beloved child of God (or in my dad’s words, to know who they are and whose they are.).

Here’s to the next 40 years. May God’s grace light the way…