It is nearly 4 am and I have been awake for a couple of hours.

In my last post, I shared some deeply personal insights of a spiritual nature. I feel prompted to share similarly tonight, or rather this morning! I haven't written this week because there has been so much going on, and it has been a bit overwhelming.

I have another friend who is working on making the transition from this life right now as we speak. His situation is different than Tony's. This friend is a WWII vet. His body has been gradually failing him over many years. His wife is one of my closest friends. I met her nearly 14 years ago at church. She would sit in the foyer during the church service because of her bad back. I was in the foyer because of a crying baby. We became fast friends instantly and are as close as family.

As I have been in this home, serving my friends, I am again impressed with the sacredness of life, of death, and of God's hand in our lives. There is so much we can't see. As I/we walk in faith we can be given just enough to know to continue going on.

So I woke up a couple hours ago, and had music playing. The power of music to touch our souls is great. It is quickly becoming a recognized form of therapy in the mental health field. While the answers are not completely scientifically understood, the truth is that there is great power in music, for good or ill.

As I lay here listening to songs including Carrie Underwood sing How Great Thou Art, and David Archuleta sing Be Still My Soul, the tears flow.

Not because I am sad, but because I feel so much love for and from my God.

Several times I have asked God in prayer what He thinks of me, what He feels about me. If I am good enough. I know He loves me because I have felt it so many times. Yet the question still has been in my heart. And in the middle of this personally sacred experience this song played:

Beautiful for Me

I can't put into words what I felt or was thinking, but I can say it was an answer to those questions.

There is so much more to us that what meets the eye. It is obvious when you look at the body of someone who has died. That body doesn't look right. It resembles the person, but it is obvious that they are no longer there. For us, it is an unknown, but the reality of it touches us sometime. The longer we live the more it touches us. It changes us and deepens our searching for meaning. As my dear friend Erica said in her latest blogpost regarding what she is experiencing right now, "Grief is essential to our spirits, just as much as love is. There have been moments where the grief seems unbearable, where I want to cry out in pain as I feel my chest collapsing in sorrow. That's how it feels to me, and I hate when it comes crashing in. But I am thankful for this deep emotion as it's a reminder of how deeply I love Tony, how full and enriching our marriage is, how we were really able to connect "as one" over the past decade. I would do it all over again a thousand times to be with him forever. I will welcome the grief to continue to have all this love. We will be together again, and until then I never want to forget how Tony makes me feel as a wife, mother, and above all, a daughter of God." I had never thought of grief in that way, but it hit me as true.

I apologize that this is another deep post. It is what I am surrounded with right now. I feel like I am undergoing a spiritual growth spurt experience. The emotions are deep and real and life-changing.

There is much that I do not know. I do know, however, that there is a God. He loves us deeply and personally. I have always known that. That knowledge deepens with time and experiences such as these. I am so thankful for that knowledge and to have the chance to share.