Death still has a sting.

2014 is half way through and it's already been hard.
In February, my friend Gordon killed himself.
In March, a wonderful man in my ward, who had quit his job and gone back to school at BYU to get his MA and provide for his family, died suddenly.
My next door neighbor in Idaho, a wonderful, kind man died a couple of weeks ago (but he was ready).
My friend Elizabeth died the last week of June.
Last Monday I found out my Great Uncle Bud had passed away. He was 96.
And Sunday morning, my friend Maria never woke up. I was faffing about on Facebook when I got the message from a good friend in Edinburgh. I served with Maria in the Young Women's there. She was fantastic. I loved working with her. My chest suddenly felt cold when I read that.
How can you be young and healthy and just not wake up one day?

I've had enough of Death.
As a Mormon, I believe that families are eternal. That we can be together forever after this life. Yet when death comes, it's hard to find comfort in the phrases people spew out. It bothered me when people would say that to me after my dear Grams died. Yes, I did know she was at peace, in a better place, and healthy and strong again, but I wanted her here with me.
For Elizabeth and Bud, there were loved ones waiting in heaven for them. I see and understand death in a circle of life kind of way. Their time on earth is through and they need to progress. But I struggle to understand why we lose people like Rick or Maria. Deaths that leave young children fatherless or motherless. Deaths that create broken-hearted spouses. That is the death where I struggle to see God's hand in.

Yes, as Paul says, we hope. We believe in good things to come and we hold on to that hope through the dark days. I look forward to those reunions and I believe they will happen.

I love the words that Mormon writes to his son, Moroni:

Moroni 9:25

My son, be faithful in Christ; and may not the things which I have written grieve thee, to weigh thee down unto death; but may Christ lift thee up, and may his sufferings and death, and the showing his body unto our fathers, and his mercy and long-suffering, and the hope of his glory and of eternal life, rest in your mind forever.

I abide in hope. I grieve for my loss, but I hold on to hope.