Ashes to ashes

Today is Ash Wednesday, a day we are marked with ash to remember that we are but dust. Death..we are marked with death at the start of the journey to Resurrection. When I think about death I realize how much it changes life. The deaths that have changed my life in the most significant ways was the death of my mother and the death of my first husband. But there have been many many deaths that have marked my life; death of missionaries, tribal friends, aunts and uncles, grandmothers and friends. All of them were tragic, a death too soon it seems.
Resurrection's start is death.
I remember hearing my brother tell me on the phone that my 52 year old mother had died. I wondered if I would ever be the same. When I got the phone call at work that Curtiss had fallen at work and how every subsequent report was worse. How alone death makes you feel...how afraid, how vulnerable. Death changes life. Death brings perspective, wisdom, endurance, reality, sobriety and pain. Death's shadow is grief, and that is the journey that changes life.
When I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...grief is the shadow of death. This Ash Wednesday we begin by willingly placing ourselves in that walk of grief towards the joy of Resurrection Sunday.

On this 40 day journey to Resurrection Sunday...we sober up with death.
Fat Tuesday's drunk to Ash Wednesday's Sobreity...Repentence...Death...Resurection...