Seven months after I had committed myself to starting this blog I am just now writing my second blog. Many valleys and mountain tops have been journeyed since January 2013 began. At the time of this writing I am still looking for the person that had stood so tall as the old year turned into the new. My feet firmly planted on solid ground, not many rumbles to speak of. The time came to find a place to call my home, a nice quaint, yet roomy apartment that would accept my two precious pups. Celebrating the achievements of my two littlest birds, my daughter graduating from the police academy and my son graduating from VMI. Saying goodbyes were just a few, my sister moved back to her home and my son moved six hours away. The most heart wrenching goodbye to my big brother. June 9, he was traveling to his sons home in Kansas where he was going to meet his first granddaughter who was three weeks old. His son who is in the Army was also getting ready to be deployed for six months. He left his home bright and early and made it to Kentucky before he started having problems. We don’t know if he was having health issues or just problems with mechanics, but several events lead to a fatal single car crash on the evening of June 9. We didn’t find out the news until the following day. I will never forget that phone call. The shock over took my whole being. I had not even begun to understand what my world was about to become. The pain began in the very center and like the foulest of weeds grew as the roots entangled themselves around my heart. Day by day I knew that all I had to do was lay my pain in the hands that had already taken all our pain, but I couldn’t let go. I couldn’t let go because I tried to win the battle myself. I thought that if I didn’t then I had not won any of my battles. So I felt the pain deeper and deeper. I wouldn’t pray for relief, not because I was angry with God but that laying down my pain would be letting go of my brother and how much I loved him. I tried to define why I was feeling the pain, then I found that I just needed to feel the pain, accept the pain, know the pain and let it go. My father knew my struggles before I did, he knew that I wasn’t strong enough to withstand what I was going to go through, not without my faith growing stronger. My faith was numbed, it was frozen and my pain was great. God knew that I had to feel the deepest to know the greatest. His hand never was far but it was far enough that I had to stand to reach it. My faith began growing again. As it grows it is growing slower and deeper. Deeper than the roots of the weeds of the world can reach. I know that I will still stumble over the rumbles in each of my days, I cry each day for the loss of my brother, but my heart is beginning to smile again. For God told me to be still and I did, and I saw his hand as I stood up once again.