Joy-packed reunion.

As I write this post from my warm bed, the snow is coming down - it is so beautiful, and it means even more to me right now than it has any other day. Today has been a hard day for me, and it is not even 8 o'clock yet. I awoke last night not feeling so well, and I have been up all morning with some sort of stomach virus. A co-worker was sick this weekend with a stomach virus, and I have the worst immune system, so I probably caught something.

I received the phone call this morning that I have been waiting for - the call that my dear great-grandmother has gone on to be with her Father. When I heard my mother say that grandmother had died last night, I immediately started crying. But they were not tears of sadness - my grandmother has gone home.

She died last night around midnight - my granny and her siblings were by her side until around 10:30 p.m., and they left to go home. Grandmother was very stubborn, and I think she did not want to breathe her last breath in front of the children she loved so very much. When my granny got to the nursing home, she said Grandmother looked so very peaceful. The last couple of days have been so rough for her, but there was no struggle last night.

I can just imagine how happy she is to be with her beloved husband. After she became ill with alzheimer's is when my great aunt and uncle were murdered, and no one had the heart to tell her because she simply would not understand. My heart is bursting with happiness to know that they were all waiting for her.

So, on tomorrow night and Thursday, we will celebrate Mattie Kathleen's life, and we will rejoice that she is no longer suffering. I thought this passage from 2 Timothy in the Message was perfect to describe how I feel this snowy morning.

"Every time I say your name in prayer—which is practically all the time—I thank God for you, the God I worship with my whole life in the tradition of my ancestors. I miss you a lot, especially when I remember that last tearful good-bye, and I look forward to a

joy-packed reunion."

- 2 Timothy 1:3 (The Message)