Aspiring Poet, heartfelt thoughts.I have Just Discovered that I can write

  There are days when life makes perfect sense. The sun is shining. The bills are paid. The people we love are gathered close. Our prayers seem to rise straight to Heaven and come back wrapped in peace. On those days, "Hallelujah" rolls off the tongue with ease. Then there are the other days. Days when shadows linger longer than they should. Days when the doctor's report brings more questions than answers. Days when grief sits beside us at the table and refuses to leave. Days when our minds become tangled in a thousand thoughts, trying to understand what cannot be understood. Those are the days that teach us what Hallelujah really means. The human mind is a remarkable thing. It searches for reasons. It wants explanations. It wants every loose end tied neatly into a bow. We look at the world and try to separate everything into categories: good and bad, victory and defeat, blessing and sorrow. Yet life rarely cooperates with our neat little boxes. Sometimes joy and sorrow s...

The house still remembers her. Not in a way I can prove, not in anything I can point to and explain cleanly, but in the quiet way a place changes when someone who shaped it is no longer walking through it. It is my father’s house, and he still lives there, but it is not the same home it once was. I go to see my dad. But I still go to see her too. And both of those things are true every time I pull into the driveway. The couch is still there. The rooms still hold the arrangement of her life, even if no one says it out loud anymore. Nothing has been dramatically changed, but everything feels permanently altered. Like the house is still learning how to exist without the one who made it feel complete. When I step inside, my eyes still do the same thing first—they look for her. Not because I expect her to be there, but because love does not stop searching just because it has been told the answer. My dad is there. That matters more than I can say. He is still in the house, still holding on t...

 At the feet of Jesus there are no years to measure— no anniversaries, no “one year gone.” Only now. I wonder what that now feels like for her. Does she remember the ache of this world, or has it already fallen away like a coat she no longer needs? Here, I count days with a tight chest. There, she stands where love has weight, where faith is no longer whispered but spoken face to face. I wonder if she knows how often I still reach for her, how time keeps pressing forward while she rests outside of it. She is not waiting. She is not missing anything. She is where all questions finally exhale— at the feet of Jesus, where eternity is gentle and grief cannot follow. And I remain, learning how to live in seconds, trusting that one day time will loosen its grip, and I’ll step into that same now, and see her there.                                                   ...

  I'll see you again mama Her hand in his grasp— each breath a frail, fragile wisp, her faith steady, sure. He remembers love’s tender warmth, those hands that bore his childhood weight. Memories surge in— the lull of her voice, her arms that sheltered his storms, her gentle strength in each word, her laughter that filled the dusk. Tears streak down his face— each sob a testament to her devotion’s light. He leans close, his voice a vow, softly through his trembling lips: “Sweet Mama, I will come when my earthly journey ends— we shall stand in perfect peace together at our Savior’s side. ” She takes a labored breath— her final breath upon this earth— now no pain, no sorrow, only joy untold. ----JHF