Happy Birthday Brother...

Tomorrow is August 28th, I will go over this date on the calendar with my class tomorrow during math, we will write it many times on our schoolwork, I will date papers with it that I have to turn in, I will most likely write it on a check and I probably even have a bill due on this date, but this is more than another day, this was my brother Jason's birthday. Tomorrow would have been his 32nd birthday. It has been 14 years since I have heard his deep raspy voice, since I have touched his hand, since I have seen him in person and not just had to settle for a memory. It seems sometimes as if the world simply swallowed up the hole that was left the day he died. Even in my life, the pain got a little easier every day and life simply went on. At times I feel guilty for not, as I say, "shutting down" on his birthday and the day that he died, but I don't think that is what God wants me to do. I couldn't help tonight reading my devotional for tomorrow's date, August 28th. The title was "Rerouted Dreams", it spoke of life simply not going as we might have anticipated or fulfilled in the way that we would have seen fit. How well this applies to my situation. Fourteen years ago, in many ways, my dreams were rerouted. I never intended on losing my only sibling to suicide, but friends, even in our darkest hours God is in control and God has a plan. Though I lost a prize posession, my only brother, God gave me many gifts of life through his death. Because of these "rerouted dreams" my journey in life changed it's course forever and I knew that God's way was the only way. I rejoice that God gave him to me for as long as he did, I could have never known him. So I celebrate August 28th for the years I was allowed to know him. Happy Birthday Baby Brother, love your sister, Beth