Twenty years of stuff...

Twenty years. I got to know Laurie for 20 years. On one hand, that's a lot. Many, many, many people did not get to know her for even half as many. There are plenty of people that I am grieving for, because they only got to see the last year or so of all that made her life what it was. That makes me so sad.

It makes me think of this vase that Laurie bought for me in Mexico. When she first sent it to me, I thought it was beautiful, and cherished it just because. When she got home, and came to visit one day, she told me that there was a woman in Queretaro that she knew who was a very talented artist, but very poor, and Laurie had paid her to make it for me. She told me that for a few weeks, every time she would visit with this woman, she saw a bit more of it come together. It was made from a coca-cola bottle, with cement and pieces of broken tiles, a mosiac. I'm holding it in my hand right now, thinking how much more the vase means to me because I know where it came from, and how it touched Laurie to see it when it was just a work in progress.

When I read through all of Laurie's journals, I am just blown away by the process it was for her to become the woman she was. Her words, thousands upon thousands upon thousands...there is a depth to her faith and maturity there, it boggles my mind. I always knew, because I could see it in her life, that she was thoroughly passionate about her number one priority, her relationship with God. But to see it all on paper, her prayers on each and every one of the pages, words that she never really meant for anyone to read until now. Just her and God, in this relationship that is just astonishing. Her struggles were still very much human ones, and she made it perfectly clear that she knew humans had, and would always fail her, but she never waivered on Him. I read the depth of her spiritual journey, and her words to God, and see her faith there, and I pray that I can grow even half the amount of passion she had.

I wonder, then, about that passion, and how her death plays into it. The uncontainable joy written on those private pages not so many years ago, and yet, somehow, in the end, there was so much pain in her heart that it wasn't even worth living anymore. The pain of her life here on earth becoming so unbearable that the only thing left to do was to go running back to the source of her true joy.

Twenty years. So many years that I got to be with her, but not nearly enough.

I got to see her grow up, but I'll never see her grow old.