These past four or so weeks have been spent in a mini van, in someone else's bed, in someone else's home. Having a 3 year old and a 1 year old has made me stretch my patience and pray outloud in many circumstances.
These times spent away from our home have been some of the best and most sweetly treasured times I have ever had. I wouldn't do it any other way.
My sweet Aunt Sharon has been battling breast cancer for the past 2 years and finally the Lord has taken her home. We spent a week in Branson visiting with her in her own home and just enjoying her and loving her.
She decided that it was time to move in with my parents a week later. That meant moving out of her home and making a very long and hard trip 4 hours to Hillsboro. The doctors knew that there was no more they could do to treat her cancer.
The littles and I knew then that any and every chance we could get to travel and see her 3 hours south in Hillsboro was worth the trip, effort, out-of-routineness and time away from our sweet Daddy.
The past 3 weeks were a very rapid and steady decline of her physically, but she was still sassy as ever:) It is a sweet gift from God that He allowed me to be there with her so much and to just be an encouragement, a caretaker, a pray-er and a singer of hymns (even when she told me they sounded awful at one time:) I was having a very hard time choosing to leave and come back home. The day that I would have left I decided to just stay one more day. That evening I was by her side when she was ushered in to her Savior.
I cannot say enough thanks to God for allowing me to be there with her and to have the chance to say goodbye. It was a very emotional and hard time, but I wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere else then right there. The neat treasures that my aunt has left to her family in memories and pictures and sunflower mementos will forever be treasured.
