I’ve taken a break these past few days from my blog…a break made necessary because my dear 3 month old great niece was taken from us suddenly on Thursday.  These are the words I wrote, then read at the chapel service today.

When the inside of your nose feels the burn of a tear that is yet to come… you know you are in store for a thunderous attack of love… a love that is felt so deeply.

Our minds are filled with the photographs we will never take …we will recognize a part of her in someone else, and we will know that her amazing life is molding so many people on this earth…we can look into her grandparents’ eyes and see the stories left untold… we can look into her great grandparents’ eyes and see not only the  untold stories, but the lessons of a family tree filled with unbreakable branches.  This is us, all of us here. We will bend, but we will not break. We are a tree of strength. And this tree is made up of the Stepps, the Hughes, our family and friends. Yes, we bend, we bend to accept, we bend to hope and we bend to love.  But what we do not bend to is the simple acceptance that things are over.  We will never do that.  We trust You and accept that this is at your hands, God. And we say…You can take away a mom, a dad, a friend, and even a tiny little baby girl. You can take away our ability to hold hands with each other because of miles we cannot often travel. Take away whatever you like, and we will find a way to reach up,  reach out and grab hold of one another with a grip so tight that You will place us in your testimonial of love that others should model.  Thank you God for thinking once again that all of us here can handle this unbelievable task that you have thrown at us.  We totally get the compliment.  We can do it…each and every one of us.  We are joined and we can handle this.

 We are made strong by the lesson she has taught us.  We are asked to give up the promise of her smile, big wheel lift offs, camo clad hunting trips, driving Amanda crazy with dressing room drama, driving Lee crazy with… well… being boy crazy.   We are asked to give up seeing her put her brothers in their place.

 But we are gaining so much.  Many of us here have never even gotten to meet her, but please don’t be sad by that.  We are all learning the same lesson, and gaining so much. 

 Miela Rose will bloom on in every one of us. God created a lot of stuff…can you imagine-150 varieties of the rose. Thank goodness that He was willing to think that a new rose could grow in the garden of a world that so desperately needs the hope of beauty, the hope of family, and the hope of unconditional love.  While Miela Rose Hughes is now among the famous, thriving among the prosperous, and being cradled by other loved ones in heaven, her roots are planted here and her purpose is to tell the entire world that the beauty of a life yet to be lived is a promise to all of us that we also have a life yet to be lived.  The purpose of her death is the hope of new life in all of us.  Miela Rose Hughes was placed here by God, a reason for us to ask ourselves, in my next minute did I live the last one to its fullest, am I blooming, am I a beautiful part of the Garden? 

I will leave you with words to a very poignant song by Tim McGraw.   It is about a man that was just diagnosed with cancer.

The man said
“I was in my early forties
With a lot of life before me
And a moment came that stopped me on a dime
I spent most of the next days
Looking at the x-rays
Talkin’ ’bout the options
And talkin’ ’bout sweet time”

Tim asked him:
“When it sank in
That this might really be the real end
How’s it hit you
When you get that kind of news?
Man, what’d you do?”

And the man said
“I went skydiving
I went Rocky Mountain climbing
I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu
And I loved deeper
And I spoke sweeter
And I gave forgiveness I’d been denying”
Then he added
“Someday I hope you get the chance
To live like you were dying”

He went on to say:
“I was finally the husband
That most of the time I wasn’t
And I became a friend a friend would like to have
And all of a sudden going fishin’
Wasn’t such an imposition
And I went three times that year I lost my dad
I finally read the Good Book, and I
Took a good, long, hard look
At what I’d do if I could do it all again.”

Again he said,

“Someday I hope you get the chance
To live like you were dying”

 We might not ever go sky-diving or ride a bull, but we can certainly love deeper, speak sweeter, give forgiveness, and be the friend a friend would like to have.  We can kiss goodnight, reach out, see the good in others, and say our prayers. We can be better people.

 We can live this way because of the beautiful lesson we have learned from Miela Rose.