Time flies.
No time like the present.
Time will tell.
Time heals all wounds.

Twenty years. So much has happened in 20 years. I graduated from high school. I ran away from Boston to Florida. I’ve been married, divorced, and became the mother of 3 children (although 2, Preston and Gloria, are in Heaven with you). Several failed relationships. Several great friendships. Mission trips. A discovered ministry. So many things that formed and made me into the women and the mother I am today, but nothing has changed the course of my life, more than the day you left this earth.

I remember that day and the short months leading up to that day not as memories, but as moments. Moments that could have easily happened earlier today. The moment you told me that you were having a “minor” surgery. The moment I laid in your bed to reassure you it would be okay to “let go”. All of the moments in between. So, many details about your life and death that I didn’t discover until several years later.

Those details now don’t matter. You left this earth and claimed your place in Heaven. You are walking with our Savior in a new body that gleams. Your only desire is to worship Him. How amazing is that? I am so jealous! I, still mourning you at times, selfishly wish you were here. However, just in the past week, the Lord has reassured me that this journey has been predestined for me and I needed to travel it without you beside me. The calling He has placed on my life has required and been inspired by each tear I have shed and every smile that crossed my lips.

I have missed you these past 20 years, but you have not missed me nor every milestone that I have reached. For, with my Heavenly Father, you see the whole picture. You see where I am headed and are excited for the things ahead. In your perfect emotion, you have laughed with me and hurt for me, and have been the encouragement it was often hard for you to be on earth.

How amazing that I may not have had the perfect mother on earth, but I do have a perfect mother in Heaven!! Praise You, Lord!  One day, I will be singing praises to our Savior right along with you! Oh, what a glorious day that will be! And it will be like no time has passed at all! I love you, Mami!

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ,so also our comfort abounds through Christ. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort. 2 Corinthians 1:3-7

And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified. Romans 8:30