B E D S I D E S

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So much of my life leads me to bedsides.

It's a funny thing these places.  Sobering and joyful...full of life and full of life's final rest.

At the bedside there's rejoicing as a new bundle of joy enters life with tears and hope that tomorrow will be brighter.  At bedsides there's the beauty
created when two people fall in love and join their lives together in marriage because two is always better than one.

Conversely, bedsides are a place that some find illness and healing again to rejoin life and live another day.  At bedsides there's hurting and pain and loss.  These bedsides hold the end of life's journey as a soul is reconnected to our Maker.

Christ is found at a bedside as a child prays a prayer acknowledging their sin nature.  Comfort is found as tears stream down a once helpless face all at a bedside.

Life begins here.

Life ends here.

Life happens here.

At a bedside.

So much of my life leads me to bedsides...to places of joy and sorrow.  But at these bedsides there's always one thing that I've found.  No one wants to be alone there whether in pain or happiness.  We long to share the bedside with humanity knotting our lives together.

A truth often overlooked in business of life is this: We all need each other.  We all have a drive to connect with each other and the world around us.  Engrained in our DNA from birth, this drive for human connection will cause us to do strange things.  Anything to join our life with another's.

Tonight my heart is breaking in remembrance of the bedsides that I've stood beside watching painful life pass to the next.  Singing them to heaven, surrounded by friends--by family--I have an assurance.  Many of these lives passed I will see again.

But until I do, I'll continue to stand at the bedsides of life and to live with the living.

A choice I ask you to make today...a hard one, to be sure, but one that must be made...a commitment that must be engaged.  It will cost you the world, but you will gain everything.

Life is short.  We will all one day be baptized in the sheets and pillows as we pass from one side of the bed to the other.  We just will.  So I ask you--so I beg you--live now as if that final rest were today because in actuality it might very well be.

As in the bedside of childhood, find solace and peaceful rest in His presence wrapped forever in His loving arms.  

So much of my life leads me back bedsides.


Linking up with...

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a Week of Thanksgiving...Tiffany Cutcliff

Hello.  My name is Tiffany Cutcliff and I blog at The Dwelling Tree.  I write about life and family.  I'd love to have you stop by and send a greeting.

I am so thankful to Danette for having me! I have been a follower of her for a while now and am amazed at her creativity, vision, and ability to bring other bloggers into the spotlight. She is very generous! 

In keeping with the theme of gratitude, I am delighted to write a post about this subject. 

Isn't it amazing how fast our lives become complicated and heavy? Even if we have a roof over our head and food on the table, we have other things to worry about as well. Broken relationships, failure, and loneliness can plague our hearts. I have often made the same mistake over and over, or have regretted something I have done and wish I could turn back time. 

"...as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us." Psalm 103:12

Forgiven. A new start. I am free. 

This year, I am thankful for new beginnings. 

I have a past. My past contains many regrets I have and a trail of broken relationships, both romantically and non-romantically. To be painfully honest, I experienced a failed marriage in my early twenties. I truly believed in "till death do we part", but that didn't mean that I was exempt from experiencing a failed marriage. I thought I would never get my life back, and I hit an all time low. I viewed the world from rose-colored glasses and thought that giving my life to Christ prior to marriage meant having a joyful and blessed life. Divorce did not fit into that picture. 

I was about to find out that as a child of God I am not going to always have an easy life. Something I was going to learn was that God was the author of my life, that he walks with me through my heartache and pain, and that he could even turn my pain into a beautiful story. He is the God of New Beginnings, and he was going to give me my very own. 

See, my story went on. I found friends who loved me in my struggle, I found that God was with me every step of the way, and I eventually found love again. God redeemed my life and I enjoy a husband that is my best friend and I have a beautiful baby girl named Lillian. See, that isn't my new beginning though. I value my baby and husband more than I could express in words, but what God really wanted me to see was my New Beginning with Him! Jesus used my husband to build trust again, and my baby to show me what unconditional love is (as much as I even think I can understand)- all in an attempt to show me what He really did when He died on the cross. Jesus pardoned my sins as far as the east is from the west, and He gave me a new start. He promised me that he would renew my soul. He can fix broken relationships, failure, and loneliness. His promise of my New Beginning and the fact that he cleanses makes me more grateful than I could have ever imagined. 

What New Beginnings have you experienced this past year? Where has God renewed your life? 

May you have a wonderful Thanksgiving this year! 

"He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” Revelation 21:4

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