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Bittersweet thoughts flood my heart this week as we draw closer to my niece’s wedding day.  My thoughts keep tuning in to memories of my sweet sister, the bride’s mother.  As I begin to create her flowers for her special day, my sis’s kind face just keeps popping up-reminding me she is near.  I am just not sure that the searing pain of this kind of loss ever goes away….ever.  I wonder as I work what would she have done?  How would sis have decorated that wedding room?  Fabulous with that special touch she had, that’s how.

Keep working, keep your focus, do it for her I whisper to my heart.  I love Jesus so much, but until I ask Him face to face, I will never understand why we must go through such pain here on earth.  It just doesn’t feel like my real home, earth that is, my heart tells me there is a place for us.  I need peace Jesus, come into my heart and fill it up with your presence – so I can BE present for this occasion.

Sis would put raffia on all the mason jars, working quietly in her “keep it all to herself kinda manner”.  It would be country looking, warm and inviting and never outrageous or over the top.  Gotcha sis, I’m with ya, let’s keep it simple.  Her baby girl is alot like her, at first she didn’t want any flowers at all, but gradually ideas and her look came together .  Mason jars filled with babies breath, stock, dusty miller and little wild daisies.  Ummmm, hate to be the one to say this but your Mom’s influence is definately in this design ! Oh and by the way, the bride tells me, “absolutely NO raffia, cuz mom put that stuff on everything and I just don’t like it!”  Okay I say to myself while secretly thinking-gosh we sure need raffia around those jars…lol.

She decides to put butterflies in special places, in the jars, in certain bouquets and corsages, not too many, just a few, just a little reminder that her mom is with us all on that day.  She will flutter around that precious moment of joining two people together for a lifetime of love-like her marriage was, yep she’ll be there for sure.

One of my flower tasks this week is to create two bouquets for the graves of my two sisters, one left us the night before her wedding day and the mother of this bride who left us just a few months ago.  Again I don’t know how I’d survive this heartbreak without my faith-it would be a dark road.

It’s a beautiful day today, crisp, sunny, not too hot or humid, the kinda day my silly sis would have laid out on the deck to get a tan kinda day.  I’d join her and we would be doing the flowers late into the night to make up for the fun we were having in the sun.  Yep, that’s what she would have done for sure.

Love you sis, and miss you all the way to the moon and back.970423_10101890666062532_122820067_n