It seems as though I must once again suspend the usual light-hearted, family saga posting, to ask for your prayers for the entire Schultheis family as we mourn the loss of Crick’s brother John, known to all of the family as “Feller”.  The news of his sudden passing Wednesday afternoon from an apparent heart attack has left everyone in a state of disbelief.  Our hearts go out to Joni and his children, Kim, Jared, Katie and Kelly and his three adorable grandchildren, Lilly, Dylann and Nick.  There are simply no adequate words at times such as these, just lots of hugs and time spent together…………..remembering.

As I have struggled to offer comfort to my “other” family, I turned to the Sacred Scripture which always reassures me that all things work together for good to those who love God,  and also a prayer I came across a few months after Crick’s death which has provided a great measure of comfort to me over the past few months:

The great and sad mistake of many people, among them even pious persons, is to imagine that those whom death has taken, leave us.  They do not leave us………….they remain!!  Where are they? In darkness?  Oh no!  It is us who are in darkness.  We do not see them, but they see us.  Their eyes, radiant with glory are fixed upon our eyes full of tears.  Oh, infinite consolation!  Though invisible to us, our departed ones are not absent.

I have often reflected upon the surest comfort for those who mourn.  It is this:  a firm faith in the real and continual presence of our loved ones; it is the clear and penetrating conviction that death has not destroyed them, nor carried them away.  They are not even absent, but living near us, transfigured: having lost in their glorious change….no delicacy of their souls, no tenderness of their hearts, nor special preference in their affection: on the contrary, having in depth and fervor of devotion grown larger….a hundredfold.  Death is for the good, a translation into light, into power, into love.  Those who on earth were ordinary Christians, become perfect; those who were beautiful become good, those who were good become sublime.

TNT

TGW