Ripples

Ripples

(To T and K from S and A)

(We are with you. We love you.)

 

 

 

Imagine your life as a timeline, stretching from here to the horizon.

The space, a placid lake that watches sunsets and suns rising.

 

A timeline laid out before us, where it finishes we know not when.

It doesn’t seem so long measured against God, the beginning and the end.

 

During life you move through this water with ripples that go mostly ignored.

Only because you’ve done this, you’ve seen this, you’ve been here before.

 

Then water breaks and a miraculous creation drops.

And life as you formerly knew it suddenly stops. 

 

Not stop, really, as much as twists and unexpected turns.

Calling you to remember and practice all that you’ve learned.

 

A new child added to the family of three, now counts four. 

Ripples in the water mingle and spread from shore to shore.

 

 

Blessings flow as the pace quickens, joy begets joy. 

A mother and a father, taking in the awe of their boys.

 

The timeline looks so long, the horizon way off so far. 

It would look much different if viewed from a distant star. 

 

Life deals us all its uncertainty, humans we are afterall. 

A grown man fights and parents see, still, their boy so small.

 

Prayers are launched upward like a volley of targeted arrows.

Hope is present, but promises don’t include any tomorrows.

 

Ripples roll away and return again in a different way.

Together on the timeline and a ripple meets its final day.

 

The news hits like a boulder in a stream, some say cancer won.

I deny the loss, a life filled with the countless smiles of family and son.

 

From tragedy comes a reset, grounded again, a peace to find.

I say cancer came out of jealousy of a miraculously crafted mind.

 

 

The lake goes calm again, the sun again sets and rises still.

Time suddenly seems much more difficult to fill.

 

Timelines run, horizons lay afar off still out there. 

A ripple free day is lost to an unflinching distant stare. 

 

Time seems to fall apart, for the T, the K, and the C.

Ripples roll slowly, the patterns aren’t what they used to be. 

 

God didn’t have to show up, because He never went away.

Answered prayers may have been seeing the boys laugh and play.

 

The ripples slowly return, one step at a time they roll on and on.

It hits close to home that this race isn’t a sprint but a marathon.

 

Steady, focused on the horizon, a renewed purpose you carry.

It was flesh, not the memory nor the spirit that was buried.

 

 

Shaky steps cause ripples and so does the single drop of a tear.

But with each drop it feels like M. R. S. is near.

 

Tears multiply, ripples everywhere and you notice them as before.

When laughter filled the air, ripples in the water, a family of four.

 

Time marches whether you do or not, but the legacy rolls forward. 

Ripple after ripple rolls, each a memory remembered and shoreward.

 

Time not only marches, and some things still hurt after they heal.

The ripples you make, the memories you carry, a life very real.

 

So forward you go to carry the load, remembering, sharing a life led.

Laughs, smiles, and moments all shared as not to be a story unread.

 

And the water sees the sun fall as the last ripple flattens far away.

A night’s rest, and the horizon brightens a bit, ripples greet a new day.

 

Days run on, and ripples come and go, the horizon seems so near.

It’s been awhile but when you look up at the night sky your little star appears.