Amazing Love

I am very lucky. I am very blessed.

Today I got to thinking about how many amazing and resilient people surround me. I complain a lot about how difficult classes are, how I fear not getting a job, how I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. I complain about little things, too. We all do, its natural.

There are people around me who carry stories with them one would never know about by the looks of their attitude and demeanor. My good friend, M, one of the only "good" friends I have in law school, told me a few months ago that her mom passed away over the summer. She never mentioned in the year and a half I knew her that her mom had been battling cancer for twelve years. That she had passed away during M's 1st wedding anniversary. That her mom was her closest soul-mate next to her husband.

Yesterday we were practicing mock jury selections in our Criminal Procedure class. The class formed groups of four, each of us role-playing as prosecutors, defenders, judges, and jurors. The point of the exercise was for each lawyer to ask questions of the juror to ascertain biases/prejudices and basically determine whether that juror would be objective enough. We were all asked to answer the questions honestly. One of the questions on our questionnaire packet asked "Have you or someone close to you been the victim of a crime?"

R, a gentle soul, and the most quiet girl in our class was the first juror in our group. She said yes.

"What kind of crime was it and did you get hurt?"

"No, not me. My brother. He was murdered."

There is a woman in my class, S, who is a mother of three. She came to law school to practice international law, even starting the international law society in our school. During the spring quarter of our 1L year, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. By the fall quarter of our second year, we shared a class together. Her figure was dramatically different, but she walked into class like nothing had ever happened. Same large, kelty backpack, same coffee mug, a colorful handkerchief wrapped around her head.

This quarter I see her and she looks stronger and healthier. Her hair has grown back. She has caught up with classes and is on track for May 2009.

God is so good. I watched this movie called "Waitress" this evening, and the lead character said she wished she could have somebody hold her for just twenty minutes without letting go, without looking at her face, without saying a word.

How awesome it is to know that God's embrace is eternal. All that's left to do is to free ourselves to feel it.