I was Christmas shopping Saturday night when I came in direct contact with a rack of flannel shirts. It took less than two seconds to dissolve in a hot mess of streaming tears right in the middle of JCPenney’s.

Dominic loved flannel shirts, and every Christmas I bought him one to add to his collection. I was thrilled a few years ago when they came back in style because there was, all of a sudden, a plethora of trendy plaid from which to decide.

Oh, friend, sometimes I wish God picked me to write about humorous, lighthearted bits of life. The kind that make you laugh out loud with impressive anecdotes. I long to have you feel joy while visiting this online space. Instead, He keeps calling me back to encouraging through the muck and mire of the everyday, hard, and tiring valleys we find ourselves trudging through.

To be honest with you, and I always am, I need to say that as much as I’m choosing to focus on the hope of my savior, death sucks. I’m sorry, there’s just no nice way to say it.

I hate death and grief, and I hate crying in the middle of Penney’s. I don’t want to be fragile, and I don’t want an empty place setting at our dinner table, but this is my life and the only one I have to live, so I’m choosing hope.

Hope is a choice, believing in Jesus is a choice, joy is a choice, and peace is a choice. So much in life comes down to choice. I cannot choose my circumstances, but I can choose how I live among them.

The last few days have been tough.

To feel loss over someone who has gone to their eternal home is to miss unique love. Every person born loves in his or her own way. Unique love is incomparable and cannot be duplicated.

Dominic loved me uniquely and he was a stepparent, meaning he chose to love me even though I wasn’t his biological daughter. We should all be so blessed. And guess what? When it comes down to it, we are.

When we choose to believe and accept Christ as our Savior, we are adopted into the family of God. From the begin inning we were chosen, and all of our days He pursues us and runs hard after our souls. He is always rooting for us to choose life in Him.

I’m thankful for a reason to cry because God placing Dominic in our lives was just one of the many ways He’s shown me love. And, in a strange and crazy kind of way, God taking him home reminded me of how loved I really am. Uniquely loved.

God is mysterious and as long as we are wearing the skin we were born in, we aren’t ever going to figure Him out. He’s God and we’re not. And so I’m choosing hope in the midst of today’s sorrow.

I will continue to walk down mall aisles with flannel shirts on display. Maybe I’ll cry; maybe I’ll smile. I guess it will depend on the day. However, I’m sure of this: regardless of whichever emotion I’m overcome with, I will always know love is the driving force.

God made me to feel things and that’s okay. It makes me who I am.

And God made you – uniquely to love and be loved. No matter where you are, you are not alone.

Choose joy.

Choose peace.

Choose hope.

Choose Him and you’ll choose life.

Hope is coming!

Love,

Jennifer