The past week has been amazing.  Not always good, mind you, but still amazing.  Our family all went up to Parma, Ohio to be together as we said goodbye to Grandma Bertie.  Loss is hard even if the person you love is old and lived a great life.  We still miss them and life without them is a new chapter.  Especially if it is your mother or father and you were close.  Even if you were not loved by good parents, it is still hard.  Ask my daughter Alena.  She will tell you, loss is loss and for all of us it brings change.

Change is often a crazy thing.  Change of address, change of a job, change of a situation.  Some of the time the change is good.  In a loss it is most likely not a great thing.  So what do you do when loss and change comes your way ?  Count your blessings….

On the plane coming home I realized just how blessed I am.  Even with the tragedies life has sent my way, the blessings are greater.  I don’t know about you but I see the world through rose colored glasses.  I always have and I pray I always will.  Not that I haven’t had some muddy glasses on every once and a while.  I lose hope like others, I just don’t let myself dwell there for too long.  I also read stories about others who have come before me.  People that get through tough times or loss with grace.  I believe that those who have come before have much to teach.

Mother Theresa,  and Dr. Martin Luther King are people that most of us know.  But then there are other more obscure people we may never heard of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is just such a man.

Some of you may have heard of him.  I consider myself a geek and love to read and write, but I haven’t heard of him until recently.  He was an amazing German Pastor who was executed at the Flossenburg Concentration Camp for being part of the German resistance.  And for helping others.

Eric Metaxas wrote a great book about Bonhoeffer.  It is called Bonhoeffer, Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.  It is not a fluff book for the mom who wants a quick read.  It is however an amazing look into a life of a man dealing with great change in his world.  Living in Nazi Germany with such turmoil, was no easy thing.  I pray I could be so strong in my convictions as Dietrich Bonhoeffer was.

Bonhoeffer spent a year in America and was greatly touched by a pastor named, Dr. Adam Clayton Powell Sr.  He was the preacher at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem.  After spending time there and around America, Dietrich had to decide if he was going back to Germany or stay in America.  Knowing how difficult it was in Germany, he had a big choice to make.  Later on he would say explicitly: that he had been “grasped” by God; that God was leading him, and sometimes where he preferred not to go. (Chapter 5 in Bonhoeffer, Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas)

I love that quote.  Truly love it.  Here was a man who knew that where he was going it would not be easy, yet he believed God had his path already in plan.  I am sure he “felt” that where he should go was back to Germany.  That feeling was God’s direction. Can you imagine what he was going through.  I am sure he prayed, and really weighed every decision greatly.  Change was coming and he knew it.  He could only guess how hard it would be, but he was not deterred as he believed God had a plan. Now if I could be that convicted….

So off the plane I went and with our new world order of no Grandma Bertie here for us to love, I thought OK, God you got me.  I may not like this change in our lives but if Dietrich Bonhoeffer can face Nazi Germany, then I can face my life with all the crazy changes that may come.  I am so very blessed.

Kelly

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