Porter Post

A thought that kept coming to my mind in the ensuing days of my mom's death was, "beauty for ashes." It turns out it comes from Isaiah 61:3 , "To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness." Those words, that reminder that the Lord will trade beauty for ashes, were my eye in the storm. I noticed so many ashes around me at first, but I also quickly started taking note of the beauty. Don't get me wrong, at the end of the day I would rather bag up all of the beautiful things I've seen in the last three weeks and send them back to their source if it meant that Mom was gearing up for her next trip down to my house and that I was caught up in planning our annual Harry Potter birthday party without another care in the world. But what I will isn't what matters and so I'm embracing the beauty in His will. I listened to a talk from Evan A. Schm...

My Mom died in the early hours of June 29 of complications from pneumonia. She was one month shy of her 67 th birthday. I’ll be processing everything from the morning of her death to the day she was buried for a long time. I’m so grateful that I was able to talk to my mom just two days before she passed. I had sat down at my computer after rocking Spencer to sleep and it was quiet time in the Porter house. My mind went blank as soon as I sat down and I relaxed, which is abnormal because I usually feel torn between doing ten things at once when I sit down to “get stuff done” during quiet time. So I thought, “Well, what should I do? It’s been a while since I talked to Mom...” When I asked her how she was she answered, “Well, actually not so good,” and she explained that she had just come home from the doctor’s office where she found out that she had pneumonia.   She filled me in on some details from her appointment and how she had been feeling recently. My mom has had and ...