LunaBellaGathersAcorns

Sometimes I feel like a Pollyanna (and not necessarily in a good way)
I think life can be as beautiful as you allow it to be. God has certainly created an amazing world.
Yes, there is pain and unfairness but unlike our happiness, our joy does not have to be linked to our circumstances. So many things in my life bear this out. When life has been truly out of control, that has been when God has most comforted me. It has been when true friends emerge, when real character is developed, when I have felt the spirit of God fill me with the peace that passes all understanding.
That is what I am most grateful for. That incredible peace. It is the most profound emotion (not really the right word -it is so much more than an emotion) that I have ever felt. No pain is too intense when God envelops you in his peace. Sure you can be at a point that death is more desirable than life and yet still hang on in his strength not your own.
(Back to the Pollyanna bit) How can you describe the comfort available from God to another who is hurting? I don’t know. You can’t minimize another’s pain. How do you show them God’s grace with out seeming phony. I sometimes will act less optimistic than I am (yes -be a phony)just so I won’t seem like a phony. All things do work to His ultimate good. (& if God’s Will and my Will are aligned, doesn’t this mean my good?)
I am sad, confused, even angry at times. Sometimes I like being melancholy for a while (sort of weird pleasure like picking a scab) but there is always that knowing I am unconditionally loved by the creator of the universe that keeps me from going to deep -too far down.
I am so gratefully for the “knowledge” that is so much more than head knowledge, it is gut, spirit, soul knowledge that He loves me.
My deepest desire is to be able to share this gift to those who so desperately need it. (My struggle -is not to sound like an insincere idiot when doing so)

Oh Dear! I can’t find my camera anywhere and it is driving me nuts. Of course, everywhere I look there is a picture just waiting to be captured.

Well, this is new: I not only designed a communal columbarium/memorial garden for a local church, I built the vessel top.
The structure has turned out beautifully – Brick garden walls with a gothic arch center and custom cross with side pergolas, but the cost of the vessel top was crazy or at least more than anticipated or budgeted for.
So for the amount left in the budget, I -with help from my husband, laminated marine grade plywood with west system and stainless screws to create a double circled stone mosaic removable vessel lid. The actual design is pretty complicated but looks wonderful. Installation is tomorrow. I’ve never seen anything that functions quite like this one so I’m a bit nervous. Fingers are crossed that everything will simply fall into place.
When you are creating a place for someone to place their loved ones ashes, you really don’t won’t any issues. I don’t think your soul stays where your remains are so I’m not terribly sentimental when it comes to such things but some folks definitely are.
Personally, I’d like to be scattered in the woods or a garden (back to nature and all that) But I do love a good old cemetery with interesting tombstones and crypts. If I have a memorial stone or bench or structure, I want it to have personality, whimsy.