Creating a Memorial

Earlier today I received a phone call from my mom, who let me know that one of my childhood friends had been killed in Afghanistan. At first I just took it and didn’t really feel anything. It was like I didn’t really process it. I went about finding the article that documented the event and looking up family to give my condolences, but it still hadn’t hit me yet.

It wasn’t a couple hours later that it really hit me and I began to break down. I couldn’t believe that Tofu was gone. This is the first time I have lost anyone that wasn’t significantly older than me. Kids shouldn’t die, old people die and even that is hard enough to deal with.

Then as I began to break down I felt like I didn’t deserve to be upset over his death, because we hadn’t be in touch in years. I struggled with that for a while before I realized that it didn’t matter, that he had a significant impact on my life and that was enough to mourn his death.

Tofu and his sister were my first friends when I moved into this state. We lived near each other and would hang out and play all the time. First they moved, but we still went to the same high school, and then I switched high schools for my senior year and we drifted apart. But those years that we basically spent every single day together really had an impact on me.

Throughout the day I have danced between crying uncontrollably, feeling numb and nauseas, and attempting desperately to keep control. Then about half an hour ago I had a sense of peace wash over me along with a memory.

We had wanted to make a club house. So, we got permission to clean out this one shed and make it ours. So we moved everything out, which was a long hard task, and decided we wanted to paint it to our liking. We spent hours attempting to make the walls look like trees. I am not sure how it started, but I know it was either Tofu or my cousin that did start it, suddenly out of nowhere paint is flying through the air. It didn’t take long for it to turn into an all out paint war. In the end the room was destroyed, we and my dog were covered in paint, my cousin was injured, and we were all soundly beat and punished. However, when I remember it now, all I really remember is how much fun we had together.

I think that is my favorite memory of Tofu and I will treasure it and remember how we were then. If I remember that Tofu, then I know he wouldn’t want me to be crying over him, he would want me to be remembering the good times we had and laughing at all the idiotic things that we did.

So, I am going to curl up with my cherry Garcia ice cream and hot cocoa and watch some food network happy to know that Tofu’s memory will live on and be remembered as a happy one. And I know from the pit of my being the only reason I am able to do so is because YHVH lives inside me and comforts me when I am weak.

Creating… a memory?

So, here I am attempting to recapture the many thoughts I never pinned to paper with a pen. Life has been moving so quick-slow that a week has felt like a month but at the same time has flown by. I mean, I hope a month would flow by if it was squished up into only a week.

In this past week I have started my internship at the firehouse, started working on my book again, and started writing my testimony. All the while attempting to oversee construction on my house when I really have no idea what they are doing or if they way they are doing it is the way it is supposed to be done. Therefore I must trust that everything will be completed before the impending deadline rears its ugly little head.

That’s not mentioning the roaring battle to reclaim my house from these little mice that have decided to make my home theirs. For months we have been attempting stay alive traps that you then go off and release them somewhere. However, I am fairly sure that the same pesky mouse we released down the street has made its wormy way back in. So, after one of our little rodent squatters decided to poke its little head out of our stove and into our cooking food- we decided enough was enough. I am crossing my fingers and hoping that all the mice just go away and don’t end up in one of our no see traps or dead somewhere from poison. I honestly hate the idea of taking any type of life, but it is becoming a hazard to keep the furry little critters around.

Anyways, I am finding that as I write out my testimony of how to I came to be the person I am and the mess that YHVH brought me out of I am in awe. After typing the first couple entries I just started bawling. I was so incredibly grateful that I have the life I have now and that with my Papa I was able to overcome what I was certain would be the death of me. It makes you so much more grateful to be alive when you realize how close you were to simply not existing.

I feel like I am getting off topic, but at the same time there is no set topic. I guess I don’t really know the purpose of this post except maybe to capture some of those wandering thoughts before they too disappear forever.

It was interesting, it wasn’t Yom Kippur that made me decide to share my story, but it helped cement the fact I needed to. For those of you that don’t know, Yom Kippur is a day of atonement and reflection as well as a day of celebration for what Yashua has done for us.

So, I was fasting as is custom, but I didn’t feel satisfied with that. I felt like there needed to be more that I was missing something vitally important. So, I had a discussion with my brother about it and we talked for a bit and in the end I felt a little more placated, but still a bit unease. It wasn’t until I was driving into work, that I realized during the discussion I was having, I was quoting scripture right and left without having to think about it- it was just coming naturally.

That’s when it hit me: Yom Kippur is about self improvement realizing where you are doing better, where you are lacking and taking the path towards improvement. I was happy with my growth from last year and hope to grow even greater in the time to come and in the now.