It is hard for me to believe that a year has passed since Brent and Deanna were headed to North Africa with the girls and the rest of their team. Now, as then, they were full of anticipation and emotion because of what they had come through and what lay ahead. Please keep them in your prayers as they prepare to embark on this trip where they will meet some of the people BJ met and share the same gospel that he did as they walk the will of the Master.

Monday was a rare day off for me this time of year and I spent an hour doing something about as dangerous as I let myself do, I looked through my college yearbooks. If you've been with us a while you know I tend to be reflective and this activity brought on both melancholy and smiles as I noted how young we all looked and then how my professors appeared to be, more or less, about the age I am now. Sigh.

There was energy in knowing that life was ahead of me in those days, full of opportunity and promise. Everything had a very...physical reality to it; friendships, relationships, smells, feelings, even dreams and ideals for what the future could be. I recall the poignancy of the feelings and experiences of my senior year, the thoughts about my future and more often, worried about everyone leaving school. In a very real way I had focused on graduation as my goal and what came beyond that was just what life would be.

Well, it be - and it hasn't been what I thought it might be like. Some of it has been better than I had anticipated and some of it not; some of it has just been different. I remember how I longed for the assurance that BJ seemed to have grasped so early in life, that he was in the midst of the Lord's will at all times even as he struggled with life issues. He had hopes and plans for his future, I would imagine never imagining that it would pass so quickly (at least until he sensed the Lord's ultimate call to be a martyr for Him, if then). He grabbed life and lived it for his Heavenly Father.

I'm still grasping at whisps of life and not fulling living it. I can blame it on grief, busyness, business, personality - but anyway I look at it I'm grasping, not grabbing. My Savior is real to me, don't get me wrong. I love Him and long to be in His presence but I too often want to shortcut to "graduation" and not have to deal with the responsibility of working to get there. I am not doing all that I can to walk with Him, I continue to let grief, anger, selfishness and human nature muttle my thoughts and actions.

Lord, thank you for loving us even when we aren't very loving, caring for us when we aren't very caring and blanketing us in grace when we just don't deserve it. I can never earn it and I will never deserve it, but let me live like I can. I love you Father.

Brad