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Blog 496 – 12.16.2016

While You Were Sleeping

One of my all time favorite movies is the romantic comedy,”While You Were Sleeping” and stars Sandra Bullock, Bill Pullman,and a great cast of characters. It is a wonderful holiday movie about  a young woman whose act of bravery wins her the hearts of a family she so needs and has missed since the death of her father.

There are so many people for whom the holidays are a sad time because of memories of loved and lost family and friends. I do not believe in loss. My first child, my daughter Emily, made her entry on this stage in July of 1980 and her exit in the same month thirty two years later. The play that was her life was a joy to be a part of and share. Her cousin posted a picture of a Christmas Tree on Social Media yesterday that had a Viking helmet complete with horns and blond braids atop the tree. Her comment with the picture read, “Guess who is the angel atop our tree.” When I saw it my heart answered that question – Our Angel Emily. A year after Emily took her final bow, at a family reunion in Murray, Kentucky per her final wishes we held a Viking Funeral for her. A year ago yesterday I posted for my daily blog that day a chapter from the book I wrote about her, The Little Girl Who Sang Her Song To Anyone Who Came Along, the chapter called Emily’s Viking Funeral.

In a comment to the Christmas tree picture I remarked that years before the Lord Of The Rings movies came out that some fan of the books had scrawled on a New York City subway wall the words, “Frodo Lives.” On the hearts of many of us Fans of Emily are carved the words, “Emily Lives.” Indeed neither she nor we are ever lost so long as we are remembered.

The One who knows us and loves us best, whose we are and who we are in the highest and best sense can never forget us. So wake up, Sleepy Head, and realize that even the sweetest dreams one might experience in this world of illusion and misperception are nothing compared to what has been prepared for us. In the movie I mentioned above Sandra’s character voices over in the closing happy ending scene, “Peter once asked me when I knew that I was in love with Jack. I told him, ‘While You Were Sleeping.” Most of us enjoy a good love story with a happily ever after ending. While we are sleeping the great Author, the Universe, gives us glimpses of just such a story, His Story, in our dreams.

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White