One of my friend’s boyfriends blew her brains out last weekend as her three daughters watched in horror.

Today was the viewing at a local funeral home. I got sad as I walked past throngs of people that were my age. I grew sadder as I saw a young lady in a corner dabbing her red eyes with a Kleenex. I grew sadder still as I hugged and softly kissed my friend’s sister and brother. I was the saddest when I sat on that front row and stared at that closed casket. Wow.

What makes someone think that they have the authority to take another person’s life? But not only take their life but do so in front of the children.

I just sat, quietly, and just tried to take everything in. When I was tired of sitting, I got up and read the small square cards in the beautiful flowers. When I read all the eight cards, I sat back down again. Once more, I got tired of sitting, so I repeated the song and dance of looking at flowers and reading cards all over again. I was avoiding something as I knew that I would.

So I confronted the casket by sitting straight up in front of it. My friend was the same age as I am, having only turned 30 a month before me. Her mom was like my mom. Both sent their children to parochial schools making sure that every day there would prayer in our classrooms. Both mothers were very active in their child’s lives and supported everything that we did and wanted to do. But here I sit looking at a casket containing my friend whose brains were splattered against a wall in front of her kids. Then I began to think about me and my health trials over the past year and a half. Oh what her mother would do to have a lupus riddled daughter here with her! Oh how blessed I am. Oh how blessed you are.

Do we really, really understand when someone says that tomorrow isn’t promised? Do we really take that to heart? We let silly things ruin our disposition. We get mad because we live from paycheck to paycheck. I bet my right arm that my friend’s mom wishes that her daughter was here and her least problem was living paycheck to paycheck. That’s why when people ‘compliment’ me about not complaining about lupus, I take it with ease. There are people worse off than I. I may be broken in many ways but I am still here. I am physically broken but I am still here so that my mama can kiss me each morning before she leaves for work. I am financially broken but I’m still here so that my three year old cousin can crawl up in the bed with me and call me a jerk. Sometimes I am so mentally spent from dealing with the effects of lupus but I refuse to complain because I am still here to see the dawning of a new day. What you are going through really isn’t that bad. Honey, remember this if nothing else, if you can look up, you can get up.

Things may not be going your way and they may not have been going your way for 20 years but YOU ARE STILL HERE. Now is not the time to feel sorry for yourself. So you feel like you are at the end of your rope? Tie and knot in that joker and old on. My friend didn’t deserve to die especially not so violently but you and I know that she would give anything to be in my position or yours. She would give anything to have her mother kiss her. She would give anything to hold her daughters’ hands. She would give anything to see a sunrise again. But sadly, her thirty years of life was snuffed away in an instant.

So laugh a little harder. Smile a little wider. Things are going to get better and know that trouble don’t last always.

"See I decided that I cried my last tear yesterday
Either I'm going to trust you or I may as well walk away
'cause stressing don't make it better
Don't make it better, no way
See i decided that I cried my last tear yesterday
Yesterday, I decided to put my trust in you
Yesterday, I realized that you will being me through
There ain't nothing to hard for my God, no
Any problems that I have
He's greater than them all, so
I decided that I cried my last tear yesterday..."
Mary Mary, Award Winning Gospel Duo