“Hope is revolutionary patience” says Anne Lamott. What is patience, then? It is the yet-to-be-realized longing of a looking soul. It is a parent’s eyes glued to yonder horizon, knowing that one day there will be a reunion and a feast…while, for now, there’s only the quiet vigil of sighing and dreaming.

The heart knows a secret bravery that is not celebrated with medals and speeches, but with unabated courage to take every day as it comes. It looks like flowers on a grave, instead of beside a child’s Mother’s Day card. Like sending a text or making a call to another mother who has her kids and wishing her a happy day.

Joy, in this world, is not sung, it is whispered; it is pomp and circumstance under the breath, minus the fanfare and marching. But ever so often it hears the instruments tuning and warming and tilts its head, satisfied the prelude is not too long now.

To witness up close such incarnated hope each day – along with every hollow milestone – is a thing of beauty. Sandy’s unpretentious, faithful life is a blog gone viral in the heavenlies, a sermon without pounded pulpit, a book you weep through to get to the next wonderful page.

Her spirit is a feather for she is the embodiment of stained-glass hope. 

Proverbs 31:29-31
Many women have done excellently,
but you surpass them all.”
Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,
but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
Give her of the fruit of her hands,
and let her works praise her in the gates.

Selah