Jamie’s Journal

The last 18 months I have been doing a lot of remodeling to my home of 25 years. In the middle of painting, going to Salvation Army, renting three 150 ton dumpsters you learn to be careful that you are NOT accidentally getting rid of something important.

My husband was a pack rat…” you never know” he use to say.

Living in the same house for 25 years…we accumulated a lot of stuff.

My great-grandfather was a Methodist minister and my grandmother had a lot of his library. When she died Mike and I took boxes of his books. It was fun to look through them, read some of them and see the handwritten notes in the margins. I have given a ton of books to the Saline Library but not really sure what to do with these very OLD books.

Today I was going through some shelf’s and I came across Jamie’s diary. I didn’t even know he had a diary. He must have ditched it because he had only one entry, but it was a good one.

He wrote this on Thanksgiving Day 2009.

God is so faithful, what could have been a tough day became one the most blessed days for me EVER. Writing about it now is bringing some of the same feelings back to me. Praise God. He does renew. He does restore. He is so good. I am so thankful to be chosen and loved and able to share such things with others. The fellowship and love and laughter we shared will never be taken from me. It will go with me to eternity. I love you Jesus. I am yours.

WOW, He did take that into eternity as this was written only 2 years before the Lord took Jamie home.

I don’t know why I found it today, but I love those God nods as we call them in my family. It brought such joy to Andrew and Christa when reading it. As a grieving mother anything like this brings such comfort.

The last two weeks have been particularly hard, as another young man in the Saline community died from injuries sustained in an auto accident. My heart was breaking for the pain I know the family is going through and how their lives will never be the same.

I was in Nashville when I heard the news and was also able to spend time with Jamie’s girlfriend. It is hard to see her still learning to deal with the loss of Jamie and yet oddly comforting to know someone else loved him as much as we did.

It’s also been hard with Michigan football starting in a few days. I know right? But, our family especially Mike and Jamie were so intense when it came to Michigan football. We are so excited about our new coach as both Mike and Jamie wanted Jim Harbaugh to come back years ago.

Now Jim is here and they are not. 

With all that has happened the last two weeks, reading Jamie’s journal was a much-needed God nod.

Dr. John Rice said in his book Bible Facts about Heaven,

“Not one in that blessed land would, if he could, return to the decaying form he left, to live out the life he had planned, to see the happiest future he could imagine on this earth. Death for a sinner is horrible, but never to a child of God. “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them” (Rev. 14:13). Blessed and happy are the Christian dead!”

The majority of the time we sit and talk about Jamie, Mike and Lillian we always end up saying, “but…they wouldn’t come back even if they could.

As King David said when his son died, “he will not come back, but I will go to him.”