Love 4 Emmalee

Does the pain ever go away?  I was going through some photos and found this one of Emm and her friends taken a few months before she died.  She looks good and healthy, other than the obvious sign, her baldness, she has cancer.  Tears still flow at times, but to some it means I don't have faith in God or the atonement of Christ.  Just because I miss or still cry, does it mean I don't have faith?  I truly wonder if only those who have lost a child understand the pain that can come on so suddenly and feel like and emotional knife is stabbing into my mind.  I don't focus on the pain, but it comes quickly and can leave just as quickly.

There are the cool reminders that sometimes cause a broad smile to sweep across my face and even laugh.  I love those times.  I don't know if I would have accepted the range of conflicting emotions if I had not been a counselor for 20 years.  I may have been one of those people thought to themselves, "Wow, this person is dwelling way too long on this loss of his child.  He needs to get over it." Interesting how life experiences allow us to gain such depth into issues that were never even conceptualized in our youth.  I would have never even imagined I would have experienced the things I have when I was in my youth enjoying sports, food and fun.  However, I realize that life is what we make it.