Eternity In My Heart

Ecclesiastes 7
I've named this passage "The wise man's school".
But no one wants to go to class.
The Teacher is famous for being loving , but the lessons are ridiculously hard.
The students are usually confused.

Here's the lesson plans for Ecclesiastes 7:

Lesson #1 Quit throwing parties for birthday's and start looking forward to funerals.
Lesson#2. More life lessons are taught at funerals than parties.
Lesson#3. The heart of the wise is (can be) improved when we are distressed.
Lesson#4. It's better to be rebuked by a wise man than be praised by lots of nonbelievers.
Lesson#5. The strong hearted will often lose control during pain.
Lesson#6. (Hardest of all?) God causes pain as well as the joy.

But in Chapter 3, the scripture says (my paraphrase)
He has made everything beautiful in it's time, and He has put eternity in their hearts....

I'm at a place tonight where I'm feeling a little empty.
Not distant from God, but not passionate either.
I've sat in the classroom described above and am frustrated that I have to wait to see the beauty of the circumstances.
I can not help but look backwards, but I long to move faster forward.
I know from experience that the remedy for "emptiness" is to start serving others. I must make time to do more for others.

A few months before Jae's wreck, the 5 of us had planned a trip to Williamsburg, VA. Just somewhere different, history, fun stuff, etc. After her death, we scrapped the idea of travel all together. We couldn't dream of vacationing with out Jae. We were too heartbroken.
The Sanden family (I love you Susan, Gary and kids) found out about our cancelled plans and GAVE us a week in Williamsburg, Virginia, at their beautiful condo.
So.
Three months after the funeral, we piled into our van for the two day drive, and sobbed for the first 500 miles.
The trip, however, turned out better than we thought it would, and we even found ourselves laughing for the first time as a family. We made some good memories in the middle of the agony.

Towards the end of the week, on the drive home, our plans were to spend the night in a hotel still several hours away from our house. We pulled into the hotel parking lot about dusk,....tired, sad, missing her, on each others nerves and dreading the last long night ahead of us. We were withdrawn,....barely speaking to each other.
I'll always remember what happened next:

Ralph turned around and said to us:
"Why don't we just stay in the car, drive on through and go home?"

I can not tell you how the atmosphere of our van changed in that moment.
We turned on the music,.....we began to communicate,....we no longer felt tired,...our spirits soared,......we were going home!

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I firmly believe that all things will be beautiful when we get to see God's work from beginning to end.
I'm thankful that He's given me "eternity in my heart".
Oh how I look forward to Heaven!