Life Matters

July 17 Memories

| Sharon Arpana Edwards

I have loved today’s date for seven years now. I was in prayer one morning in 2018 when I happened to open my eyes and look at my clock at 7:17. I sensed the number was significant, so I asked the Holy Spirit to show me what it meant.

I have shared the revelation in this video, but the gist is that the Holy Spirit led me to Genesis 8:4, where we are told that Noah’s ark came to rest on the seventeenth day of the seventh month. For this reason the Gregorian July 17 has a special place in my heart.

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The Day of Second Chances: A Letter to My Mother

| Sharon Arpana Edwards

My dearest Mummy,

When I started writing my letter to you on this day last year, I did not know where to begin. But today I know exactly where to begin. I guess that itself is a sign of progress, and I know you’ll be happy. You’d never want me to stay trapped in my grief. You’d want me to make the most of this life I still have. I can’t say I’ve made the most of every minute of these last two years, but read on. Continue reading →

Some Cloudy Day

| Sharon Arpana Edwards

A few minutes after noon today, I picked up my phone to see a message from a friend that began, “The sad day has finally come. Queen Elizabeth II has died.”

As I was coming to terms with the news, I remembered that one of my first thoughts this morning was of England. Some hours before the queen took her final breath, all the way across the pond I was thinking of the land over which she had reigned so long and so well. Continue reading →

So Much to Say: A Letter to My Mother

| Sharon Arpana Edwards

My dearest Mummy,

Unbelievably, today marks one year since you left. There’s so much to say, I hardly know where to begin. Maybe I’ll start by telling you I am fine.

I mean, I am fine today. I have not been fine every day since May 5, 2021. My grief has literally made me sick.

The doctors ordered a bunch of tests to rule out heart trouble, but I could have told them I had heart trouble without the tests.

Broken-heart trouble.

I thought I knew what it’s like to lose a parent, but my grief for you has been unlike anything I’ve experienced before. For one thing, when I lost Papa I still had you.

I’ve never felt as alone as I did in the weeks after you left. But after my Father’s Day blog post the Holy Spirit spoke clearly to me from one of Jesus’ sayings in the Gospels. You’ll be glad to know I’ve held on to that word by faith all these months.

I just realized something about the verse the Holy Spirit had given me a few hours after your funeral. I didn’t know why I was being prompted to use Psalm 139:18 for my most heartbreaking Facebook announcement, but it resonated somewhere deep inside. Today, on this first anniversary of yours, I’ve finally made the connection.

It was also about not being alone!

Last year we had a memorial service on your birthday. As I was putting together a montage of your life for a video that week, I came across a picture of your wedding ceremony. You both are standing and the veil still covers your face, so perhaps it is just before your vows.

Your head is bent and I can’t read your emotions behind that veil. Maybe you’re nervous and happy and sad all at once. But my goodness, you look beautiful! You’re wearing that white Benares silk sari I loved, holding a wispy bouquet that almost reaches to the ground.

I can’t remember the bouquet, though. Did you give it to one of your sisters, hoping they’d be next? Or maybe you threw it away? You never liked fake flowers, so that wouldn’t surprise me.

My friends sent me some gorgeous fresh flowers in the days after you left. There were pale blue hydrangea, multicolored tulips, and red and white roses, three of each. You would have loved them all. I dried the roses and tulips, and saved the ribbons around the hydrangea.

I don’t need dried flowers to remind me of you. They’re to remind me of the kindness of friends in the saddest days of my life.

As for how our heavenly Father has been looking after me, I can’t even begin to count the ways. But you already knew He would. You had an unshakeable faith in Him, thanks to your loving earthly father. Life gave me a very different dad, but that story ended well as you know.

And because of the Lord’s mercy, this story ends well too. The story of this year since you left.

I still cry.

I still call your name at night.

I still reach for my phone to talk to you.

There’s still so much to say.

I still have a ways to go, but I’m getting better. The love of our Father, the wounds of our Savior, and the presence of our Comforter are steadily healing me.

And now the story of the new year begins. As a sign, today is the National Day of Prayer.

You know how much I’ve loved prayer since childhood. But I’m sorry to tell you, in this last year I’ve often regretted spending those precious moments of our last earthly conversation praying for you instead of thanking you for the gift of life and faith and your sacrificial love.

But on this National Day of Prayer, I am putting that behind me. Today I am choosing to be thankful that in those final hours of your earthly life we were together in our Father’s presence, as we’d been so often in the past. It was His gift to us.

Someday we’ll once again be together in our Father’s presence. There’s so much to say, and we’ll have all the time to say it.

Until then, as Little Fellow used to say, I love you beyond Pluto!

Sharon

PS – Last year on this day, I found this while going through your Facebook photos. Seeing the date made me weep last year. Maybe next year, if the Lord lends me life, it will make me smile.

(c)2022 Sharon Arpana Edwards. All rights reserved.

A 9/11 Memory

| Sharon Arpana Edwards

When an event as cataclysmic as 9/11 occurs, you never forget where you were and what you were doing when you heard the news.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was having my devotions in a sunlit spot in the Redondo Beach condo where I was renting a room. Unfortunately I cannot recall which passage I was reading, but I can still see the beige-covered NIV Study Bible lying open on my lap, and feel the sunshine streaming upon my shoulders through the window behind me. And I can still hear the silence in the moments before I found out that the world had changed forever.

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A Father Story

| Sharon Arpana Edwards

When I got home from church today, I found my package among a pile of Amazon deliveries lying haphazardly near the mailbox. It seems as though everyone in my building had received a package today. Perhaps some were last-minute Father’s Day gifts.

My package contained a jar of silver polish and two bottles of my favorite dish soap. I hadn’t run out, but for some reason I’d added them to the cart while ordering the polish. I love worshipping the Lord while doing dishes so don’t like running out of dish soap, especially since the Target and Ralphs near me stopped stocking this brand during the lockdown. I don’t know why. It’s not like it’s toilet paper.

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A Eulogy for My Mother

| Sharon Arpana Edwards

Author’s Note: If you find this post helpful, please consider purchasing a copy of There Once Was a Man Who Suffered, the book I wrote after my mother passed, or any of my other books. Thank you. The rest of this post was published on June 12, 2021.

This is the eulogy I gave at my mother’s memorial service a few hours ago. I have made some minor edits and added links to the Scripture passages quoted and the video commemorating my mother’s life.

On behalf of my family, I want to thank each of you for joining us today. We are grateful for your presence and for the many comforting messages we have received since our beloved mother went home to be with the Lord on May 5. Thank you.

Writing the eulogy for Lalita Edwards is at once easy and difficult. Easy because of her exemplary character and well-lived life, and difficult because she was my mother and this is yet another reminder that I will not see her again this side of eternity. There’s a reason the Bible describes death as the last enemy.

My mother was the epitome of the virtuous woman depicted in Proverbs 31. She was wise, generous, compassionate, hardworking, and faithful. Above all, Continue reading →

The Lost Comb

| Sharon Arpana Edwards

One day about twenty years ago, my flight attendant friend in Hong Kong called to say she would be in LA in a few weeks. We usually met when she came to LA on a flight. The airline put her up at the Torrance Marriott, and I lived in nearby Redondo Beach. If her layover fell on a weekend, we would hang out at the Del Amo Mall, shopping until our feet begged for mercy.

My friend always asked if I wanted anything from Hong Kong, but this time she had a request. Continue reading →