Halloween 2013...

This week has been so jam-packed.  In some ways, that's a good thing, because it helped the time pass by quickly as we look forward to our big family vacation.  But in other ways, it's left me pretty drained physically and emotionally...

My Pa-Pa (my mom's dad) had surgery this week, and it appears they found several spots of cancer.  I really wanted to go spend some time with him since we are about to head out of town, so Gabriel and I loaded up on Tuesday morning and headed on an impromptu road trip to visit family.  On my way to their house, I stopped in my hometown to visit my Gibber (my dad's mom), but she was out running some errands so I had a little extra time to pass by.  It had been awhile since I had visited my daddy's grace, so I decided to take a few minutes to go by the cemetery.  I'm not sure that was the best idea for a hormonal pregnant woman, but I felt like I needed to go.  I'm always sad when I go out there, because I know he isn't there, so it just feels so empty and lonely staring at all of the headstones filling up the cemetery, and it just seems so wrong that my daddy's name is written on one of them.  As I drove towards my grandmother's house afterward, I noticed all of the halloween decorations filling up people's yards, and one in particular really stood out to me: these people had gone to town, but not in a way that was pleasing to my eyes at all.  Their entire yard was filled with cobwebs and coffins and skeletons.  It was so dreary and DEAD looking, and a question struck me:

Why do people take so much time and energy to celebrate death?

As a Christian, I live with a hope that I will experience LIFE after death.  Yet the idea of celebrating death as the end...I don't understand the draw towards that.  And I especially didn't understand it from the perspective of having just left the cemetery where, six years ago, we laid my Daddy to rest after he had died. It just seems to me like we often try to make light of death, and especially of anything that represents hell.  Have you ever noticed that when people talk about hell, they often make jokes about it?  I think we do that as a coping mechanism of dealing with something that seems unknown to us, or something that scares us.  Rather than treat it for what it really is, it's easier to try and make light of it...but no matter what we say or do, it doesn't change the reality of what is.  So, for me, halloween has nothing to do with ghosts and goblins and bloody makeup.  I just enjoy dressing my kids up in fun costumes and making fun family memories...and that's exactly what we did this year!

A nearby church was hosting a fall festival, so our family met up with some other families from our church and headed there.  The kids looked so sweet in their costumes, and we all had a lot of fun.  Lucy went as Snow White this year, and Gabriel went as Mickey Mouse.  The kids played in bounce houses, we ate kettle korn, played some fun carnival games, took photos, and went and visited at a friend's house afterward...and we might have had a fun size candy bar or two along the way:)  No scares, and so many sweet memories made:)