I started writing this yesterday, but as a couple of other people have noted, it's hard to find the words, even a year later. So I also want to link to Kelly, Megan and, most of all, Pinky, so that I can use their words, and their pictures, too. Edie, we love you and your family.

I have been thinking a lot about heaven the last few days. Not because I am deep, but because this week makes it one year since a good friend of ours got there before us. I think Brent and Edie and their kids were some of the first people we met at our church when we first started visiting there in 2003 when we were engaged. After we were married and joined the church, we spent hours over at their house along with other friends. Brent was a Texas Tech alum, and so of course he and Dan had to talk trash for weeks before the Tech vs. A&M game. One Sunday after Tech stomped A&M in the Saturday game, we walked out of our apartment on the way to church to find Dan's A&M Aggies rock that sits outside our door replaced with another rock hand-painted by Brent and Edie, sporting the Texas Tech logo and the score of the game. It's probably not to my credit that I laughed as hard as I did, but really even Dan thought it was funny. Eventually Brent gave us our rock back, and then displayed his Tech rock on their porch. It's still there and I smile every time I see it.

Another Sunday a few years later, Brent and Edie and our friend Susie came to the hospital to meet Kate, who was born the night before. They brought me smoothies and chocolate pretzels and held the baby, and Brent got seriously uncomfortable when the women started talking about childbirth. But he was a good sport and stayed anyway, and held the baby, and I'm so glad for that memory.

And then one Sunday morning, we came to church and heard that Brent had died. Since then, probably as a result of needing to work on grasping the simple reality of his absence from us, I have thought about heaven more than I ever have in my life. It always seemed like a distant, hazy sort of eternal church service before. But now that I know someone there, it seems more real. Oddly enough, I also now think of it as a place with a lot of laughter. I know that the point of heaven is that we'll be in God's presence without sin or death forever. But, I mean, come on. Brent is there. So you know we're going to do some laughing.

We miss our friend terribly, and in this life, I don't think there will be an end to that. But we have no doubt about where he is, and that we'll see him again. That is the good news. And, as we say in our church every Sunday, to that good news all the Lord's people can say Amen.

"And He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away." Revelation 21:4