Joanie's Words of Wisdom

Joanie's son Joey, hugging my husband at our son's memorial I have had some sadder than usual days missing our Joey. Sometimes I obsess on seeking answers, "why, why, why?", where there are none to be found. I'm sure the true answers won't come till we are in Eternity anyway, and everything else till then is just our best guess. I doubt that I would feel much better about losing Joey even if God sent me a telegram laying out the whole plan. The fact is it is a huge loss for us and we miss him terribly and we are now forever changed by our heartbreak.

In an earlier post I likened our change to a verse in Luke 5:37 where Jesus said:

"And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins."

We feel like we are new wine now, and we need a new life/new wineskin to live out the newness of who we are. So our move to Virginia is predicated on that truth. We would never have left Maui on our own--and feel in some ways it has been forced upon us by unchosen circumstances.

My friend Joanie, who has a lot of wisdom, commented on this in a post back to me. Our sons were really good friends back in high school. I thought her reflections apply to all of us at some point or another. Life is going to force change upon us all repeatedly and we have to be willing to let God use that process to exchange our old ways for His new ways. She describes it as a redemptive process, which gives me hope.

She said this, "What a great analogy of the wineskins. I have heard that verse many times before but this time the meaning was so poignant. It made me acknowledge that life is ever changing and hopefully we are also. That we should all always be prepared with that change to reflect that in our whole self, whether it be joy or tragedy. To prepare new wineskins for the new wine that we have become, so that we can be refined into wholeness and produce thirst quenching vintage until once again we are emptied and start anew. "

Though, I'm confused and struggling, I honestly hope our new changes will help me to become "thirst-quenching vintage". My heart's desire is to yield to the Winemaker's approach.