Imagine sitting with one of your best friends, working to upload photos from her computer into an online photo storage site, in order to preserve the photos for her family. And making sure her husband knows the userid and password to get into those photos in the future. You see, she’s dying from cancer.

This is almost as surreal as driving along the Interstate with your mother, who is explaining that she’s got an appointment later in the week to have her photo taken professionally so that she’s got a good photo with hair for her obituary.

Few things in life seem as unfair as sitting and planning the death of someone you love. Both of the above scenarios are real, taken from my life – one from eight years ago, the other from yesterday.

It IS hard to process, and painful, but I’ve thought of the alternative (or at least one of them – the most choice alternative in my opinion would be to die at a good old age while sleeping in your own home), and I believe it would be even more difficult. Some lose loved ones from a car accident. Sudden. Unpredictable. Unexpected.  How do you deal with the reality that someone you loved, that you’d maybe kissed goodbye that morning, is just gone forever?

But, as my husband so aptly put it, after hearing someone on the news speak of the death of a loved one as “unexpected,” –  why?  We’re all going to die one day. It IS expected; we will ALL experience it. Unless, of course, we happen to be one of the few fortunate who are around for the return of Jesus.

The real concern, of course, is whether they know Jesus. And my friend does not. She has rejected Him, which grieves me deeply. But I cannot make that choice for her. I can only pray that God would soften her heart to the truth.