Hi I'm Sara and I love redheads.
When I was 3 or 4 I had a crush on this boy His name was Nick Peterson and our parents were friends. Nick had strawberry blond hair, like I did. I thought I'd marry Nick Peterson.
When I was in third grade My best friend Kim had red hair.
In seventh grade my best friend Ginny, had you guessed it red hair. This beautiful dark auburn hair.
My first real job I met a gal named Trista, and we became best friends. She of course had red hair!
I can't tell you why it is that I am drawn to redheads. Maybe it's their fiery personalities or their fierce way of loving.
One of my dear RL friends introduced me to the blog:
The Real Life of a Redhead.
Umm, yeah. Just try and keep me away.
Only when I started reading Miss Jill, she was going through something no woman should ever have to. What struck me most about her was how through unimaginable pain, she clung to God. With each post she wrote I struggled to come up with something to say. My heart ached for her and her family, but the words just wouldn't come.
In this land of Blog, we all are touched by the stories we read, and I think that we all want to do our best to lift those up when they are hurting, and that is hard when we don't personally know them or are unsure how our words will come across to them, when they can't see our eyes when we say them.
I wanted to tell Jill I cared, I wanted to reach out and touch her and tell her I was there listening, praying for her sweet son.
Jill wrote a very raw and emotional post about Joshua's last day here. I was struck by how much pain was in her memories, I was overcome with this feeling, this truth I guess. I needed to share that with her and yet I was afraid, I was very frighten that she may not want to hear what I had to say, what if my comment hurt her, what if it only made her memory more painful. Then I thought to myself would this be something I would want to hear? Is this lifting her up? is it encouraging?
The answer to all was yes.
But I still felt like "she doesn't know me! Who I am to just say this."
We like to say we are authentic, transparent in our blogging, I certainly feel I am.
I sent my comment and knew that she would need to approve it before it would ever be visible.
I came down to check my email later in the day and what I saw in my in box made me nervous. It was from The real life of a redhead. I opened it and read it and cried. What felt so simple and obvious and yet scary to say...she said meant more to her then I would ever know.
Today as I was reading through blogland I saw her post.
I am extremely humbled. I have a hard time being acknowledged. I like being on the sideline cheering, if someone asks for me to speak about something I'm passionate about I will without hesitation. I was afraid of how my words would impact her, I was afraid that my heart was overstepping, I was afraid God got me wrong. I should have stayed a redhead, because there is this fiery, fierceness in me too that needs to acknowledge the truth when I see it, even when that means the pinprick of conviction. (I'm talking about myself here) See I've been ignoring some pride issues. I'll do a post on that later.
I am humbled that words I've shared meant so much, and I know it is only because
for out of the over-flow of the heart the mouth speaks Luke 6:45
