In the belly of the chamber, his smoldering ashes lay, a bleak reminder of a life that once was and will never be again. Where are the tears? Where are the grieving hearts? Is there nothing but betrayal, shame, and bitterness to mourn his death?
How many hearts were crushed by the brother I thought I knew? How many tears splashed at his feet? How many pleading voices were silenced by the hammer of injustice?
Like father, like son. He wore the cliché like a crown. Proud. Intelligent. Humorous. Secretive. No one was ever allowed into his life. His heart was wrapped in barbed wire, where selfishness ruled like a cold-hearted warden.
He was my mother’s golden child, meek and mild, never sassed—never caused a scene, always did as he was told. He was her perfect, blonde-haired, blue-eyed angel who gradually became a narcissistic devil in disguise.
I loved my brother, but I didn’t love the heart-rending choices he made throughout his life. I didn’t love the way he treated his son and his wife—his entire family. I didn’t love that no one could talk to him, reason with him, or help him. He wore his reckless, sordid life like a shield of armor that he never intended to remove.
That foggy, rainy night so long ago, when he was hit by a car, the doctor gave my parents a bleak prognosis because of his enlarged heart. I couldn’t stop crying. I prayed that God would tell me that my brother would be okay. Through sobbing tears, I opened my Bible, and the pages fell on Psalm 91:16: “With long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation.”
Not only did my brother recover, but he also left the hospital with no signs of ever having an enlarged heart. He was healed. He was given a second chance to live a clean, respectful life. A second chance to allow God into his heart.
The only legacy my brother left behind is a trail of angry, bitter, discouraged, broken hearts that may never recover. They’re the ones I grieve for, the ones I cry for, the ones I pray for. They’re the ones left to sort through the wreckage my brother left behind. And I pray that in their search, they will find God’s loving, healing touch for their broken souls.
Second chances. What will we do with them? How will they change our lives and the lives of those around us? Will we honor God, or will we kick mud in his face? Will we please him, or will we crush his heart? The choice is ours and ours alone. Now is the time to honor the second chances God gives us every day.
2 CORINTHIANS 6:2
Now is the time of God’s favor; now is the day of salvation
PSALM 147:3
He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
Straight From the Heart 
Is this Kenny or Leonard? Did Leonard die? I didn’t know. I corresponded with him a number of times when he was in prison
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This is Kenny. Leonard passed suddenly about seven years ago.
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Kenny passed of lung cancer last Saturday. He fought it for two years. He died in Hospice House in Winston.
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Powerful! I love your posts even though they are often painful.
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Thank you so much. I almost deleted this one. My brother died of lung cancer last Saturday, so it’s still pretty fresh. But I’m fine because God has been with me through it all. Again, thanks for your encouraging comment, ~Sandi
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I’m so sorry for your loss. You did a great job of explaining the complexity of emotion that many of us experience when someone dies and the relationship was complicated.
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You Cannot Heal While Holding What Cuts You
Imagine holding a knife in your hand.
You know it hurts.
You know the tighter you grip it, the deeper it cuts.
Yet instead of letting it go, you keep holding on.
That is what we sometimes do with people, memories, anger, and relationships that have already wounded us.
We know they are hurting us.
We know staying attached is making the pain worse.
But because letting go feels frightening, we keep choosing the familiar pain.
At some point, healing requires you to open your hand.
Not because what happened did not matter.
Not because the wound was not real.
But because you finally understand that holding onto what hurt you is keeping the injury alive.
Letting go is not pretending it never happened.
It is deciding that the pain no longer gets to keep cutting you.
Sometimes peace begins the moment you stop gripping what you already know is hurting you.
#RealTalk #Healing #LettingGo #LifeLessons #SelfRespect
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The pain is not cutting me. Don’t judge others unless you’ve walked in their shoes. It seems you missed the whole message of my article. People hurt people. It’s what people do with that hurt that matters. Everyone needs time to heal. My brother was cremated this week. The comment you wrote to me is an article in itself. I really don’t know what to make of it. Thanks for reading my post, but the comment was unnessary.
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