“Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” Psalm 139:16
I was standing at the gathering place when I heard my mother calling me home at an unusual hour. Heading towards her I saw something that I didn’t recognize in her countenance. Apprehension consumed me. Her words tumbled out, “Robin Tosti is dead.”
It was there in my front yard, at the age of ten, where I was first introduced to death. It greeted me awkwardly as I stumbled towards our first meeting place just three doors down from Robin Tosti’s house.
It had been an ordinary day at the gathering place, the place where any kid belonged. There were no outsiders inside the gates of our military housing. Once transferred there you belonged automatically to our not-so-secret society where the password to join was, “Hello, I just moved here from…”
Before my mother broke the news to me I was truant of the knowledge of death. Robin was still the vibrant girl who walked to school in front of me. She was still the high school student who was the teacher’s assistant in my 5th grade class. She was still my neighbor and I was still working on the picture she had asked me to draw for her.
Robin’s death wandered in and out of reality until I found myself sitting in a pew at her funeral, with my bottom lip quivering, not yet knowing the proper expression of grief. Death would become an all too familiar acquaintance after Robin, as I learned through loss that only God knows the number of our days.
In remembering those who have gone before us we are reminded of the frailty of life. Death confronts us with the truth that we are not in control of our tomorrows, so we must live completely each today. Death teaches us to never waste a day doing anything less than our best; thinking anything other than positive; being anything other than genuine.
Live or die each day, a good day is absent of regret. It is one in which we are present and accounted for in the service of our Lord.
Pray about what unique ways God is calling you to serve him in even in this present day.
this present day.
Very sweet devotional.
I had the biggest crush on Robin when we were in the 6th grade. She was always so nice. Her family was stationed at Randolph at that time. That year, we moved away for a one year assignment my dad had. When we came back, she had moved and I did not know where. I was crushed.
I was even more crushed to hear that she has passed.
I was just Goggling Robin’s name out of the blue, thinking about her and wondering where she would be after all these years. I knew she must be doing so well, so many years after I knew her. She was one of those people that you never forget. I found some pictures from way back that I took of her, and smiled when I saw her face. As I googled the name, I saw her picture with a memorial, and was shocked. I knew it was her…she looked a little older, but I knew it was her from the two perfectly placed birth marks on her cheeks. Same birthmarks I remembered, way back in Rose Garden Elementary School in Universal City, Texas. I don’t know how she died, but very sorry she was taken so young. I pray she is resting in peace.