Laura and Jon, May 2024 My sister has gone to be with Jesus. I miss her already. From the very start, Laura’s life was a puzzle—a carefully crafted puzzle, guaranteed by the Maker to be beautiful. There was no picture on the box for this puzzle, though, just a mystery to be revealed one piece at a time. And I suppose that analogy could describe the life of any child of God. But it seems especially true of Laura who, fittingly, loved jigsaw puzzles. Slow-paced, tedious activities were her thing. She liked sticker books, color-by-number pages, and word searches. But she loved puzzles the best. She spent countless hours snapping together edge pieces, sorting colors, testing a connection, turning a piece, testing it again, until one by one the pieces came together to form the picture. Maybe it was the scenery of a farmstead, or a picture of colorful ocean life, or maybe it was a beloved movie character. She took her time and loved putting each piece in pl
It was a beautiful May day in gorgeous Irvine, California, and four of us songwriters were sharing a sunny and lighthearted conversation as we walked. This retreat had three scheduled songwriting sessions, and the forty-two attendees would find out before each session what the assigned groups and writing locations were. Benji, Cara, Matt, and I began our gentle uphill walk to the chapel for the final cowrite. We chatted and laughed as we walked. Good Shepherd Chapel, Concordia University Irvine. Photo by Anna Gruen. I don’t remember everything we talked about, but I’m pretty sure that at some point someone joked about the zoom meetings, commenting how you could wear some comfy shorts below the nice shirt and no one would know. And about how there was no way anyone could tell what was really in your mug or water bottle. The conversation took a serious turn when the observation was made that covid (stupid covid!) made substance dependency and addiction worse for many people. No