“Heal my heart and make it clean.

Open up my eyes to the things unseen.

Show me how to love like you have loved me.

Break my heart for what breaks yours,

Everything I am for your Kingdom’s cause,

As I walk from earth into eternity…”

from Hosanna – Brooke Fraser

“It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.”

-John Steinbeck

On Sunday I spent the afternoon in a bit of daze really. It was raining (the clocks went forward on Saturday night, so I’m glad we’re starting the ‘British summer’ the way it probably will go on…). I watched an episode of Underbelly. I text to see if anyone was going to church. Ruth said she was, we agreed to meet each other there. Saves us the embarrassment of looking like friendless losers if we stick together! (NB – Ruth totally rocks & is not a friendless loser, I just thought I should clarify. But going to a big church and sitting on your own is just ever so slightly depressing)

It was tough to sing the songs…so much about God giving life, and to be honest it was just making me think of Eva. It was making me think of another blog friend who had tweeted to ask me to pray for her friend who because of pre-eclampsia had just given birth at 28 weeks gestation and her baby girl was now fighting for life in the Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit.

And my heart was breaking.

I can’t take any more people I’m praying for dying God…

And then it was open mic. I started feeling sick and shaking. A sure fire sign that I needed to say something. So I did. I shared about the wonderful people I’d met through this crazy blogging journey.

What I didn’t realise, was that they would then ask people to gather round the people that shared and pray for them. How could I have been so dumb to have forgotten that they do this?!

And so people did before I managed to escape to pray for somebody else (rats!)

Well, that was it. I lost it. One of our pastors was praying, and I just lost it. There were tears, snot….yeah, a great night to have put on mascara. Fantastic. I turned to someone who I knew they would know why I was crying, and all I got out was, “all I can think of is Eva”

And it’s true. It’s a weird place to be grieving and feeling this strong sense of loss for someone that I’ve not actually ever met in person. And you know, she is not the first person I’ve prayed for connected with social networking that has died. There was Gavin in November, and Jess in January.

I guess though that Eva shared so much of herself with us, that you couldn’t help but read her poems, see her photos, videos and not know her heart. And I knew that she, like me was to have her 26th birthday this week, which perhaps has made this death closer to home somehow.

We were born days apart….the whole of Canada and the Atlantic Ocean between us.

She accomplished more in (almost) 26 years than most people do in a much longer lifetime.

I was walking through the rain and wind today, and I couldn’t help but think of her family and friends. And Eva’s never ceasing campaigning, her creativity in raising awareness for Cystic Fibrosis and Organ Donation.

I couldn’t help but pray “You know God, I know one day I’m going to die, somewhere, somehow….but please let it be in a way that my death brings others life?”

Morbid thoughts, I know. But it’s true. And now I feel spurred on more than ever to life as fully as possible. And somehow, do my bit to continue the legacy that Eva (& many others) have left us.

And since this is ‘Holy Week’ – isn’t that something Jesus was all about? Isn’t that what we celebrate at Easter….His death so we might have life?

We saw what Eva did with her second chance.

What are we going to do with ours?