My husband took a picture of this beautiful flower in our backyard. I thought about posting it to tell the families whose loved ones were injured or killed in El Paso and Dayton that we are praying for them. May God give them the strength to survive those horrible tragedies.

Coping with the loss of a loved one is extremely difficult, especially when that loss occurred in a brutal manner. I lost a cousin and a nephew to gunfire; and another cousin was beaten to death on a deserted highway. (Their killers were never found.) At that time I thought that I would never recover from losing them, but through the years, I learned to cope with their loss by remembering them in a positive way. Their Christian values and contagious laughter when they teased me will always be cherished.