Donna Jean Capdepon

I tried doing a blog before, but it just didn't seem right. I don't know what it was. Maybe I wasn't ready yet. God still had a lot of changing to do in me yet and I don't think I was ready to make this into what it really should be....a dedication....a way for me to always be able to remember and look back and never forget. Not only how much I've changed or the events and people that affect and influence me, but to remember to bring it all back to the beginning and never forget who I owe my life to. My God, my Lord Jesus Christ, my Creator, my Rock, my Redeemer, my Comforter, my Friend, my Counsellor, the One who is, who was, and who always will be, my Shelter.

It's just been a little over 2 years since I've been saved by the Grace of God. It hasn't been easy changing who I was. Discarding the old me and trying desperately to change into somebody that is even remotely worthy of the suffering that Jesus Christ took for me. I still have trouble with that one. Feeling worthy, accepting that I'm really loved that much, and that it can never be taken from me. But God's working on that everyday and all the old scars are being healed....in His time. Monday was another one of those time shifting moments of my life with Christ. But it starts even further back, so I'll briefly start there. The whole story will have to wait for another time. Monday was about Donna and how she helped me.

When I was 16 my father died of Leukemia. I didn't understand why, I was full of questions and anger and I felt very alone in this world. People would mention God or try to talk to me about Him and I didn't want to hear any of it. My father was gone and I was alone, what kind of God would do that? I wanted nothing to do with it and I spent years living in darkness thinking there was no other way. Until a couple of years ago when I found myself at Community Bible Church. I can't explain how, but I know without a shadow of doubt, that God was calling me there. The next day I accepted God's gift of salvation.

The following year Terry and I joined Mike Deguzman's Sunday School class. There was a boy sitting in the front next to his mother and pointing me out to her. It was Sheldon from Skyler's baseball team and his mother was Donna. I didn't get to know her very well, but spent a lot of time with those boys being the team mom. Sheldon was always running around full of life and always smiling. This past April we were told that Donna was in the hospital. They started posting updates on her condition on Carepages because the poor woman couldn't get any rest because of all the well-wishers that kept coming to see her. To be loved by so many people...what a blessing!

Over that past four months, I have sat here reading the posts that her husband has written. Praying, crying and thinking of how much she loves God. How dedicated to being a mother she was. It's how she lived her life even in her death. And Cap...how he loved that woman....I wished to be loved that way. I thought about how a man could get to that point and it all came back to her and her love of God. Terry had said numerous times that he didn't understand why God would take such a good person, but when she died, I knew. She touched so many lives. Mine included. And during her service, I was drawn to get up and speak to Cap and those children. I had to let them know that I was a changed person because of them, because of their mother and his wife. That their faith and her faith in God and in Jesus had forever sealed my faith.

I don't know what the purpose was in my father dying and I don't know if he's in heaven waiting for me. I'll have to wait until I get there to find that out. But I do know this....there is a God, there is a heaven, and He does love us much more than we can even fathom. And I will do everything that I need to do to make sure that I grow and change to become the kind of woman and mother Donna was up until the day that God called her home.

I love you Donna and thank you for your faith.