{"id":7888,"date":"2017-03-10T11:30:19","date_gmt":"2017-03-10T17:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/?p=7888"},"modified":"2017-03-10T11:30:19","modified_gmt":"2017-03-10T17:30:19","slug":"celebrate-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/?p=7888","title":{"rendered":"Celebrate Life!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today is our annual Celebrate Life Day. Every year it is a day of mixed joy and pain, laughter and weeping. Every year. This year.&nbsp;We celebrate life today because four years ago Tanzen was born. We celebrate life today because four years ago we almost <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/?page_id=3339\">lost Crystal to her stroke.<\/a> This year we celebrate life because we have watched our beloved Ita step from this world into her eternal home.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We take our celebration seriously. Today is not a day that we wallow in sentimentalism or bask in trivialities.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We will not hold our daughter&#8217;s hand and think of how lucky we are.<\/p>\n<p>We will not step into the sunshine with Crystal and forget that she can walk.<\/p>\n<p>We will not relegate Ita&#8217;s existence to a place in our hearts or happy memories. Whether or not her memory lives on within me makes no difference. Her existence has not ended.<br \/>\nNo. We will take this celebration seriously because we take life seriously. We take eternity seriously. We take joy seriously.<br \/>\nWe will not forget that we are more than particles and energy.<\/p>\n<p>We will not forget that every breath we have is a gift.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We will not forget that evil is real and not an opinion.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We will not forget that death is painful and will one day be eliminated.<\/p>\n<p>We will not forget that life is hard and tears sting.<\/p>\n<p>Today we celebrate life.<br \/>\nWe celebrate because the Maker has given us one more day. We celebrate because he has promised that there is more to come. Celebrate with us!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today is our annual Celebrate Life Day. Every year it is a day of mixed joy and pain, laughter and weeping. Every year. This year.&nbsp;We celebrate life today because four years ago Tanzen was born. We celebrate life today because &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/?p=7888\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spain"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p34kFn-23e","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}