"Temporary Home"

Could this song be more fitting?  This evening I found a FB message from my friend Tupou whose son, Sione, was just shot this past weekend, requesting that my daughter Sisilia sings at his funeral.  Two songs came to mind.  Both by Carrie underwood.  "Temporary Home"  and  "How Great Thou Art".  She has until Friday to decide which one she wants to do
It's after three this morning as I awaken to attend the little room, all I could think of was that, here I am peacefully asleep, free of worries or pain.  Contend with my life and with my children.  And then I think about Tupou.  Suffering and grieving for her one and only son Sione.  I can not begin to comprehend the pain she must be enduring right now.
My husband went to their home yesterday morning to take food and to give our condolences.  He had a chance to talk to Sione's father Haini.  The saddest words were spoken by this father:  

"All I could think of when I saw Sione lying there was that, "I wish I could have taken his place.  I've lived my life and Sione's was just beginning to live his.  I wish I could have trade places with him".

He also said that Sione's friends in West Valley were gathering to avenge Sione's death.  The shooting itself was gang related and they have already arrested someone.  Sadly these are kids of beloved people that our ties goes all the way back to the island.  They grow up here in America and instead of resolving to fist fights like we do back in the island, they've adapt themselves to using deadly but cowardly ways of guns where you shoot people in the back and run off to hide instead of manning up to what you've done.  The Police are still looking for the rest of the boys that were inside the car.  Soon enough they will all be found.

Anyways, Sione's friends thought that Sione's dad would be on the same page with them in revenging Sione's death.  Contrary to their thinking, Haini said:  "Sione is my son, not yours.  If I wanted revenge, I'd do it myself.  I can go and take out the whole family if I wanted to by myself.  I don't need anyone doing it for me."    He then told them to go home to their parents and leave things be.  I pray no other lives will be lost through this.  There's enough pain going around in the world. 

I love Carrie Underwood's song "Temporary Home".  The fact that we walk through this life like passing through rooms is in itself amazing.  We're just travelers, journeying through this wonder place called earth.    Birth, childhood, adolescent, adulthood and then eventually death.   This is not a permanent place for us.
No indeed.  It is truly our:  "Temporary Home". 

I believe that our spirit lives on eternally.  We will see Sione again soon.  Just like, I will see my beloved mother when I die.  Death seems so final to those who don't believe.  For those who believes, they understand it is not the end.  Death to me, is just another door we pass through as we progress within God's great and glorious plan.  The Plan of Salvation.