Love and Ashes

I recently heard a story that reminded me that love isn't a feeling, it's an action.

A woman named Kelly Sheridan was walking along the beach when she noticed a bottle, half

buried in sand.

She picked it up and discovered ashes inside and a note that read,

This is my mom, please throw her back in, she's traveling the world.

Kelly returned the bottle to the ocean as requested, but first she posted her discovery on

social media.

Within a few days the story went viral and the bottle's deeper story came to light.

It turns out the ashes belong to a woman named Wendy Melia, a single mother of five who

unexpectedly passed away at just 51 years old.

Friends and family say she sacrificed for others so deeply that she never got a chance to fulfill

her lifelong dream of traveling the world.

So after Wendy died her daughter decided to grant her that wish.

She put a note and her mother's ashes into a bottle and set her a drift off the coast

of England.

Wendy isn't about feelings, it's about action and Wendy put her love into action by sacrificing

her dreams for others.

In return she was honored through an act of love by her daughter that said to the world

my mother mattered.

Every act of love is a message in a bottle like a kind word, a moment of sacrifice or an

act of faith released into the world.

Our lives will eventually come to an end, but our love for others has the power to go on

and on.

For Focus on the Family, I'm Jim Daily.