In the Midst of Life........!

It was the worst of days, AND it was the BEST of days!  It was the day we buried my mother just a few weeks ago.  My mother was having the BEST of days as she began her new life in eternity with Jesus.  I wouldn't wish her back for anything!  Honestly, it was also the worst of days!  It was the end of having a parent on this earth.  I would never again hear her voice or kiss her cheek.  I would never again look into those beautiful blue eyes and know she loves me no matter what! Did I mention I HATE death! I even think God means for us to hate death. It's part of understanding how much we need Jesus!
The memorial service was in the morning and the graveside several hours drive away in the afternoon. We have lots of family!  I have 3 sisters and 2 brothers (one is in Heaven).  We all married, and my mother considered the children she got by marriage as much hers as the ones she birthed.  There were 21 grandchildren - all but 4 married.   There are close to 40 great-grandchildren with several on the way. All in all in round numbers it's right at 90 immediate family, and all were there for the memorial service except for 2 moms who had week old newborn babies, and one grandson's wife who is having a baby soon.  It's hard to be lonely in such a crowd of loving family! 
We were all walking into the service together, and my brother told me to go first with our sons, their wives, and our grandchildren.  Because John was helping with the service, I was alone.  I reached my hand back for a granddaughter to walk with me. Only one saw and took my hand. She not only walked with me to the front row, but she sat as close to me as glue the entire time hugging me and being hugged.
On a day like that day when death intrudes into life is when it's easy to be lonely even in a crowd of loving family. I was that kind of lonely, and I needed the touch of a hand and hugs. God sent me that hand and those hugs!  Thank you, Vania!  And, thank you all for your hands and hugs on one of the BEST-worst days of my life!
There's a lesson for my heart here that reaches out:  there is always someone who needs a hand and a hug but it takes eyes to see and a heart to understand!

Heaven's Gate

Two years ago this morning marked the end of one of the sweetest experiences of my lifetime.  With my siblings (except for my brother Ed who had already walked through death into everlasting life) and most of our spouses, I spent ten wonderful days walking my wonderful Daddy right up to the gate of Heaven!  It was truly amazing, and a model for the death experience in a Christian family if circumstances permit.

I know circumstances don't permit in every case.  That August Saturday 23 years ago when Ed walked into Heaven, I was 3 states away and only got there after he was gone. His death taught me a lesson about death: that death (especially when it appears untimely from a human perspective) is HARD!  Ed was a Marine of Marines!  He was many other things too and my closest sib in age.  He had served in combat in many war theaters including Vietnam for 3 "tours" including one while he was still a midshipman at the US Naval Academy but that's an interesting story for another time.  He had stared death in the face with nary a scratch. 

Three weeks after he retired from the USMC he was bush-hogging his pasture on the farm where he retired with his family in NC.  He didn't know his life on this earth was almost over that Saturday morning.  He planned to begin the next phase of life with a new job and to continue building his farmhouse.  God had other plans:  the tractor turned over and crushed his chest.  He was in Heaven a few hours later. We celebrated his life and worshipped our great God who gave him life and then took it away at his memorial service a few short days later!  At the end of that service, we sang Handel's Hallelujah.  It was Hallelujah time even when it didn't feel like it!

22 years later on an August Tuesday we celebrated eternal life again at my dad's memorial service.  We sang hymns.  We were comforted with God's Word and truth as two sons-in-law pastors and another pastor led us.  We remembered a life well-lived!  For me, the memorable thing about Daddy's Heaven journey wasn't that worship service.  It was the days leading up to it.

July 26 my brother called and said Daddy had a large sub-dural hematoma (blood clot on his brain).  They were moving him to the main hospital and operating as soon as possible.  We begin the trek from Pittsburgh to SC early the next morning and went straight to ICU.  And, so it began........

Mother and Daddy were living in my sister's home.  After the surgery it became increasingly apparent that Daddy wasn't going to climb the huge mountain back to a measure of health.  It was just too steep a climb with advanced Parkinson's and all the rest!  A week later on August 1st we took him home in an ambulance with hospice. 

In the hospital and at home we were Team Robeson.  We walked shoulder-to-shoulder, heart-to-heart watching the winding down of Daddy's life on earth.  We prayed.  We sang hymns.  We cried.  We hugged.  We talked and remembered.  We said many things to Daddy and each other - those things of the heart that need words.  And, then early Sunday morning, August 5th, we all stood around his bed with our dear mother and waited at Heaven's gate for him to take that final step from this life to the next!

Death is what it is.  It was never meant to be in God's good creation.  Sin brought death.  And so, we all die.  But, for those who walk with Jesus who trust in Him ALONE, He is the Way to eternal life!  That's the comfort beyond death, and it IS enough!
*picture is from newspaper shortly after Daddy's return from war.  He is holding his Japanese sword and me.

Never Been This Way Before!

On December 5, 1989 my grandmother went to heaven. She was 95 ½ years old. She lived a wonderful life but that’s a story for another day (and a wonderful story it is, I might add!)!  There were lots of us who came to gather at my parents’ home on their mountaintop in North Carolina as my grandmother had four children and 16 grandchildren. My mother had six children and 21 grandchildren (though all 21 had not been born in 1989). It was a family time! We celebrated life and the life to come! We sang The Hallelujah Chorus at the memorial service, and it was all good!

August 25, 1990 was a different kind of day entirely. It was the day my brother Ed went to heaven. It was startling and unexpected and out-of-time and sequence! It was the kind of life experience that jars one to the marrow of the bones! He was the kind of guy who charged out of the birth canal and never looked back! More or less all the same people plus a few showed up this time, but it wasn’t the same – not the same at all! Many things were the same like family. We sang The Hallelujah Chorus once again at the end of the memorial service. This time there was a Marine general and a whole planeload of Marines from Camp LeJeune, NC. There was a 21-gun salute over the flag-draped coffin. And there was a lot more life to pick up on the other side and just go on!

Last night one of my sisters sent an email telling how much blessing God has poured out on her family moving them from despair to hope!

This past year we have prayed and struggled to hope, trust, rest, walk forward in the God who IS and you have been there with us. God never deserted us although we wondered. He provided every day's needs even when we couldn't see it. And He encouraged us through His Word and His people of whom you are each a very precious part. Thank you for praying, caring, reaching out. ………….

As I received her email I was just finishing the Children’s Page I write every week to go along with my husband’s sermon for A Restoration Church, Pittsburgh. I shared what I had written with my sibs because it just fit. The sermon today was on Joshua 3 especially vs. 3-4: When you see the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God, and the priests, who are Levites, carrying it, you are to move out from your positions and follow it. Then you will know which way to go, since you have never been this way before.

So, like we do, we began an exchange of emails and love each weighing in to love and encourage each other. If you want the link to the children’s page, it is:  http://restorationheart.blogspot.com/2014/02/2-feet-6-feet-many-many-many-feet.html

Then, this morning (Sunday) another sister who is also a pastor’s wife very uncharacteristically weighed in. She would have responded later, but for her to take the time on Sunday morning was significant. This is what she wrote (in part):

I must be crazy to spend the time on a Sunday morning to email, but I just have to respond to this. You're amazing, AA, in all that you get into a children's page! What a blessing!  Joshua 3:3-4 have been memorial stones to me ever since Ed died. I was reading through Joshua right after that, and these verses just jumped off the page at me. I was reading the NIV at the time, so those are the words that are special:  “When you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, and the priests, who are Levites, carrying it, you are to move out from your positions and follow it.  THEN you will know which way to go, since you have never been this way before.”

As I'm sure was true for each of you, I felt completely untethered by Ed's death and struggled to find my footing again - not doubting God at all, but not knowing what to do with the grief in my heart. Josh. 3:3-4 were and are memorial stones to remind me that whenever I feel confused and lost, if I will just keep my eyes on the Lord and trust Him to lead me through the waters, He has promised to show me the way, even though I have never been this way before and have no idea how to navigate it. I also clung to Psalm 139:16, "All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." That was my answer whenever someone would say to me, "It's so sad that his life was cut short." I was very sure that his life had not been cut short by one minute, but that he had lived very fully the life that God had counted out for him before he was ever conceived. That was very comforting, but his death just took all of us completely by surprise because God had certainly not let us know ahead of time how many days had been counted out!

Never been this way before! Yep, that’s about the size of that day – August 25, 1990 – and many days since! It was surprising and, then again, not so much to discover today that we all floundered trying to find our way in a way we’d never been before. Whoa! This was not the same as the previous December’s loss. This was another level of loss! We had never been this way before!  We all have struggled over the years with the adjustments Ed’s death brought to our family and particularly to his wife and children. And, the bottom line for all of us came to be that although we had never been this way before the One who had was walking with us every step of the way!

When Angels Fold Their Wings ...

Christmas and sermons ... since I happen to sleep and do life with a pastor, I'm familiar with the holly and lilies crowd. There's one, at the most two, cracks at them a year. They only come Christmas and Easter.  So, the annual or biannual question is how to tell a wonderful old story in a new way.  And, for the rest of us we also hear the same wonderful old story in a new way!

Today we heard about angels and here's the shorter version:

Have you ever met an angel?  Do intelligent people believe in angels? We sing about angels at Christmas, but do we believe in angels?  Would we know one if one showed up?  What’s the angel side of Christmas?

There are 66 books in the Bible and more than half of them make reference to angels.  Angels are significant in the Biblical story.  Angels appear in Scripture as messengers, as protectors, and as watchers.   

Peter had a dramatic encounter with an angel recorded for us in Acts 12 when an angel sprung him out of the slammer!  Perhaps Peter was remembering his angel protector when he wrote 1 Peter 1:3-12:

³ Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴ and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, ⁵ who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. ⁶ In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. ⁷ These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. ⁸ Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, ⁹ for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

¹⁰ Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, ¹¹ trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow. ¹² It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.

Peter says the prophets wondered about the meaning of their own prophecies: where Jesus was going to be born (in Bethlehem) or what it meant that the Messiah was going to come as a light into darkness. Do you guess Isaiah understood what he was writing about a virgin and a child and a son to be given? 

Peter says it’s not only prophets who wonder, who scratch their heads and ask:  Apparently angels also wonder and think about the real message of Christmas!

What do we know about angels?

·       Angels are God’s heavenly messengers.  That’s what angel means – messenger.  Angels go back and forth from heaven to earth carrying messages from God Himself.  Angels visited Abraham and gave him the message that he was going to have a son.  An angel actually burned Isaiah’s mouth in Isaiah 6 when Isaiah tells the story of God calling him to be a prophet.

 

·       Angels are God’s front line of defense for us earthlings.  The most important role of angels is to serve God by defending the people of God.  Unnoticed God has sent His angel messengers to stand guard over you and me as He works in our lives and in the world. 2 Kings 6 records the attack on God’s people in Israel by the Arameans. Elisha’s servant got up one morning and saw a huge army with horses and chariots surrounding the city where he and Elisha lived. He was terrified. Elisha told him that God had the situation in hand. Elisha prayed and asked God to open his servant’s eyes to see the spirit world reality. The servant saw that the hills were full of horses and chariots of fire surrounding him and Elisha to protect them. The Psalmist says God gives His angels the mission "to guard you in all your ways" (Ps. 90:11). When Daniel was thrown to the lions God sent an angel to shut the lion's mouths. (Dan. 6:22) 

• Angels are God’s heavenly watchers. What are they watching? They watch what goes on in heaven. They watch us. Some of these angel creatures have many more eyes than we do. They can watch more than one thing at a time. They watch what God Himself is doing. In Genesis 1 God says,  Let us make man in our image ….  Angels were there. They eavesdropped on the whispered conversation between God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Angels wonder what God is doing and what’s going to happen.  It must have been an amazing conversation for the angels to overhear! Do you guess they hushed their singing for a moment so they wouldn’t miss a single word? 

Imagine the watching angels! Can’t you almost hear the rustle of their wings? God said, Go! Go to Bethlehem. Sing your hearts out in the Bethlehem sky announcing the birth of My Son, the King of Israel!  And they did!  Angels were there when Jesus was tempted in the desert and in the Garden of Gethsemane when God sent a solitary angel to minister to Jesus in His hour of anguish.  Don’t you imagine how the angels must have been peering down from heaven watching in horror as Jesus hung on His cross? They must have been ready to take off in a flash when God spoke the word. But the word never came because Jesus had to die to become the Savior of the world!  Angels were there and were the first to see Jesus rise from the dead on the first Easter morning. Angels were there when Jesus went back to heaven.

I think there's something else angels wonder about. I think they are totally puzzled and ask among themselves:  WHY don’t they (meaning us, the earth creatures) realize what He’s done for them?   That just might be the greatest mystery of all to an angel.

Holy, holy is what the angels sing and I expect to help them make the courts of heaven ring!

But when I sing redemption’s story they will fold their wings, for angels never felt the joy

That our salvation brings!   --Johnson Oatman Jr., 1894

The good news of Christmas is that God has done something for us earthlings that his extra-terrestrial creatures (aka angels) can only imagine.  God sent Jesus to take care of our biggest problem - sin - and Jesus did just that!  The good news of Christmas is that this is all true – every last word!  Jesus is real! God is real! Angels are real!  And it's really, really true that God loves you and me far more than we can possibly imagine!

Lord of My Heart!

Last Tuesday my friend Tony went to heaven. She fought the "cancer demon" for 14 valiant years. She was buried in her wedding dress. I think that's just awesome! She was and is the bride of Christ - now part of the church eternal - with a whole new body! The symbolism is stunning! She died as she lived with her eyes on Jesus! Saturday morning we sang:

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light. ...

 High King of Heaven, my victory won,
May I reach Heaven’s joys, O bright Heaven’s Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.      
                     -- Dallan Forgail (8th Century)

What's in Your Heart?

My sweet mother has Alzheimer's.  She often loses touch with the real world. Just last week she woke up and as my sister was getting her up, she sat on the side of the bed and said, "Now give me a report on your daddy." My sister took a deep breath and said, "Mama, Daddy went to heaven on August 5th." My sister says Mother looked at her like she'd been punched in the stomach and responded, "What? Why didn't anyone tell me? I thought he is in the hospital and that you were going to give me an update."

Ruth said, "Mama, the flag that was on his casket is on your mantle." "O, yes," Mother said, "I remember seeing that."

I can hardly imagine the horror of reliving over and over the reality that someone you were married to for over 68 years and in love with for 70 years was gone!  They had an amazing love and next to Jesus my daddy was her world!

Fast forward - same day later. My sister's husband is a pastor and they have a Bible study in their home on Wednesday night. My mother likes to sit in. My brother-in-law told everyone to look up a Scripture verse and Mother immediately quoted the verse before anyone could find it. This happened multiple times. Everyone was amazed.

What a wonder that she who can't process that her beloved Buddy has gone to heaven before her but has God's Word so deeply embedded in her heart that it just flows out!
What's the most deeply imbedded thing in your heart? or mine? It is certainly something to think about!

I Saw Love!

I saw love at the movie theater

I went to the movies a couple of weeks ago to see “Lincoln…”

But instead, I saw Love. ….               (Posted on December 11, 2012 by katiewetherbee)

My husband was treating me to a movie and burger date for my birthday. For me, going to the movies is a huge treat. I love the atmosphere…the anticipation when purchasing tickets, the hushed feel of a darkened theatre…the fun of the previews and the uninterrupted enjoyment of a story on film.

When we arrived, Tom went to get the tickets and I ducked into the ladies room. We were running a bit late, and so I hurried in, pleased that it wasn’t crowded. In fact, only one other person was there…an older lady wearing a red winter cap on her grey curls. She smiled at me as I ducked into the stall. When I emerged, she was still there, pacing back and forth, humming to herself. As I made my way toward the sink, she turned and followed me.
And then she spoke.

“I can’t find my way out of here,” she said quietly.

“Well,” I replied, “I know the way out. We’ll go together as soon as I wash my hands.”

She smiled and waited for me. We walked out together, and she murmured, ” You seem like a kind person. Don’t ever let this happen to your brain.”

“Is someone here with you?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “My…” her voice trailed off when she saw him, her delight shining in her smile. “There he is!” She pointed to a gentleman wearing a plaid flannel shirt.

Her husband’s worried look was replaced with relief when he saw her.

“Yes. Here I am,” he said, “Let’s go.” He nodded and smiled in my direction and gently took her hand.

I found Tom and we made our way into the theater and found a seat. Settling next to us were my ladies room friend and her husband.

Soon, the lights dimmed and “Lincoln” began. We were transported to the Civil War, mesmerized by the scenic design, costumes and acting.

About halfway through the movie, the lady shifted in her seat, becoming disoriented and agitated. Her husband immediately stood, and put his arm around her, whispering comfort to her as they walked out of the theater.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful…It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things… (from 1 Corinthians 13, NRSV)

 

I saw love at the movie theater. … and I saw it in action. Clad in a flannel shirt, holding a wrinkled, familiar hand, whispering comfort.

This blog post is by my dear friend Katie Weatherbee. I had no warning it was going to be a sweet sucker-punch but it was!

You see, Katie could be describing my own dear parents: Ed (Buddy) and Austin Robeson. They loved with just such a love for all the world to see! My mother like the lady in the restroom is mostly confused and fragile mentally – much more often than not! She also has a hard time sitting still! And, I must say, my daddy would have done just what the man Katie wrote about did. He would gently get up, hold her hand even as stooped as he was from severe Parkinson’s and lead her from the theater.

Then there is the part about the flannel plaid shirt. My daddy always wore a plaid flannel shirt in the later years.

They loved each other with a holy love! I know the couple in Katie’s story isn’t my sweet Mother and Daddy because my daddy slipped away to heaven a few months ago and my mother is still confused about “why he doesn’t come around anymore.” She just can’t take in that he’s gone ahead without her. She just told me this afternoon that she expects to see him standing with Jesus when she comes to heaven’s gate. She said, “I’m gonna smile, wave and start running to Buddy and Jesus!” She will too! ‘Cause then it won’t matter anymore that her knees have nothing but bone rubbing on bone or that she totters! Then it won’t matter any longer that she loses her balance and doesn’t have the strength to do what her mind wants her dear old body to do. What will matter is that Jesus is there and Buddy too! It’s a wonderful thing to find love, Katie, whether it’s in life or in a theater! Thanks for sharing your story so I could share mine!

       --used by permission: http://katiewetherbee.wordpress.com/2012/12/11/i-saw-love-at-the-movie-theater/

 

Day of Infamy - Day of Remembrance!

On December 7, 1941 my precious Daddy sat in chapel at the United States Naval Academy listening to a sermon preached by Peter Marshall, the great Scot preacher.
His wife Catherine details "behind the scenes" of that sermon in the biography of her husband, A Man Called Peter:
"A strange feeling which he [Peter Marshall] couldn’t shake off led him to change his announced topic to an entirely different homiletical theme based on James 4:14: For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time and then vanisheth away. In the chapel before him was the December graduating class 1941, young men who in a few days would receive their commissions and go on active duty. In that sermon titled Go Down Death, Peter Marshall used this illustration:
In a home of which I know, a little boy—the only son—was ill with an incurable disease. Month after month the mother had tenderly nursed him, read to him, and played with him, hoping to keep him from realizing the dreadful finality of the doctor’s diagnosis. But as the weeks went on and he grew no better, the little fellow gradually began to understand that he would never be like the other boys he saw playing outside his window and, small as he was, he began to understand the meaning of the term death, and he, too, knew that he was to die.
One day his mother had been reading to him the stirring tales of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table: of Lancelot and Guinevere and Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat, and of that last glorious battle in which so many fair knights met their death.
As she closed the book, the boy sat silent for an instant as though deeply stirred with the trumpet call of the old English tale, and then asked the question that had been weighing on his childish heart: “Mother, what is it like to die? Mother, does it hurt?” Quick tears sprang to her eyes and she fled to the kitchen supposedly to tend to something on the stove. She knew it was a question with deep significance. She knew it must be answered satisfactorily. So she leaned for an instant against the kitchen cabinet, her knuckles pressed white against the smooth surface, and breathed a hurried prayer that the Lord would keep her from breaking down before the boy and would tell her how to answer him.
And the Lord did tell her. Immediately she knew how to explain it to him.
“Kenneth,” she said as she returned to the next room, “you remember when you were a tiny boy how you used to play so hard all day that when night came you would be too tired even to undress, and you would tumble into mother’s bed and fall asleep? That was not your bed…it was not where you belonged. And you stayed there only a little while. In the morning, much to your surprise, you would wake up and find yourself in your own bed in your own room. You were there because someone had loved you and taken care of you. Your father had come—with big strong arms—and carried you away. Kenneth, death is just like that. We just wake up some morning to find ourselves in the other room—our own room where we belong—because the Lord Jesus loved us.”
The lad’s shining, trusting face looking up into hers told her that the point had gone home and that there would be no more fear … only love and trust in his little heart as he went to meet the Father in Heaven.  —Catherine Marshall, A Man Called Peter, pp. 230-231, 272-273
As my father told us the story of that day, he said that when they walked out of chapel the newsboys were on the streets crying, "Extra, extra! This morning the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor was bombed...." Within a few months many of those midshipmen who heard Peter Marshall's sermon that fateful day would go down to hero's graves in strange seas. Soon all of them would be personally involved in the business and dangers of war.
The sermon they heard in chapel that day offered these men the defining metaphor of the reality of eternal life: For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time and then vanisheth away. (James 4:14)

On December 7 I often - almost always - reflect on my dad's real life experience. This year is no different except that another chapter has been written in this story. It was written early on the morning of August 5, 2012. On that day my precious Daddy was carried by his heavenly Father (in much the same way as Daddy often carried each of the six of his children back to our beds at night) to his eternal home. NOW my dad knows what waking up in that other room is in reality! He is in the place he belongs forever - the place that will never vanish away where there is no more fear or pain, no more death or sorrow or tears - the place where Jesus sits on His throne proclaiming, "Behold I make all things new!"

Empty Chair

Recently there has been bi-partisan talk about chairs:

• Nancy Pelosi talked about her surreal "experience" at the White House where her "chair was getting crowded ... and then I realized Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton (etc. all the suffragists) ... 'At last we have a seat at the table.' "
• Clint Eastwood spoke to an empty chair at the Republican National Convention

That's not the kind of chair conversation I'm talking about this Thanksgiving Day. I'm thinking about all the homes where there will be an empty chair today:

• In some homes it will be a US serviceman or woman's place empty because he or she is serving us to protect our freedoms - so we can continue to live in the land of the free!
• In other homes there is an empty chair because a service man or woman - soldier, sailor, airman or Marine - gave the ultimate sacrifice for us to live free!
• And in still other homes - homes like mine - there is an empty chair because someone very loved and special has moved on to heaven to a place God has prepared for him! For now, that place is empty both in our home and in our hearts today!

God, for all those homes where there is an empty chair today, fill hearts with your peace and with gratitude for all your blessings even in the pain of loss!

 

She's My Mother!

She always said she liked the chicken back - which I think you have to be of a certain age to even remember - and all because it was the piece left! She always came running when I needed her even when I was grown and terribly sick or sad and hurt or happy! She came and did whatever her hand found to do with all her might AND all her heart!
Memories of her sitting reading her Bible or praying are too numerous to count! Memories of the people she fed and cared for in countless ways - family and stranger alike! Memories of her love for my daddy and his for her! Memories of the beautiful flowers she grew and arranged in vases all over her lovely home! Memories of sacrifices great and small all because she loved! - all these memories and so MUCH more!
Now she doesn't remember the NOW and often not the WAS either. She doesn't remember names even of her 21 grandchildren and 28 and counting great-grandchildren. I know the day is fast approaching when she won't know my name and I can hardly bear the thought but I know and grieve that we have lost so much and are losing her inch by inch! She still desperately wants to be mistress of her own home and kitchen when she can hardly dress herself even with help and only totters unstably across the floor hanging on her walker (which she hates)! She refuses to wear her new hearing aids because she can hear just fine, thank you very much! It's everyone else who just talks too low for her to hear! Just getting out of bed is more effort than she has energy or desire to do even tho' she must so she can eat and drink and take her meds! She still loves pretty shoes and pretty clothes even tho' she can't comb her own hair! She still loves my daddy and wants to be as close to him as she can get holding his hand with his wheelchair the only barrier between. Truth be known: he and Jesus are her rocks!
She loves to read aloud but can't remember what she's read or comprehend it in the moment but still reads fairly well. She doesn't always know even her own 5 children and our spouses - not really know. She gets names mixed up but she loves with a great love that comes from deep within her heart! She still wants to teach the Bible as she has done as long as I can remember and then can't remember that she wanted to do that.
All this and so much more is the wonderful woman I call Mother! She's going to heaven soon and she's so ready! She's mentored countless people into God's Kingdom! She's loved and cared almost to a fault! She could always stretch a meal for just one more like the Fourth of July when she fed a huge crowd tacos with one pound of hamburger meat. Some of us got grease on a tortilla served with love!
Until two years ago she worked with the young girls in the church even wanting to take them into the woods to learn how to start a fire rubbing sticks together. She was mad that we came to visit and arrived earlier than she thought so she didn't get to go. I thought she should have kissed my feet for showing up so she didn't have to go!
All this and so much more is the wonderful woman I call Mother! She's going to heaven soon and she's so ready! It's the rest of us who have trouble wrapping our hearts around that reality!
Happy, happy Mother's Day, my wonderful mother! If it's your last then your next will be the best ever and someday we will be together again and your mind and body will be brand new! You'll be just where you've wanted to be for most of these 91+ years - face-to-face with Jesus your Savior and Lord!
I love you, Mother mine!

Broken Can Be a Good Thing!

“Christ is building His kingdom with earth's broken things. Men want only the strong, the successful, the victorious, the unbroken, in building their kingdoms; but God is the God of the unsuccessful, of those who have failed. Heaven is filling with earth's broken lives, and there is no bruised reed that Christ cannot take and restore to glorious blessedness and beauty. He can take the life crushed by pain or sorrow and make it into a harp whose music shall be all praise. He can lift earth's saddest failure up to heaven's glory.” --J.R. Miller

He Made Our Hearts to Seek Him as He Seeks Us!

If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world. ― C. S. Lewis

Great are you, O Lord, and exceedingly worthy of praise; your power is immense, and your wisdom beyond reckoning. And so we men, who are a due part of your creation, long to praise you – we also carry our mortality about with us, carry the evidence of our sin and with it the proof that you thwart the proud. You arouse us so that praising you may bring us joy, because you have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is unquiet until it rests in you.
--Augustine, Bishop of Hippo

There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus. --Blaise Pascal

Are you looking for hope and help for your heart - at the deepest core of your being - today?
O, you may be a believer in Jesus Christ and a follower of Him serving Him BUT there are still moments and days when there is that unquiet and vacuum and unsatisfied desire that should cast us on our knees in great thanksgiving that this world IS NOT our home - that we are just passing through and that someday Jesus will welcome us to our new home where there will be no more pain and sorrow and lonliness and NO darkness at all because He Himself will be our light and will light that new city! That's a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving! That's a lot to focus on when the pain or sorrow or lonliness or darkness of this world closes in. He will push back the pain, sorrow, lonliness and darkness here too!

Moi Speaks

Philosophical "truth" can come from surprising sources:

"Only time can heal your broken heart just as only time can heal his arms and legs"
- Miss Piggy

There won't be time in the world to come which must be one reason that there will not be broken hearts ever again nor will time be needed for healing arms and legs! O, what a day THAT will be!

Homesick?!

"Homesickness" is a longing in the heart for home!

The summer I was six, I went to camp for the first time. Before I went, I discovered Psalm 27:10 - "Though my mother and father forsake me, the Lord will receive me." I carried that verse in my heart to camp! It kept me from being homesick even one time. In my child's view, "forsake me" included leaving me at camp. My focus was that God would pick up the slack, so to speak. I was able to trust Him to do just that.

"Homesickness" is usually a sadness that might even verge on sickness with a longing for home. When my grandchildren visit and decide at bedtime they want Mommy or Daddy and the tears start, I tell them, "You can go home tomorrow morning. Let's go to sleep now, and I'll call Mom and Dad in the morning if you still want to go home." So far, they always change their mind by morning!

Today the sermon was Luke 17:20 - 37. Jesus answers some questions about the Kingdom of God. Jesus tells His main men (His disciples) that it is a good thing to "long" to see the Kingdom come. This world isn't our final home if we belong to God's forever family! It's okay to be homesick for heaven! I sat there thinking that longing for God's KIngdom to come - for Jesus to come back - longing to go to live forever in heaven is a good thing! In fact, it is what we should feel! We should live every day wanting to be in that better place and ready to go there but still willing to live and work to bring in God's Kingdom on earth as long as we live in this temporary home.

Being homesick for heaven is good! Jesus gives us that longing in our hearts! This world is NOT our real home - thankfully! We are just passing through on our way to our real home if we know and love Jesus!

A Milestone Birthday

Today is my dad's 87th birthday. He's a pretty awesome guy to have for a father. He understands and lives 24/7 what a heart and life restored by Jesus looks like. He pretty much always has. What an incredible heritage for me and his other five children and more than 21 grandchildren and soon to be a dozen (and counting) great-grandchildren!
These days you can catch him a lot sitting with his Bible on his knees reading. He may not move as fast as he used to, but he hasn't changed a bit how he lives. His faithful living consistently demonstrates his heart restored by Jesus.
87 years is a long time to live. Chances are he has less time more to live than he already has lived. Sometime he's gonna just step over into the next life - eternity with Jesus. I don't like to think about that, but that's pretty selfish of me. It will be a wonderful transition for him! He will have a whole new body in heaven. The drag of years and various other things will no longer hang around. He will be free and whole. No more doctor visits, no more medicines, not even any more daily walks up his mountain road.
This morning he told me he planned to take a load of trash from the garage to the dump. He won't have to do that in heaven either.
This restoration business is pretty awesome when I consider where it leads in the end!