Carried On

     Today is Memorial Day. It is a time for remembering the servicemen who died defending our freedom, and I do not want to detract from that focus. The fallen should never be forgotten. But it is also a time we think of others we have lost. Today we gathered with what family we could, ate steak and homemade ice cream, talked and laughed together. Amidst all these good things, like a wreath atop a headstone, today was both beautiful and sad.  

 

          Carried On

If these are the times when

the "Footprints in the Sand" poem

says you are carrying me,

why can't I be unconscious

or, at least, asleep?

 

Because it feels like 

I am plodding through loss,

carrying my son's body

on my own back, and my 

heart was already heavy, Lord.

 

I know you could 

take this sorrow from me

as easily as you carried

his spirit to heaven, 

and I'd be free of its burden.

 

But I would not be healed.

Healing comes from feeling

the weight of my grief,

the depth of my love,

my hunger for heaven. 

 

Maybe the times you carried me

are something I can only see

looking back at days long gone,

times when everything in me

wanted to stop--but we carried on.

             5/29/23

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Beautiful Soul

     On yet another of our family's collection of sad Thursdays, my cousin Patti made her journey to heaven. Of the many wonderful Christians I have known in my life, hers was the most beautiful soul. Some share her Spirit-given gift of encouragement, but few could be as selfless in the face of suffering. Besides the years of MS and the breast cancer that spread to her brain and then took her life, there were hard home situations. Her first marriage ended in divorce, but the years of living estranged in the same home (at her in-laws insistence) taught their sons that it is okay to disrespect your mother. A lesson  they learned so well, that they did not even visit their mom before she died. Her sons are also estranged from work and living independently, but not from law enforcement.

     Her family of origin, my Mom's sister's family, virtually cut off contact with Patti in later years, mostly because of her faith in Christ. My cousin Arlis, who now lives in Boise, is the one who told me six months ago that Patti had brain cancer. Our branch of the family has been praying for her since we found out. Wednesday night Patti's second husband, Billy, let Arlis know Patti was nearing the end. Arlis came to keep watch with her and texted me. For a variety of reasons, none of her family came. We were not surprised. But this post is not to air a load of our family's dirty laundry. Patti would not have wanted that.

    If she was unwelcome in her first marriage and her family home, that has been more than eclipsed by the welcome Patti received in heaven. Her marriage to Billy was happy. He and Patti's friends from church took care of her round the clock in her final weeks. Patti saw the beauty in her life and in people because that is what she was looking for. She spoke encouragement to others because she focused on them, not herself. I have a loving family, a happy marriage and few health problems, so perhaps I have not learned to look as hard for beauty as Patti did, but I recognize it when I see it--a beautiful soul.                                         

This Mother's Day

     I hesitate to post this poem before I have time to fix it up, but I think it is better to share it at the time it pertains to, Mother's Day, than to get the wording just right. Last year at this time I was just trying to keep moving through my days with some semblance of normality, despite the shock and loss, to just keep breathing. This year, with more distance from Tracy's death, I have words to express what I'm feeling. For good or bad, this is the real me.

            This Mother's Day

 

  This Mother's Day approaches with  

gratitude and remembrance--and sorrow.

The deepest desire of my heart,

my perpetual prayer, the one that mattered most

was for our family to be together in heaven forever.

God answered my prayer, my son is there.

 

  I am just as much a mother as I ever was

before my child went to heaven,

five minutes or fifty years, it makes no difference.

My earthly role as his mother has ended,

but the relationship is eternal.

We will always be a part of each other.

 

  So if this Mother's Day, my pleasure and thanks

mingle with memories and tears,

and sometimes silence, despite all

I know to be true about God and heaven,

it is only because of this other truth--

I am just as much a mother as ever. 

                   

 

 

Question 8

    We have finished our BSF study of the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah, their perpetual idolatry, and eventual captivity in Assyria and Babylon. We spent 29 lessons going through 15 books of the Old Testament to get to this unhappy ending. . . although this is not the end. The happy ending is yet to come. Lesson 29 was a recap of our study of Israel and Judah's history, kings, and prophets until the time of the exile. My one sentence summary of this whole year is--God relentlessly pursues His unworthy children so He can restore our relationship. That encourages me because I am one of those unworthy children He relentlessly pursued, and eventually caught.

    Question 8 on this week's BSF lesson was, "Write a sentence or two praising God for His mercy and grace toward needy and rebellious people." I was having a hard time finding the words, which seemed odd because words are sort of my main thing. (As you can tell by the goodly wording of the previous sentence.) But I discovered why I was having a problem putting words on paper--my answer wanted to be written as a poem. I learned in BSF that most prophecy is written in poetic form because the messages are too grand for prose. For me, these aspects of God's love for the unworthy, are poem worthy, so I wrote the following:  

 

                                            Question and Answer  

                                                                       

What foreign love is this

that chooses such as I,

lets lifelong sinners live,

but lets His own Son die,

to pay the cost that we could not,

and did not know we owed.

How inexplicable the love

our suffering Savior showed.

 

Toast Post

                                                                                

 

    Last night we had a birthday bonfire in honor of Tracy's May 3rd birthday. We held it at Britten and Luke's, where the pile of yard trimmings used by both our families had grown big enough to be Tracy worthy. He and Dillon used to make bonfires on Leisure Island that were probably visible to orbiting satellites. It was wonderful to hear former neighbors and some of Tracy's childhood friends share memories. But between roasting hotdogs and sharing memories, I gave the following toast:

    We are here today to celebrate Tracy’s birthday and share memories of him and I hope for many of those. But before we do that, I wanted to recognize our other children—Britten & Luke, Will & Emily. When our kids were little, our goals were simple, we wanted them not to kill each other and we wanted to survive parenthood with losing our sanity. But beyond that, our hopes for all of our children were that they would love and serve God, work hard, be responsible and considerate, and grow to be friends with one another. Britten and Will took to the work hard part early in life, Tracy took longer to get there, but then became a workaholic like his Dad. Despite their different personalities, our kids learned first to work together, then to become friends.

   They all love God, and Britten and Will married people who shared that faith. Our children did not meet our expectations for becoming responsible and considerate--they exceeded them! They are wonderful parents to our three amazing granddaughters. They take care of family, friends, sometimes even strangers, and do all the things that matter most to us. If Britten and Will did not become as social and outgoing as we had hoped, they at least had the good sense to marry people who were. Luke and Emily both place high value in family, and now that we all live in the same town, we gather often in each other’s homes. Even though I did not get my wish for a revival of parents arranging marriages for their children, we couldn’t be happier with the partners they chose for themselves.

   Together, they made even the pain of losing Tracy much easier in too many ways to tell in this brief time. So I’d like to propose a toast to our kids—by birth, by marriage, by Tracy’s choice, here or in heaven—to family!

I also want to recognize two other birthdays coming up in May—Dave Cano and Russell Lamb—we miss you.