Lost

Our family has been dealt a great blow 2 weeks ago. I got the phone call from my mother-in-law. That one phone call stopped our world from revolving. Life as we have known it has ceased. My father-in-law has passed.

I had to watch my family's collective hearts smash to pieces. It wrenched my soul. The questions that can only be founded out of grief came pouring like a burst dam from their wounded hearts were left unanswered. "Why?" "How?" And the most terrifying one, "What now?"

When that evening was drawing close, my broken husband had to tell our children the news. Georgie sobbed. Hannah stared. That was the worst feeling. Watching your child's fragile heart deflate like it was punctured with thorns of sadness. My heart bled as never before.

I sat helplessly to the people I longed to help. I wanted to picked up their heart-pieces & mend them together, but the shards were too small & sharp to handle. I began to do the only thing I could. Pray.

God knows what it is like to have great loss. He had to watch His only son be tortured & murdered. He alone had the power to stop the madness, but refrained with love. A love for hearts broken with sin. Hearts that could only be repaired by a loving master-healer. So, I asked Him to reconstruct the fallen bits as only He can. It will take Him longer to fix what it broken because He knows when & how to gingerly fit the broken together. You can't rush a love that binds & heals damaged hearts.

As the days waned on slowly,  I waited. I waited for God to use his gentle hands to work. I waited for my name to be called out if only for a tissue. I waited for my heart to make sense of what was now past. We had to leave behind the patriarch & walked away. It stung & still does.

The next week brought the celebration of the greatest birth. How do we celebrate a new life when the  when we just put a life to rest? How do you go to gatherings where everyone is filled with joy & gladness when your wound is fresh & bleeding? You remember in the chaos there is hope. The hope that came with that small unnoticeable babe so many centuries ago. The hope that life will be renewed someday.

Although our lives & hearts will never be the same, we can keep taking on step at a time. Each step taking us farther from disparity & closer to what lies ahead of us. We can still looked over our shoulders & smile at the ones we had to leave behind. We can never go back to them, but we can look forward to seeing them again with our Heavenly Father. There is but one way to get there, through believing in that little baby who grew up to be the Savior of this world.

9that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; 10for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. 11For the Scripture says, “WHOEVER BELIEVES IN HIM WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED.” 12For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call on Him; 13for “WHOEVER WILL CALL ON THE NAME OF THE LORD WILL BE SAVED.” - Romans 10:9-14


With this hope, we can look towards to moment when we will be healed of our brokenness.

Bittersweet

I love bittersweet. It's not very pretty during the summer when all the other flowers are in their blooming splendor. It sits back & waits for it's turn. Biding time unassumingly.

Then, when all the plants are quietly getting ready for their long-winter's nap, the bittersweet explodes with bright contrasting colors. Just when the world is putting on it's winter dress, the bittersweet is putting on it's party gown.

Bittersweet reminds me of my daughter, Hannah. She is still in the green leaf-stage at 13. I look at her & see what is to come. I can see the vibrant colors. But that's the thing. I'm hoping to see what should already be visible. I'm still waiting. How long will I have to wait to see the buds? I don't know.

Hannah has made great strides in gaining good speech. I would pray that God would let her talk to me, again. I have learned & trust that God is good & answers prayers. She now can have simple conversations & express her wants & needs. Like going to the store to buy some toy because she has money in her pocketbook. I think Hannah will always want to buy toys. This is bittersweet to me.

She looks like a girl in her fledgling teen years. She is good at math, when she's in the mood. Hannah sometimes smacks her brother when he is being a younger brother. She loves & shows compassion.

Hannah is my bittersweet. When all the other girls her age at the school dance, she is at home drawing her pictures. It's not that we forbid her to go. I don't know how much she would understand about that social confusion. That's all a junior high dance is anyway. She's happy to draw instead. She tells me that she doesn't want to kiss, let alone marry a boy. Hannah describes that as, "Disgusting!" I rest easy with that thought, for now.

Every so often I get to see a peek of dazzling color in her. She doesn't bloom all at once. One flower at a time. I savor it each time I see a glimpse of it happening. It happens in her time & God's.

There is a time for everything,

and a season for every activity under the heavens:

2a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot,

3a time to kill and a time to heal,

a time to tear down and a time to build,

4a time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to mourn and a time to dance,

5a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

6a time to search and a time to give up,

a time to keep and a time to throw away,

7a time to tear and a time to mend,

a time to be silent and a time to speak,

8a time to love and a time to hate,

a time for war and a time for peace. - Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

God doesn't give me all good nor does He give me all bad with Hannah. He gives what I need, good & bad. Sometimes separate. Sometimes at the same time. I can rest assured that He is with me ALL the time.  

Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.- Deuteronomy 3:16

So I will wait. I will wait & watch with eager eyes. Someday my Bittersweet will bloom, spectacularly.

Oh my, pumpkin pie

My husband, George, is a great guy. He strives to be a better man everyday. He joined a men's group at our church that was focused on improving yourself & relationships with God, wife & children. It also gave weekly challenges for the men to conquer that pulled them out of their comfort zones.

One such challenge found my husband & kids in my kitchen. The challenge was to make a dessert for the Thanksgiving dinner.

Let's pause here for a moment. My husband doesn't cook, prepare, bake or grill. He likes to eat the food. There is a reason for this. George decided to surprise me when I was at work by making dinner. He decided that he would make spaghetti with a meat sauce. As he started to cook the pasta, he realized that pasta grows as it cooks. Seeing that he didn't have enough hamburger for the sauce because meat shrinks as it cooks, he decided to add more meat to the skillet. This in turn had him adding more pasta.

When I got home that evening, he was prouder than a peacock. He made enough spaghetti to last us all week! Lunch & supper.

After that episode, I promptly told to leave the cooking to me. It was my kitchen. I really don't like spaghetti.

Back to the dessert episode. Now he finds himself in a foreign land: the kitchen. This is with the children. I thought this was a momentous occasion. So I made a movie out of it.The only problem with the movie is that it is 22 minutes long. I spent the better half of yesterday trying to download it, set-up a YouTube account & wait. It would have take 25oo minutes to download into a YouTube video!!

I have decided to show you a clip of them making the pie crust. I don't do this in jest of my husband. (Although, I do snort at him a couple times.) I'm glad that he has a great sense of humor, as well. But to show you that he loves me enough to do something he's not fond of. Just like Christ has commanded the husbands to do. Even if it involves pie crusts!

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. - Ephesians 5:25