…the cat’s tail

I was fine today.

Until…

I read Scooper’s post – Living Free Through Our Unfixable Days

Until…

I found my mom’s obituary in a pile of photographs from NC.  Her face smiling up at me from a piece of newspaper torn from it’s page.  The ache to reach through the veil and touch her hand is all consuming in my deepest grieving.  Knowing I could touch her and see her while in the hospital brought a morbid and twisted, yet sweet sort of comfort.  Until her last breath……when I realized our bodies, no matter what we think of them, are just shells.

Shells on a beach without life inside.

Empty.  Used up.  Done.

And the concept of eternity hits home.  Our lives are just a blink.

Nothing in this world matters except the lives we touch.  The people we help.  The paths we cross.

And the pain spills from deep within me.

It’s a gut-wrenching, unfixable pain.

There is no way around it.  I have to walk smack-dab through it, trusting that on the other side is something besides a balled-up broken woman reduced to a child crying, “I want my mommy.”

The grief is more like a wail only explained and expressed in God’s written Word.

The wailing wall.

I’m there.

Hope.

It’s there too.  Somewhere.  Calling.  Waiting.  Soothing like a mother’s touch.

I ponder God’s choice to willingly give us Christ.

I wonder how Christ willingly agreed.

The pain and the ache fill every corner of my body.  It’s felt in my bones, muscles and heart.

It’s expressed in solitude when only God watches.

It can not be controlled.  It will not be brushed away.

For this path, I’ve been asked to walk it.  Knowing He only gives us what we can handle.

He must think a lot of me.

And the cry is, “God, my God…..why?  I wasn’t ready.  I needed more time.”

The flood pouring from my soul inexplicable.  All of it boiling down to TRUST:

Day 15 on Facebook:

Grief is indeed a strange animal. It’s back. It’s like my cat’s tail. Sometimes it’s calm and other times it whips violently. In these times gratefulness is something I cling to with my fingernails. My memories of mom are sweet but they have a bite at the moment. I miss her so much.

Tenderness – mom was tender. She was loving. Her touch was tender and filled with love. I’m learning that nothing can replace that touch. I am a better person because of it. I also know that I would have never been ready to lose my mom. Never.

And I have to trust Gods perfect timing and pray for the work he is doing because of her death. I trust.

So I cry out to God and He comforts and loves me.  And the sun shines in the next hour.

For He is good.


31 Days of Reality (Day 4) GRATITUDE

What is more real that Jesus?

The author, the perfecter……

I wanted to share a recent God moment with you.

When we moved to Florida the first year and a half was hard.  Difficult.  Exhausting.  Sometimes Miserable.

It’s because of that year and a half that my heart is filled with such gratitude now that we are in our own house.  All our furniture has been moved in.  And we’ve found wonderful people to help with the struggles my kids were having.  These are the people at LearningRx.  I blogged about them earlier.

Here are my two masterminds hard at work.  They work for 1 hour and 15 minutes 4 times a day and the results are AMAZING.  Their cognitive thinking skills are going thru the roof.  Yippee!

Part of my gratitude comes from the journey to LearningRx.  We began with counseling, then the psychologist, psychological testing, ADHD diagnosis, recommendation for me to send my oldest to school.  Then a friend told me about LearningRx and the leaps and bounds her son was making there.  For $49 testing I was all in.  I learned more from that $49 test than the $800 psychological evaluation!  Yea, I beat myself up about spending that money but I rested in “it was part of the journey” and heaped it into my gratitude pile instead.

Each time I drive up to our home that I fully believe God has given us my heart feels with gratitude.  We have a beautiful home, hand-picked by the Maker himself.

Gratitude.

It changes a life.


Why wouldn't I trust?

At the end of my last post I asked what things do you (I) stare at from the other side of the glass?  Things like Fred who is in the sewer drain AGAIN this morning and won’t come out.  He gets into trouble every time I let him out at night and I wonder if we’d be the same way if God allowed us out into the “wild blue yonder” on the other side of the glass?  What trouble would we get in to?  Would we be trapped having to be rescued each morning?  Would we go hungry?  Would we be overwhelmed by what’s been put in front of us?  I think the answer is a resounding “yes”.

I took these last night during football practice……..

And I wonder….if my God can paint a sky like this for me why, oh why do I not trust that He ALWAYS has my best interests at heart.

Thank you Jesus for speaking to me through your beautiful sunset.


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