Heaven--next trip??

Tonight where you are is day.

Tonight where you are All have found their way

to the Happy place with their Savior.

No one is in a rush to finish their dance

No one is feeling that they must push to get their chance

at His feet before their neighbor.

Sense the ease.  Sense the peace.  Sense the joy.  Sense the fullness.

Heaven.

Are you ready?

Sharing

Sharing as a little child....well, sometimes I wanted to share and sometimes I didn't.   Then, when I wanted to share, I never wanted to give it all away.  Just a portion.  And that portion could vary in size from wee to  massive.  Always, it was according to how much I liked it.

Many of you have told me that you are glad that I'm sharing along my journey.  Some of you really think that  I'm sharing well and plentifully.

I assure you that I am not sharing plentifully.  Yes, I'm sharing very honestly.  Yet, there is a only a tiny portion of this journey from which I share.  Otherwise, you'd be overwhelmed and fall down.

It seems that those of us destined to be traveling in this grief are equipped when this begins.  Some deep inner strength seems to take over when one's route is thru the valley of the shadow of death.

Many days, I recall how in prior days I tried to help others.  Clueless and I knew it.  Yet, I thought I may have some inkling just from imagining.  Now,  I'm very, very grateful that I was extremely more clueless than I knew of how the grief felt.

What does this blog have to say?

I am OVERWHELMED with your kindnesses and your efforts to reach out and help me.  Overwhelmed with your efforts to grasp what I'm trying to say.  And, I'm overwhelmingly grateful that most all of you will never have total understanding of this journey because you won't travel it.

I will do all that I can to share because it helps me.  I will share because it may help someone who is traveling through this valley.  I will do all that I can to help others understand how to best support the travelers.

I love you my friends with whom I share life.  I thank you for every kind word and deed.

Grief and Pain

The night is late.  I have been floating thru the days and evenings in a state of numbness now for several days.  Like in an anesthesia stupor.

My soul skitters away from the pain when the shadow of death brushes past.  How do I embrace this pain?

It must be done.  All of the experts state that fact.  And, conversely, no one person grieves  in the same way.  Despair, agony, gloom, pain, excruciating pain.  There is no recourse around this.  Walk directly thru it.

In some way, grief is like death.  Death occurs individually and randomly.  It is appointed unto all of us.  Some seems kinder.  Some colder.  But all will die.  There is no recourse around this.  All will walk directly into the shadow of death.

Grief is a journey.  Death is the other journey.  The two are merely parallel.  Never will these meet on the earth.

So until the heaven, I am on a journey parallel and separate from my daughter.

Where are you?

I open this document.  Type a title and panic.  Rush over to the back button.....and....pause.  The pain is too great but I have to bear it.  It must be felt or it will consume me some day.

Visiting within your four walls, touching your valued treasures,  smelling clothes you wore.  There isn't enough time to find you.....and yet you are everywhere.

You, in pieces behind closet doors, on the walls, among the dresser drawers, stuffed in school bags.  Shoes that I brought you, then, you walked in, remain stuffed in shoe bags and rest on the shelves.  Amazingly, there are shoes which had not yet known adventure.

Little papers with notes to your guy and your friends are tucked in places to be found yet again by you.  You are the one to whom the notes were written and it is for you that they have meaning.  Receipts, books, binders, schedules forever paused only offer the significance of halted dreams.  Plans with no future.

No, I couldn't find you yesterday.  Today?  Oh, how I wish.

Not Imagining

Since the time of Megan's passing, I think often of places which I rarely thought of before.  And, just as we know is true of educating children, experience is the best way to gain understanding of formerly alien concepts.

Now, when I go to a cemetery, I understand that beneath my feet is my beautiful daughter's body in a dark box.  No, I never got that understanding from losing grandparents, in-laws, friends.  It took an earthquake  experience to give me this understanding.  Enough understanding that if I think too long, it urges me to peel the earth back and move her.

Heaven is a place that I no longer imagine as a place that there really are people who smile and talk to one another and recognize Megan.  I need to know it.  I need to know some who never met her are thrilled to know her on the eternal side of life.  This experience of her death has left me trying to feel and know about this heaven beyond my imaginings.  I'd like to know the events of every day.  I want to read every book ever written by anyone who had a death experience and lived to return to this planet.

To think of heaven now is to think of a bright soul who is so delightful and precious that even Jesus smiles bigger.  That the friends and family already there are now even happier.  It isn't that far away now because my daughter is there.  I think of it often and wonder what she is doing.  Yes, she lives there so I know she is doing something.  As her mother, I need to know these things!

As I struggled to worship this morning, overcoming my doubts and my questions, I gained a sense of what she was doing.  We sang Revelation Song....."Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God almighty.....".  That is what she is doing most often now.  Somehow, I knew for that brief few moments that I was joining her and doing the exact same thing as she was at the exact same time.   It brought me a joy in that moment to know we were joined.

She really is there in heaven.  Heaven is a real place.  My experience makes it real.

So, for today, for a while, the fog of grief in my mind, lifted enough for me to sing with my daughter.

Walking in the Night

Danger all around
Lurking sight unseen
No one's there to hold your hand
Fear consumes your dreams
Hopes and plans threatened
By the dark you're plunging through
Silence overwhelms, deafens
Is no one here but you?


Others have been here
Some are walking now
Reach out for another
Feel their hand stretched out
Right along beside them
The Greater One does trod
You're not meant to walk alone
Quite nears the Awesome God


Walking in the night
Is not meant to be done alone
On the road one may trip or stumble 
Even on the smallest stone
Each step you take His hand is there 
It guides where you can't see
No, you're not meant to walk alone 
I've been there, I believe