The Joy of the Lord is My Strength

My baby boy is turning 22 on Saturday. Where has the time gone??? When he was younger I affectionately called him my little toad because he was a prince that had not yet come unto his own. I have a little blown glass frog with a blown glass crown on his head that's very special to me. Over the years, Ben's gifted me with a variety of frog items--mostly for the flower garden that we had to leave behind when we moved last summer.

As he grew, the frog became more important to us. Fully Rely On God (FROG) is a motto I did my best to instill in him. I did all I could to teach him that if he trusted in the salvation of the Lord, then he too would be a crowned prince in the Father's Kingdom.

At the moment, my toad is walking the path of the prodigal. Once he joined the workforce, he found that the allurements of the world were just too inviting. My fervent prayer is that he will grow weary of being in the mud with the pigs and return to seek The Father's heart. I'm fully persuaded that God will finish that which He began. Of course that's not to say I don't have a mother's worry. But I do trust that God is in control and won't make us endure beyond what we're able to bear. A faith without testing isn't really faith.

So a new chapter of my life is about to unfold. I'm 46 with an empty nest. The world is my oyster. I'm curious to see the next pearl that the Lord creates for me. I'm sure that if I trust & obey, then it's sure to be a beautiful gem. Trusting is getting easier; it's the obeying part I struggle with-- LOL

As the heat of June settles in, I feel her in the air. I'm taken back to her 2-month check up when she too had her shots. She didn't even cry. She just had this startled look on her face. I was so proud of her.

We showed her off around the hospital where her pediatrican, obgyn, and NICU family knew her well. And then we took her out to a little neighborhood kitchen for Mexican food when we were done. She sat in her car carrier and dozed while dh and I had dinner.

We stopped at the Walgreen's to pick up a replacement Rx for her heart medicine since hospice had taken the other one. There was also an Rx to help with her constipated tummy.

It was a few moments when I let my guard down, and for a fleeting fragment of time I let myself believe that I got to keep her. To my dismay, only a few hours later she was dead in my arms. It caught us completely off guard. Once again our frail illusions were shattered.

I was such a zombie through the rest of that summer. We've not been back to that neighborhood kitchen since that day--there's been no reason to go all the way across town in that direction.

As the heat of the season starts to bear down, I'm reminded of that
frazzled,
reeling,
exhausted,
overpowering sense of suffocating anguish
--gasping & flailing through the heavy darkness;
--grappling with how I'd make it;
--groaning under such incredible weight of sorrow...


I miss her like crazy--all the coos she made; the beginnings of purposed smiles; and omgosh the grand strides she embarked on as she sought to be in control of her own head. I miss how the crook of my arm would get hot & sweaty from holding her so long--how her unruly hair would get matted and damp.

Yes, she was so very sweet. And I said it the day after she died and I'll say it again, "I have no idea what I'll do without her." I guess I'm still trying to figure that out...

She would have been three. It's hard to believe it's been three years since my sweet little girl came into my life. April, May & June are for Anne--my sweet little May Bee that didn't get to stay. She was my rainbow of hope after Abigail died. But then she died too and all the colors of the rainbow faded to black.

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It's hard to explain such grief to those who haven't had one child die, let alone two. Having the rainbow baby die on top of a full-term stillbirth is no small thing, and yet how many the people are in my life who brush her off as inconsequential. It's been very difficult to live through.

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Thankfully, I've managed to stay sober (though getting plastered has been a temptation on more than one occasion). I've been riddled with fibromyalgia this last couple of years, so I can't really say that the grief didn't impact my health. My body went into pre-mature menopause, leaving my hormones to fight & struggle within me. I finally had to succumb to anti-depressants just to survive. I owed it to my family to be at least somewhat functioning.

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I would have liked to have been stronger as I walked this road of grieving, but alas a person can only take so much. It's not that I'm entirely against anti-depressants, it's just that they don't really work as good as one would hope. They barely take the edge off, but I suppose that's all I really need for them to do. I can't exactly expect a pill to bring the joy & beauty if my girls back to me. But the pills do help with that chronic wishing for death to overtake me. The medication helps keep in check those dark emotions that keep me from functioning. Heck, I made it through Anne's third birthday, and I'm proud of that.

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I did much better this year than last even though my heart misses her more now than ever before. I never realized what a challenge it would be to stack up so many birthdays in the cemetery. I'm having to come to grips with the fact that cemetery birthdays are all I'll ever get to have of them. It's a rather gruesome prospect to consider; not for the faint of heart.

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Happy Third Birthday, My Sweet TurtleBird

Mama Misses You Madly!

Yikes! What a terrible blogger I've been! Even now I don't know what to write about other than the illhealth that's kept me from having gumption to write.

I've been struggling with depression and finding the right meds. Nothing seems to help. Oprah would say that I just need to wish it away--that I attract the depression because I don't visualize it away. I suppose if I had cancer that I could just visualize that away as well? I suppose she'd say that my girls died because via the "law of attraction" I actually wished them dead. Please! I've grown quite weary of Oprah's ivory tower ideologies. It's been a little too long since she's known what "real life" really is. I suppose it's a lot easier to visualize your problems away when you're richer than God.

I tried her online class briefly. First, I trudged through the book that she's plugging. As a Bible scholar, I had to be alert to those new age philosophies that are contrary to Biblical thinking. It was hard since the author clearly isn't Messianic in any way, and what snippets of Jesus that he draws from are often badly misinterpreted. I heard that still-small voice inside me saying, "are you really sure you want to keep reading such drivel?" But I did my best to have an open mind. I didn't want to miss the author's greater message just because he fails to understand the Judeo-christian worldview or what the Bible teaches. I looked forward to what the class might teach in spite of the book's remarkably buddhist perspective.

So the first night of class, I attended with text and notepad ready. The Internet broadcast lasted about 10 minutes and then crashed from the overwhelming attendance. So I turned on Oprah & Friends on XM Radio to listen to the rest of the class. Well, not the rest of the class....

In reality, I packed up my bookbag & pad and walked out of class before the hour was done. A student had called in to ask a question about how Oprah could reconcile the dichotomy of thinking between the book's buddhist prevelence and its conflict with Messianic thinking. The long & explicit answer made me not want to continue with the class, and it made me very very sad for all those who would be led astray through the book/class experience.

You see, my God is a jealous God. He's jealous for His Bride. He wants her to make Him her priority. He doesn't want her tramping around with a bunch of other gods. He's jealous for His bride to be pure in thought, word and deed. God is jealous for my safety & protection. He doesn't want me straying off into the World's mud puddles. He's jealous for my heart to remain true to Him. His relationship with me is not an open relationship where I can pick & choose only the comfy, feel-good things about God's goodness & love.

God, in Hiss relationship with His people, expresses His love for us through His righteous jealousy. Jealousy is a very very important part of who my God is. He expresses Himself as a jealous God multitudes of times in the Old Testament. Abram was called out of Ur because of God's jealousy. God called Abram out of the pagan culture of Ur in order to establish Himself as Abram's exclusive Lord. He later reiterates His jealousy to Moses when He instructs that we are to have no other gods except Him.

God's love and jealousy are one. To say you believe in God's love, but don't believe that God's jealousy is right or good is a tremendous misunderstanding of just how deep God's love is for His people. How sad to claim only part of God's love and reject the rest. I want my God to be jealous for my heart. I want Him to be my one & only Love. I want His jealousy to keep me focused only on Him. I want His jealousy to rescue me & chasten me when my heart & mind wander--and they are so prone to wander; so so so prone to wander!

What Oprah doesn't understand is that I want the jealous part of God's love. I love that He's so jealous for me that He took my place on the Cross and defeated my eternal death. Try as he may, the devil will never ever be able to conquer me simply because God is too jealous to let the devil succeed in his seductions.

Never before in all my years of Biblical study has Messianic thinking been so imperative to my life. Their use of the word christ in their awakening terminology is troubling. Clearly, they don't understand that christ is the Greek word for messiah. It's not something that you achieve or bring about; it's not a "state of mind." When they use the word "christ" as an awakening process, they illustrate that they do not understand the Judaic principle of propitiation. And why should they since they don't believe in the sin nature of humanity.

Rather than believing in the original sin nature of humanity, they believe in the collective consciousness in terms of "ego" making a mess of things--that if we just master our individual egos then collectively we will be an awakened society, ever evolving toward buddahood. There is no heaven or hell apart from what we create here. God is created by man rather than vice versa. Their premiss is that if we awaken within ourselves then we can fix ourselves by recognizing our egos that get in the way. Ultimately, they see no need for a Messiah. Who needs a Messiah when there is no impenitrable sin from which we need rescuing? At best, such rose-colored egoic thinking is delusional.

Thus, for as "awakened" as they think of themselves, it's sad that they still aren't truly awakened to who God is--the God who spoke the world into existence; the God that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Solomon, Elijah, Isaiah, & Jesus loved, worshiped and made personal relationship with. I pray that over the course of their "spiritual examination" the Holy Spirit will impart Truth upon their hearts and lead them out from the mud puddles they play in.

Of course, I'm sure they see my Messianic worldview as part of the problem rather than the only solution that there really is. Father Abraham taught us when he left Ur (in order to pursue his exclusive & jealous relationship with the Lord God Almighty) that Jehovah Messiah is the only way. Moses also shared with us from his own personal relationship with Jehovah Messiah that "I AM" is a name reserved only for God. For the Awakening text & class to instruct that we too are also "I AM" is greatly troubling and world's apart from a Hebraic worldview.

As one of the multitudes of children who decend from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, I personally & spiritually know a great and astonishing God--a God whose righteous jealousy is merely one of the amazing qualities that He uses to show His deep & never-ending Love for His people. Certainly, any religion or "spiritual awakening" that would have me become my own god doesn't understand just what a fool I would end up worshipping!

It's so challenging celebrating heaven's party from down here. I'm so jealous of my girls who get to celebrate Christmas every day--with the King Himself.

I'm always so mournfully melancholy when Advent is over. I hate for the season to end--putting all the lights and ornaments away for another year. The season of preparation is truly my favorite, and somehow all that I longed for during the season of preparation is so deflated once Christmas day arrives. I guess it's a vivid reminder of how it's really not about the beautifully wrapped gifts. It's not about the twinkling beauty of the lights.

It's about the sin nature of humanity and how we need to be rescued from it's ugly demise. In the end we celebrate Christmas because instinctively we know that we cannot make it out of this place alive. The gifts and lights and merry goodwill are merely simplified manifestations of our inner spirit which intensely longs for heaven's reality.

Christmas is a party that's really all about heaven--we're all invited; the invitation has no bounds. Oddly enough, many don't want to attend the party. They too experience that Christmas day let-down, and thus they bah-humbug the whole party. Others don't celebrate because they instinctively know that in reality, Christmas is about heaven's Son stepping out of His glory and into the manger. They know that the manger becomes a Cross, and they want nothing to do with any of it. Others only celebrate as a means to justify eating, drinking and spending too much. They're all too relieved to have the party get packed away when the New Year's champagne bottles are empty. They don't understand the manger or the cross--it's all just secular dross.

For me, Christmas has become a graveside celebration where in solemn stillness lay the bodies of my two little girls. We celebrate that the Manger directs us to the Cross, and that the Cross then gives us the gifts of forgiveness, salvation, resurrection, and eternal celebration with the King of Kings.

The deaths of my girls illustrates up-close & personal the incredibly profound need for humanity's rescue--that there is no salvation without heaven's King stepping into humanity's shoes. Without the manger there is no Cross. Without the Cross there is no Resurrection. Without Resurrection there is only death for all eternity. Life is finite and death is forever.

The reincarnationists make their rebuttal by saying that life recycles--eternally; that after we die we get to come back and live again. But if that's true then we have to die again too. I do NOT want to die again and again and again until eternity runs out. I don't want to keep the funeral industry prosperous forever. I only want to know death once, and then spend the rest of eternity clothed in pure life--celebrating Christmas with the King Himself.

Oh to finally celebrate the Manger without the Cross--that's the Gift His earthly manger has given us for Christmas. That's the eternal celebration I get to have on the other side of death simply because I accepted the Manger's invitation to the Cross. I can't wait to be reunited with my princesses--to celebrate Christmas with them everyday for all eternity.

Because my daughters are in the ground at Christmas, I glady accept heaven's invitation to the Cross--the place where the real Christmas presents are given, but also the place where we must die to ourselves. Because my daughters are in the ground at Christmas, the anguish of their absence is profound. But I take comfort in the solemn stillness of the manger, walking with the Babe all the way past the empty New Year's bottles and straight toward the Cross. It's in the Gifts of the Cross that my aguished sorrow comes to know profound joy!

Look unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him He endured the Cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12:2