Lord, please bless this blog. Please let it reach deep into people, not to entertain their fancies. Let Your glory shine out of these writings, even though it is laced with pain. Lord, you saved me from the pit, and I am forever thankful for that. All the glory only goes to You. I am a lowly sinner, but saved by Your grace. Amen.
I had always believed there was a taste of heaven out there. When I would play piano, but not always, but sometimes, I felt this incredible peace. But, it was a feeling of soaring as well. What I find so amazing now as I look back, is that this was just a sliver of what would come when I would get to know the Lord intimately.
I hope you can make those connections to things that are "worldly", yet somewhat heavenly.
I started a sort of a bucket list after my parents passed away. I saw the movie, "The Bucket List", but that didn't have much to do with it. I simply saw my parents pass away from cancer at young ages. I was really determined to live life, see the sites, do it all. Dad was 66 and mom was 69. Now, understand this, I am the baby of the family, so my mother was 35 when she had me. Dad was 37. My grandparents all passed very early as well. I have one relative that lived to the age of 81 and that was my paternal grandmother. She was very ill much of her last 30 years with cancer and severe heart disease, along with diabetes. She was somewhat demented, unfortunately for her last 10 years and nursing home bound.
I missed out of some elders, here. I don't remember much of my dad's parents good years. They really were neat people. I do remember after they retired and were worn down, and those were still good memories, but my grandpa died when I was 9, in 1977. After that, I really didn't have any grandparents as we were not exposed to my mother's parents really at all, except for Christmas day.
To top it off, my parents moved to South Carolina in 1987 when I was just 19. They stayed there until 1998. Dad passed in 2000. I moved away, myself in 1998 to Minnesota. I did not have a holiday with my parents as an adult for over 90% of my adult life. We played cat and mouse all over the map, but never got in the same state for very long. My exposure to my father is very limited after age 19, and prior to that, there was not a true relationship as well, when I was young. He was in our lives, in our home, but working and not available much when he was not working.
I tell you this because I want you to understand why some people have bucket lists, even at the young age of 35. I started, subconsciously, deciding I needed to travel. I needed to really look at sunsets and moons and fall leaves and prairie flowers.
I started taking more photos. Photos of things most people miss. Frost on bushes, broken chairs in my garden, musical instruments, etc. Taking photos at different angles, photos in black and white. Less photos of people and more of simple, yet exquisite things.
I started to taste just about anything you put in front of me: What was a real treat was my cruise and eating even the caviar and escargot. One meal I had prime rib and ordered the lobster dinner and ate two entrees. My palate increased in its curiosity.
My places of travel were not that exotic, but they were fun places: Las Vegas, New Orleans, Mexico. I would cry at all of these places. I cried at the Belligo Fountains at night. I cried at the view of the ocean in Mexico. I guess I didn't cry in New Orleans, though!
I enjoyed smoking at times in my life, and to smoke a cigar (yes, I am a woman, but I enjoyed in my day, cigars), walking down the streets of New Orleans and Las Vegas. Walking and smoking and looking around. Being on vacation was exhausting during these years of 2005-2011. But, for some reason, I had this internal urge to go fast, do it all, see it all, don't sleep much while you are there...kind of feeling.
I think it truly had to do with coming into my years, and being in my 30's with really not a good genetic chance of living a long life.
I think the Lord was also preparing me for my next step of His journey for me. I think He needed me to see my mom die what appeared a cruel death of lung cancer. It was long and awful and I have never seen death like that. I work in the medical field. I have worked in hospitals. I have dealt with death in my work as a ward secretary and heart monitor tech. We had plenty of deaths in my 4 years in the hospital setting.
My mom seemed to be at peace during the last week of what appeared to be a nightmare. She had plenty of morphine, but I cannot type for you, out of respect for my mother, what happened during that cruel week.
I kept that buried deep until last summer. I decided to seek out a Hospice nurse and tell her my personal horror story of what I saw happen that November 2004. I cried such tears talking to her. It hurt to cry that hard. I wanted to tell her my story, so she could be prepared for the next patient and their family that had a dying experience similar to ours. The Hospice nurse remembered our situation. She did reveal that it was one of the most difficult type of cases they have. She said that is really as hard as it gets, what happened in our situation.
I tell you this, because there is a victory story coming out of these ashes.
The Lord shows us beautiful things on this journey called earth, and He shows us some horror as well. We cannot comprehend it all.
I decided after the dust settled a little to go out there and see what was in this world. Searching for meaning, for resolution, for happiness, for answers, for anything.
But, I also found trouble.
I am sure that many of you in your 40's and up know exactly what I am talking about, this search for the meaning of life thing. I do see others doing this type of thing, and doing it for years. I hope they come to the end of it, as I did.
You see, I was going to a church once in a while and it wasn't clicking. It didn't make sense. Why am I grieving my failed marriage so hard? Why am I confused about my parents disappearing again? (A lot of the time, it just felt like they were in South Carolina and that they were just "gone"). Why is there so much pain for me? Why are my prayers not being answered? Why do I feel guilt for things that I truly know are not my fault? When do you feel full?
Well, God knew I was searching for Him. He knew I was not complete without Him. He knew me, and He knew that I would eventually search Him out in better ways. He knew that the means I was using: travel, drinking, smoking, relationships outside of marriage (I was divorced): That I would start coming to find Him in churches, in books, in seeking Godly people out.
It is such a relief to tell you that my Papa came into focus a little more clearly, when I heard a message at a church for the first time that included love, Jesus, stepping over the faith line. That it was ok that you were mad at your church you grew up in. That religious people are usually the destroyers of faith journeys.
That was over two years ago. And then I started reading. I read The Shack the summer of 2010. The times were changing for me. I was seeing light. I was seeing the darkness fall behind me, instead of in front of me. And the explosion happened on April 14, 2011. It has been a wild ride since then. Please join my ride. Please seek your answers to life in a church full of the Holy Spirit. You will know. You will see people crying, praying, opening expressing their joy and pain. It isn't scary. It is real. Check out four or five churches if you can.
Please seek your answers to life in the Bible. Ask the Holy Spirit to guide you as you read it.
Don't keep searching in the Friday nights, the empty relationships that leave you robbed, the cigarettes and cigars that helped kill your mother. And worse yet, the booze that is a big lie in your family, like mine. No one wants to talk about the problems it has caused everyone, and everyone keeps drinking.
Get clean and sober and get on with it. The alarms are sounding in your head and heart and you know it. I can't believe I denied myself time that I could feel like I feel now.
I do not know why God called on me and why He did in the fashion He did. My life is turned upside down, but I love it. He rang my bell so hard, I actually am relieved, because there is not doubt, that He is real, He is guiding me, and He has made me born again. There absolutely is no doubt of that. I read the Apostle Paul's writings and I bear such image to his fast and hard journey, I so relate to him.
Let me tell you the Eden in all of this: Yes, I am turned inside out so much that even my sheet music collection looks like an alien put it on the shelves of my home. My 12 year old son picked up my "Bat Out Of Hell" piano music, which has on the front cover a demon riding a motorcycle in a grave yard, and on the back, Meatloaf touching a female on her buttocks while Jim Steinman is hugging her, and just looked at me curious. He said, "Hmmf". Well, this is the same son that asked yesterday, "Hey, mom, are you excited to get baptized this month?"
Well, I am not a complete fuddy duddy, but I do know that I even notice my tastes in what I play on the piano have changed. The Lord is calling me, apparently, to play for Him now. So, I have four books that are Christian contemporary artists, and everything else seems to lost it's appeal. What is glorious, is the lamenting, melancholy, "He doesn't love me, I need to chase him" type songs just make me want to vomit. Evanescence was one of my favorite pianists and artists, but her music just screams "I am not whole without an unhealthy man!!"
My Man now, is Christ. Christ is the center of my life. No person, no object, no trip to paradise is going to fill that gap that the Lord God Almighty finally filled in me. Please join me. Search in those good places. And here's to me living to 90, God willing!
1 John 2:15-17 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world--the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does--comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.
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