Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
it's not all in vain...
i got permission from a friend to post this poem - written by a grandfather who's beautiful three-year-old granddaughter drowned a year ago (sumijoti.wordpress.com). it touched my heart. i KNOW it will touch yours. please keep this precious family in your prayers.
A year has passed, a year of pain
Is it all in vain?
Jenna’s limp and lifeless body on my lap
I kissed her forehead and gave her back.
Jesus, why allow this to be?
Tonight he revealed this to me:
“The pain you feel is what you share of
My life I gave for you and her.”
Lord, let it be.
I am content in Thee.
Leon 23 March 2009. 00h25
Monday, March 23, 2009
not one minute to spare.....
and then....the horrible plane crash in montana. a man and woman lost 2 of their 3 daughters, 2 son-in-laws and 5 grandchildren. i can't imagine.natasha richardson.....a freak ski accident. natasha richardson's sons and husband never imagined that she would snap on her skis to play on the slopes, admitting that she hated skiing but did it to be with family, and by the end of the day her voice would be silenced.
in a minute things that are so right can go so wrong. we should not take one minute for granted.
our grown son says he is having a hard time remembering his grandfather's voice. our son was 6 when his grandfather died. he didn't have a lot of years to mentally record that soft, gentle voice. it saddens me when family or friends are estranged. for if you don't spend the time that you have HEARING the voices of your family members, you will quickly forget what they sound like when they are gone.
maybe that is what our relationship should look like with God. if we don't spend time with Him - as much time as we can - we will begin to forget what He 'sounds' like and there will come a time when we will no longer "hear' His voice. and we will have a hard time remembering His voice.
fleeting....
does a mother's heart ever stop hurting for her children? it seems not. i am thinking so much of alyssa these days. it seems that so many of her friends who have experienced the loss of a baby are pregnant and happily, if not a little fearfully, looking forward to welcoming a new addition to their families. they have had showers and decorated nurseries and ordered birth announcements - grateful that these pregnancies have gone forth without a hitch - without a negative test result or the devastating, unsuspecting words from their doctors that something is terribly wrong. they have held their breath and then gradually allowed themselves to hope and believe and embrace that which was so fleeting a year or two years or perhaps several months ago.
for alyssa it will be so different. there will be no ultrasound or doctor's appointment after which she will breathe a sigh of relief. for all of her doctor's visits were normal. every examination, every 3-D picture indicated a healthy, beautiful baby who was growing and thriving right on schedule, nestled safely within her womb. even up until the last night when alyssa handed out invitations to her baby shower at her bible study, sydney was active and kicking - a healthy 8 month fetus. the doctors examination and ultrasound of only 48 hours earlier detected no problems - only a beautiful baby who looked just like her big brother.
so, if she is fortunate enough to become pregnant again, she will be as guarded and as anxious as all of her friends have been. but i think it will be hard for her to consider names or wall hangings or baby clothes - or perhaps even showers given by well-meaning friends. because even when things seem to be going absolutely right, things can go so very wrong so very quickly.
i don't know how she will do it. but if God gives her the chance, i know she will try. because her hope is not based on what she so desperately desires but on what He desires for her.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Sunday, March 8, 2009
i am this amputee.....
Letting go of adult children is hard yet necessary part of life
by CLARE MARIE CELANO
While struggling to craft a phrase that would accurately depict my relationship with my grown children, WI found what was searching for in lines delivered via my TV screen. Messages often come from the most unlikely venues. The lines were spoken by Sarah Jessica Parker in her role as "Carrie" on "Sex in the City." Carrie is trying to describe how she feels about her friend Samantha, who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, to her lover "Aleksandr" (aka Mikhail Baryshnikov), but Aleksandr is not getting it. Finally, she looks directly at him and with raw emotion, says, "She's my insides. That's how important she is to me." Her response is untamed, visceral and absolute.
"That's it," I thought. "My kids are my insides." My heart melted and I recalled how it felt when they literally were my insides, growing within me, their presence, no less significant than every other cell in my body. Like a soothing balm, I remembered the comfort of knowing their little bodies were safely and cozily tucked inside me - all the time. Many years have passed since I've felt that "literal" comfort, and still my kids remain my "insides."
It's hard for my children to grasp this concept - that they are still an integral part of my being. In their heads, they are fully grown and no longer require tending to. And logically this is essentially true. They don't need watching. But parenting is never logical. It is an emotionally driven experience that does not often respond well to pragmatism. So, if my kids are my insides, then it stands to reason that they are entwined within the cells of my mind, the emotions of my heart, and the longing of my soul - even if they have left their first "home," so to speak. This connection, while relatively easy to nurture and foster when kids are young and a part of our 24/7, becomes more difficult as they grow. Much like a marriage, the bonding between two souls flourishes when they are in close proximity but can easily wane and falter when faced with long absences. It's at this point that we need diplomacy, moxie and finesse to keep the strands of that bond sliding alongside one another in sync.
As our kids become adults, I think we go through a kind of inner power struggle between the control we once had and the lack of it now. With that control, however, came the responsibility to meet all their physical, emotional and spiritual needs. It's tough to accept that we're no longer responsible for those needs. But how could it be otherwise? Their needs and the power of our touch linked us to one another for years. Watching our kids grow away from us is like losing an appendage. Feeling the loss of control we once had, we search for some steady ground to plant ourselves on until the chaotic dust settles and we can let go of it all. We know intellectually we're no longer responsible for the events that happen in our kids' lives. But, just like an amputee, who knows his or her appendage is no longer there but feels the pain of the limb anyhow, as parents, we can't seem to let go of the desire to want to do it all. We have a hard time letting go of our kids. When discussing this subject with a friend, he shined a light on what my heart was feeling, but my head could not seem to put into words. "You're not letting go of the child," he said, "you're letting go of the responsibility and guilt. "We make deals," he continued. "We bargain. We ask to take on any pain ourselves, rather than have our kids take it." He's right, of course.
We bargain with God, fate, or whatever forces we feel are responsible for giving our children anything less than complete happiness. And then, after years of attempts at deal-making, it dawns on us that we cannot alter the course of our children's lives, and even if we could, we can't win this hand on the table - it's not our hand. It's theirs. It belongs to the children. I think it take a few decades as an adult to be able to see this.
Eventually though, we discover the emotional acceptance of a situation we can do nothing about, and this shift keeps us sane. This acceptance relieves the phantom pain - somewhat. I still feel their emotional pain, but rather than spend hours on end trying to figure out how to take that pain away, I use my time more judiciously, praying they'll figure out the root of it and learn to ease it themselves. I still feel their fear, as much as ever, but rather than struggle with the "why" of their fears, I pray they'll eventually learn to confront whatever goes bump in their nights, just as I've had to do.
Letting go of certain facets of our lives, although difficult, is like completing a chapter in a book. Moving along life's pages is our gift. If we get stuck ruminating in one chapter, no matter how incredible it is, we break the rhythm of the rest of the story.
by CLARE MARIE CELANO
While struggling to craft a phrase that would accurately depict my relationship with my grown children, WI found what was searching for in lines delivered via my TV screen. Messages often come from the most unlikely venues. The lines were spoken by Sarah Jessica Parker in her role as "Carrie" on "Sex in the City." Carrie is trying to describe how she feels about her friend Samantha, who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, to her lover "Aleksandr" (aka Mikhail Baryshnikov), but Aleksandr is not getting it. Finally, she looks directly at him and with raw emotion, says, "She's my insides. That's how important she is to me." Her response is untamed, visceral and absolute.
"That's it," I thought. "My kids are my insides." My heart melted and I recalled how it felt when they literally were my insides, growing within me, their presence, no less significant than every other cell in my body. Like a soothing balm, I remembered the comfort of knowing their little bodies were safely and cozily tucked inside me - all the time. Many years have passed since I've felt that "literal" comfort, and still my kids remain my "insides."
It's hard for my children to grasp this concept - that they are still an integral part of my being. In their heads, they are fully grown and no longer require tending to. And logically this is essentially true. They don't need watching. But parenting is never logical. It is an emotionally driven experience that does not often respond well to pragmatism. So, if my kids are my insides, then it stands to reason that they are entwined within the cells of my mind, the emotions of my heart, and the longing of my soul - even if they have left their first "home," so to speak. This connection, while relatively easy to nurture and foster when kids are young and a part of our 24/7, becomes more difficult as they grow. Much like a marriage, the bonding between two souls flourishes when they are in close proximity but can easily wane and falter when faced with long absences. It's at this point that we need diplomacy, moxie and finesse to keep the strands of that bond sliding alongside one another in sync.
As our kids become adults, I think we go through a kind of inner power struggle between the control we once had and the lack of it now. With that control, however, came the responsibility to meet all their physical, emotional and spiritual needs. It's tough to accept that we're no longer responsible for those needs. But how could it be otherwise? Their needs and the power of our touch linked us to one another for years. Watching our kids grow away from us is like losing an appendage. Feeling the loss of control we once had, we search for some steady ground to plant ourselves on until the chaotic dust settles and we can let go of it all. We know intellectually we're no longer responsible for the events that happen in our kids' lives. But, just like an amputee, who knows his or her appendage is no longer there but feels the pain of the limb anyhow, as parents, we can't seem to let go of the desire to want to do it all. We have a hard time letting go of our kids. When discussing this subject with a friend, he shined a light on what my heart was feeling, but my head could not seem to put into words. "You're not letting go of the child," he said, "you're letting go of the responsibility and guilt. "We make deals," he continued. "We bargain. We ask to take on any pain ourselves, rather than have our kids take it." He's right, of course.
We bargain with God, fate, or whatever forces we feel are responsible for giving our children anything less than complete happiness. And then, after years of attempts at deal-making, it dawns on us that we cannot alter the course of our children's lives, and even if we could, we can't win this hand on the table - it's not our hand. It's theirs. It belongs to the children. I think it take a few decades as an adult to be able to see this.
Eventually though, we discover the emotional acceptance of a situation we can do nothing about, and this shift keeps us sane. This acceptance relieves the phantom pain - somewhat. I still feel their emotional pain, but rather than spend hours on end trying to figure out how to take that pain away, I use my time more judiciously, praying they'll figure out the root of it and learn to ease it themselves. I still feel their fear, as much as ever, but rather than struggle with the "why" of their fears, I pray they'll eventually learn to confront whatever goes bump in their nights, just as I've had to do.
Letting go of certain facets of our lives, although difficult, is like completing a chapter in a book. Moving along life's pages is our gift. If we get stuck ruminating in one chapter, no matter how incredible it is, we break the rhythm of the rest of the story.
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I am speechless. I am glowing with joy… how I cherish that quick moment and hug last night. You are breathtaking. Your beauty is only made more pure, more substantial marked by this present suffering. You are always in my mind, thoughts of you come to me almost daily. Murray and I have prayed and do still… I weep with you. We truly do not have the mind of Christ, to comprehend heaven being our home fully. Our flesh and this earth is all we know…
I wanted to share a story with you because I want you to know what kind peace there is facing death. But I can see you already have this peace… this is my survival story. On Feb 11, 2001 my sister, brother, and I went back country snowboarding, as we usually did, in the Colorado backcountry. My sister and I split off from my brother and got lost. We got lost deep in the high alpine wilderness and spent 6 hours hiking in waist deep snow, completed unprepared for what lay ahead. I was 20, she 16. It had been my idea to go the route we went. As the day went on and we saw no signs of other people in our wandering, we began to realize we were lost and that we were running out of energy to go on. I hit my physical wall more than 2 times: the point where your body will no longer listen to your brain because you are completely spent and destroyed. I had more than one psycho panic attack and so did my sister. We fell into a creek and our feet were submerged in icy water into our boots. As I watched the sun go down behind unfamiliar peaks, I knew. We would die by freezing to death or we would be rescued: there was no other option. We were lost, unprepared, we didn’t even have much water on us. We were new snowboarders…
Survival instinct kicked in and I knew we had to find shelter. We trudged out a huge SOS but we were now in treeline and hidden in a forest of alpine… who would see it? Would anyone ever see our trail in the deep snow? Would fresh snow cover our tracks? Was there any hope? This wasn’t a movie with an ending we could forward to to be comforted.
We dug a hole in the snow and crawled in and sealed it up behind us. Once we were inside, all we wanted to do was get back out. The desire for power over your circumstances is unbelievable. I cannot put into words what this experience was like mentally, emotionally, spiritually or physically. We ate our chapstick hoping it had some caloric value - we had nothing else to eat. We hadn’t even dressed and layered properly so we were putting each other feet into each other’s crotches to keep our toes warm. Shortly after being in the snow-cave, an animal walked around on the snow above us - we had no idea if it was harmless or a carnivore. For hours upon hours with no way to tell the time, we waited, prayed, sang, and talked about dying together. Who would die first? How long would the other have to wait? Who could handle looking at the other dead better? In the end, all we wanted was some way to leave behind a message for our parents that we loved them and we were sorry that our foolishness would have lead to our ultimate deaths and the loss of their only daughters. I have never gone “there” in my mind like I did that night with Him - begging for rescue. But I am telling you all of this because I was close to dying for a brief time and there was a miraculous experience that I have never since had that occurred that night.
Somewhere in the freezing cold darkness (the temps were -12 degrees F), He came to me. I couldn’t see Him but He was there. I felt his tangible nearness like a third person had entered that cave. As I sensed His presence with me, it became clear that the period of suffering as one approaches their own death is tortuous and terrible. But at a point in the suffering, He come to take us home. He literally comes! As our beloved Father, brother, lover, Savior, and best friend. HE HAS REMOVED THE STING OF DEATH! HE HAS TASTED DEATH FOR US SO THAT WE NEVER TASTE DEATH.
I knew in that moment - however long it lasted - that He would walk me through death, that it would not be the terrifying experience that I thought it would be and that He would never leave or forsake me, especially not in death. Not the thing He came to have victory over and Oh, did He have Victory! This experience was so real to me that my heart leapt for heaven and I yearned physically to leave earth and die. Everything in me was ready to go, hoping to go, wanting to go, excited to go. All else was lost in this time with Jesus, there was not even the thought of my family… He was all to me and I wanted to be with him. It was as if home was a short walk with Him away…. I know now, it was the closest I have ever been to death or heaven. As I am going through all of this, I turn to my sister and share it all, I tell her that I will be going now and that it’s going to be ok. I’m ready and I can’t wait and I want to….. but we were having very difference experiences with our faith that night and she was not having quite the Jesus moment I was having and she was freaking out fearfully terrified at what I was saying. I guess it seemed like I was hallucinating or out of my mind.
We tried not to fall asleep that night because you always hear stories about people falling asleep in the snow and how they don’t ever wake up. We thought we heard snowmobile engines all night (it was a “gift” during the waiting because we found out the next morning all the search and rescue was on foot b/c there was no way to bring snowmobiles into such deep snow). I remember “coming to” sometime as the first light came. We were still there, alive. My sister’s face was purple, especially around her eyes and mouth - literally purple. And then I heard it, what sounded like a helicopter, far off in the distance, the sound of it’s blades echoing off of the nearby peaks and valleys. And I began to feel this hope that just maybe they would see us somehow. As I mustered up all my strength to reef on the “door” that we had made out of branches and our backpacks with snow, I realized it was all frozen over due to our breathing and the thawing and re-freezing of the snowcave. I was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to get out and the more and more I Began to work on heaving and hoe-ing on the door. I will never forget this: the moment I that I got that door open and stood up, waist deep out of our hole in the snow, the helicopter flew overhead, very low, and close enough for me to see the pilot’s face. I lost it. I was in total worship. I was screaming and laughing and dancing and weeping all at once. Around 9am on Feb 12th we had been found by S&R as they had made a loop to head back to Vail to get more gas - not because they thought we were there.
And those are just a few of the miracles involved in that story. Not to mention that 6 months prior to this event, my sister and I had gotten on a wicked work out plan for no apparent reason. We just started “training” together 6 days a week. 3 days in the gym, 3 days running. I now know that had we not been in the physical shape we were in when this happened, we would not have survived. When we were found by S&R, we were told we had a couple more hours to live before we would have succombed to hypothermia and the ensuing frostbite.
Rachel, beloved, if you are going home, I am so joyous knowing that you will taste this miracle of Jesus’s closeness in those final moments. You will begin to taste heaven and you will pull towards it. You will not feel alone as you die, you will not feel terror. You will see Him and He will lead you home Himself, personally. It will be the most real and unreal thing you have ever known, the last experience on earth, and the first in eternity.
All that is in me wants a miracle. Seeing you last night, all I want is to keep you here with us. I barely know you! I know it isn’t about you and that much isn’t meant to be made of you, but what I rejoice in is seeing your faith in Jesus glorify Him. I can never thank you enough for how you have changed me forever or the impact you’ve had on so many more people than you can possibly know. Eternal things you will bring to Him, treasures that are pleasing in His sight. He is great enough, Almighty enough to care for what you leave behind and you don’t leave them. We do not have the mind of Christ, we have not been to heaven, or we would know what it means for us and all those we love.
So thank you for your life and faith. Thank you for sharing. You are one outstanding woman - and you are loved more than you can know.
your friend and sister in Him, who really really looks forward to seeing you again!
jen