A Life After Death

Well. Merry Christmas! So far we've just given up on traditions. No Christmas cookies. No waiting at the top of the stairs till all the kids are ready and my dad videotaping our reactions. No homemade cinnamon buns. It's just one of those years since we're all busy and working and getting old. But there's some traditions I'm truly thankful are over. I'm thankful that this year I didnt wake up and change my grandmom's wet diaper. I'm thankful that my dad didn't have to carry her down the stairs to watch the kids open presents. I'm thankful I didn't have to puree her Christmas dinner. No more sorrow. No more pain. And I'm thankful that I'm truly not emotional about her not being here this year. The Lord is gracious and good to me. I can't miss her being here because the trauma of watching an old Christmas video and hearing her complain about how she needed to be moved cause she was sitting on something, when really it was just her out of joint hip bone bothering her. I hate it. I hate that she was in pain. I hate that she was uncomfortable. So I'd never wish for that again. I'm glad it's over. I'm thankful for the time with her. I'm so so thankful for good Christmas memories because Jesus gave us so many. But I'm more thankful that she's in eternal glory celebrating Jesus' birth with Him.I'm so thankful Jesus took on flesh so that I have that hope of seeing her again, in a resurrected body. He came and suffered so that He could be that great High Priest who sympathized with all her weakness. He died so that she's have life. Praise the Lord for that thrill of hope that causes a weary world to rejoice! This is my grandmom's tree from last year. I bought it for her and put it in her room and decorated it for her. I hung all the Christmas cards in her room and hung lights around her mirror. And a couple weeks later we all sat in that room and watched her pass into eternity. I'm so glad. We planted it and a couple weeks ago my friends/coworkers and I dug it up and put it in a pot and decorated it. It's crooked and brown and saggy. And I love it.

Fall remind me of my grandmom. Chicken noodle soup. Blankets. Snuggling. Cozy Fires. Apples. Apple pies. Apple kuchen. Lazy fall days where the house is quiet. Her memory is in all of it. When I think about staying home and taking care of her, I always just picture these quiet fall days where the morning starts out dark and I never wanted to get out of bed, but my mid afternoon the sun would be streaming through the window as I'd wheel her out to sit at the kitchen table and watch the squirrels knock all of bird seed out of the bird feeder she was insistent we kept filled. One year we baked shortbread cookies and cut them out with the fall shaped cookie cutters I bought in the dollar section at Target. But she fell asleep the entire time because her sodium or blood or some necessary level was low in her frail little body. The last couple falls I'd have to thicken her hot chocolate and cider because she could no longer handle thin liquids. As much as I wish beyond wish she was here this fall and that I was typing this curled up next to her in her bed and was taking fun webcam photos of the two of us, I'm so thankful she's not here. I'm thankful that she's in heaven where she'll never be cold or hungry or lonely or sad or in pain again. Where there's no thick-it or leg braces or wheelchairs. Where there's no depends or medicine or dementia. Thank you Jesus. Thank you for hope, a blessed hope. Thank you that she's in glory. this video is one of my favorites. my life was great.

I'm so sad I never write on this blog anymore. I don't have a laptop right now so I really can't unless I try to do it on my phone but that's just too hard. Anyway, I still exist. God still exists. He's great and doing great things in my life and the people I know. I'm excited. Pray for revival. Rest in Jesus. bye.

I feel crazy. I need an outlet. Right now. I don't know how to love. How to be loved. How to care. How to lay down my life, my desires, my comfort- for anyone. How to want to do that. Oh Lord, I know to pray this prayer is dangerous in a sense. But I know that there is no safer place than to be near your heart- and You love, you love better than anyone and you command love- command it- and so I do pray. Teach me to love. I know it's worth it. And to be loved is worth it. Oh to be loved- to let myself be loved- even by You. By You most of all. enlarge my heart in the only way You can. To love is to allow hurt and pain, to allow suffering, death- it's like a seed must die to bear fruit- and I want the fruit of Your Holy Spirit in my life and that fruit is love. And if I don't love I am nothing. I'm so selfish. Oh cause me to die. To love. To open up my heart. To stop holding onto my life before I lose it.

I wrote this prayer on Sunday May 13th. It literally was my heart exploding into my journal to the Lord as I sat in church that Sunday morning. I can barely remember why or if there was a situation that actually stirred this prayer into being or if it was just an accumulation of my entire life and I just couldn't hold it in anymore. I found this today. The Lord has answered this prayer a million times over. He's opening up my heart in a way that only He can. I've put up a million walls and guarded myself and only let people in a little bit, but He's literally just breaking it all down that He can work in my life. I'm finally sharing my life with people. I don't even understand it all. But He's working and moving and I'm scared half to death but then perfect love casts out all fear and He loves me perfectly. And to be honest, it almost doesn't matter if people hurt me or let me down or whatever because the Lord has called me to die. To die to this life. To die to myself. Cause I don't want to remain alone. And I want Him to be glorified.

“Cry aloud; do not hold back;
lift up your voice like a trumpet;
declare to my people their transgression,
to the house of Jacob their sins.
2 Yet they seek me daily
and delight to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that did righteousness
and did not forsake the judgment of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgments;
they delight to draw near to God.
3 ‘Why have we fasted, and you see it not?
Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?’
Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure,[a]
and oppress all your workers.
4 Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to hit with a wicked fist.
Fasting like yours this day
will not make your voice to be heard on high.
5 Is such the fast that I choose,
a day for a person to humble himself?
Is it to bow down his head like a reed,
and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him?
Will you call this a fast,
and a day acceptable to the Lord?
6 “Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed[b] go free,
and to break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover him,
and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
8 Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up speedily;
your righteousness shall go before you;
the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
9 Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’
If you take away the yoke from your midst,
the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,
10 if you pour yourself out for the hungry
and satisfy the desire of the afflicted,
then shall your light rise in the darkness
and your gloom be as the noonday.
11 And the Lord will guide you continually
and satisfy your desire in scorched places
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters do not fail.
12 And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to dwell in.
13 “If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath,
from doing your pleasure[c] on my holy day,
and call the Sabbath a delight
and the holy day of the Lord honorable;
if you honor it, not going your own ways,
or seeking your own pleasure,[d] or talking idly;[e]
14 then you shall take delight in the Lord,
and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth;[f]
I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

There's a million things the Lord is showing me and revealing and speaking to my heart. One of them is that I don't need to be "ready" to step into whatever He has for me. I just need to follow Him and obey Him and trust Him to supply every need whenever the need is there. I love Him. I need Him so much.


"Our Lord makes a disciple His own possession, He becomes responsible for Him. 'Ye shall be my witnesses unto Me.' The Spirit that comes in is not doing anything for Jesus, but of being a perfect delight to Him. The secret of the missionary is- I am His and He is carrying out His enterprises through me.
Be entirely His."
- Oswald Chambers