I Wonder if They Have Disco Dancing in Heaven

April 8, 2015April 8, 201516 Comments

I have this friend who is dying. A year ago she went to the doctor for her yearly physical and found out that she was healthy. A month later she had pneumonia and after a few tests she found out she had stage 4 lung cancer. From the moment she found out she was sick she took the diagnosis on full force and she refused to let the doctor tell her when she would die. She decided that she would fight the cancer with all she has and fight she HAS, she has been fighting with everything she’s got for almost a year now.

She has spent most of this past year in and out of the hospital and most of the time she has been very very sick. I have seen her take her chemo therapy bravely never once complaining and she always seems to me to be determined to not to let the cancer control her. I admire her so much because she is not just trying to live another day, but she also seems determined to live each day as a good day. No matter what setback she has she posts inspirational messages publicly praising God and thanking Him for each day, she seems to be always taking notice of the good things and always collecting each and every one of her blessings, determined not to miss a single one of them.

Lisa has been my friend since I was a young girl. She was my best friend during the disco era. We were teenagers then and we knew the words to every song on the radio and spent a lot of time singing and dancing together. We knew all the moves to every dance and we must have watched Saturday Night Fever a hundred times to get all the dance moves down pat.

We lost touch for a lot of years after we both got married, but about 6 years ago we met back up again on Facebook. Even though we both had changed and had lived totally different lives we still jumped right back into our friendship and to me it feels as if nothing has changed in our friendship when we get together. We are still comfortable together, can’t stop talking and still have this sisterly bond that will always tie us together, I love her so much.. Now days as adults we have always joked about how we will be old ladies one day and still be dancing. We occasionally post goofy dance videos on each other’s Facebook time lines.

Today as I sat with Lisa I realized that she is so sick that most likely she won’t be dancing on this earth anymore. It’s so hard for me to think about that and it makes me feel so sad as I write it here, it just seems so unfair that she has to leave so soon. I am not ready for her to leave and just can’t imagine life without her in it, we were supposed to be dancing old ladies one day. She has kids and grand kids and a husband and I feel like she is supposed to be here with them longer too…at least that’s what my brain says, but what I see with my eyes tells me differently.

I am not sure why some people get more time than others or what the reason is for all of this but it’s so hard to see her body fail her, and to have watched her health deteriorate so quickly over this past year. In only one years time her body has given out and it just seems somehow so unfair.

It is hard for her to talk because she gasps to breathe as she speaks, at one point today she whispered, “I don’t get all of this” then she just shrugged her shoulders as a look of sadness and defeat crossed her face and she turned her eyes upward as if asking God for an answer. I was at a loss of words, I because I don’t know the answer either and I agree… I also ‘don’t get all of this’ only God knows the reason for all of this. The one thing that I do know is that one day my friend will dance again and I have a feeling it’s going to be real soon that she will be dancing in Heaven. Her body may be wasting away here on earth but her new body is waiting for her in heaven. I know her new body will be strong and full of life and ready for a lot of dancing. I have a feeling when she meets Jesus she will forget all about how sick she is right now, and she will forget about having to leave anyone behind. I also have a feeling that once she meets him she will most likely ‘get all of this.’

I leave for Haiti in 2 days, it was hard to say goodbye to Lisa today, I felt as if it was probably the last time we may see each other until Heaven. I worry she may go to Heaven while I am gone and I won’t know until I get home. As I left her today she told me to come see her as soon as I get home and I promised her that I will. The selfish side of me wants her to still be here when I get back home but I also want her to be well and pain free.. I also I know that if she leaves before I return that today was not the last time I will see my friend, I know that one day I will see her again in Heaven and who knows maybe we will do a few of our old dance moves as we celebrate. I wonder if they have disco dancing in Heaven…. I sure hope so.

Me and Lisa 8th grade…Don’t you dare laugh at our goofy outfits 🙂

Sorrow’s Tears

March 7, 2015March 7, 201517 Comments

Sorrow’s tears cascade down

a sorrowful rain

Each tear drop a stain

cut deeply by a river of pain

Sorrow’s tears full of circumstances unknown

Shed for the broken,

The hurting and alone.

Sorrow’s tears flow freely

but don’t come without cost

A price that was paid

by innocence lost

A young life seeming to spin out of control

Aching my heart and taking its toil

If only for today

Sorrow’s tears will be wiped away

Tears dried by my father in heaven above

Father God, I want to get lost in your love.

Today was not a very good day. A child who is very dear to me is in the middle of a bunch of grown ups in her life who are behaving like children. Her heart is broken, her mother’s heart is broken and its not a very good situation.I went to bed just heartbroken for her and all who are involved. As I lay in bed watching the time slip by and sleep not even on the radar tonight, I decided to read my email. While in my email I found that I had notification of a blog I follow by my blogging friend James over at Men of One Accord. He had been challenged on a blog that he reads to write a poem about love which he did it is very lovely but James’ poetry is always lovely. In James’ post he also challenged his readers to write a poem of their own. The poem you just read was my poem. He had 2 writing prompts that God placed on his heart the line I chose from them was “God, I want to get lost in your love.”

When I saw the writing prompt I realized that getting lost in God’s love was exactly what I needed to do tonight, I needed to be lost in God’s love to realize that God does have the situation in his hands and I needed to give it up to him. I also know that the child has Jesus in her life and he loves her and she has him with her as she goes through this mess. Though God has reassured me he has this little girl’s situation in his hands I still feel heartsick about the whole situation, because it just really hurts to see people that I love hurt. Before I go tonight I would like to ask you all my readers if you will say a prayer for a little girl and her momma. Also before I go tonight I would like to challenge you to write your own poem and link it back here in the comments. I don’t have a line but was thinking anything to do with God’s love, trusting in the fact that you belong to him or that he has your life in his hands will do. Thank you dear readers for coming back here each day and reading,

God bless you and Good night,

Terri

At a Loss for Words

December 14, 2014December 16, 201413 Comments

Today I went to visit my dear friend. Her husband met me at the door, his eyes filling with tears. Though he tried to keep them in some managed to flow down his face anyway. He told me he thought his wife was not going to make it to Christmas. I had no words. He said she was just lying in bed all the time now and that she could not walk, would not eat, and that she could barely speak. I could tell he was also trying to prepare me for what I was about to see. No amount of preparation could have ever gotten me ready for what I saw today. My once tough and strong friend now looked so small and weak lying in her bed gasping for breath as she slept.

He woke her and told her I was there, she opened her eyes and looked at me her eyes lighting up for a brief second before she closed them again and went back to sleep. Her husband went to the store for a few groceries and I stayed with her. I am not sure why but for some reason I climbed in her bed and sat in it with her just watching her as she slept. She drifted in and out of consciousness and memories of the two young girls we used to be flowed through my head. Happy memories of us singing, sleepovers, Friday night skating rinks and dancing to Saturday Night Fever songs. As grown women we now always joke about when we are old ladies someday we will be still dancing to Staying Alive. As I watched her take each labored breath I wondered after each one if she would take another, or if maybe that breath was going to be her last. I find it ironic how Staying Alive takes on a whole new meaning today.

After a while she woke up and wanted to sit up, she was so weak she could not raise herself to sit up on her own. I could tell it was really hard for my independent willed friend to allow me to help her sit up. Once she was sitting I looked into her tired beautiful brown eyes and saw the eyes of my friend which were so full of determination and light a few short weeks ago had now grown dim. She looked at me and started speaking each word was an effort for her to speak. She said she had fought for 6 months and that she knew she was not going to make it and then she said that she was not ready to die yet. Her words ripped my heart out, I already knew she was going to die but was not prepared for her to say it to me. When I was faced with her voicing it out loud I was frozen, and had no words of comfort for her. I grasped for something anything but nothing came. I was silent because I didn’t know what to say. All I could do was reach out to her as I tried to hold back the tears that wanted so bad to just let burst forth. I just felt so unprepared for this moment and any words that came to my mouth just seemed so lame. This sort of thing does not come with instructions and I just wanted to be able to fix this, “I need the instructions” went through my mind. I kept silent while prayers were screaming in my head, prayers to God asking for the words but they just never came. All I could manage was just to sit there and hold her and pray with her. She knows Jesus and I know she will be in heaven with him soon and she knows she will be in heaven, yet she isn’t ready to go yet. She wants to stay on earth and see her grandkids grow up. She wants to be here for her kids and her husband. She doesn’t want to leave them yet. She has the most beautiful and perfect new home waiting for her to come move into yet she wants to stay in this home to take care of her family and live the life that she has here. What could I say to that? I am not sure anyone knows what to say to that. I sat with my friend feeling so broken hearted for her until she drifted back off to sleep. I watched her sleep a while longer and then I got up to go. Before I left I kissed her on the cheek and told her goodbye for now. As said goodbye she woke up for just a second and said, “I love you too,” and then she went right back to sleep. As I write this I wonder if that was our last conversation on earth and if next time I see her it will be in heaven. I still keep praying for that miracle that she lives, but could it be that the miracle is that we not live here on earth but that the miracle is that we live forever in heaven?

I pray that when God decides its time for her to come home that she will be at peace and joyfully step into her new life knowing that those she leaves behind will be okay.

I wish I would have had some great words of comfort for my friend today, but no matter how I look at it death from our earthly bodies still just somehow seems sad and there will be a hole in my life when she is gone. I will miss her tremendously when she goes but I really have a feeling she will not miss me. I think she will be pain free and so happy in heaven that she won’t even think about missing her life here and I am thankful for that.

What God Taught Me Today About NOT Hushin’ My Mouth

October 4, 2014October 5, 20146 Comments

So its day 3 of the 31day blog challenge and I am sitting here at the keyboard wondering if I will be able to pull off another day of writing. I have no idea what to write about today…. Hmmmm…. I got nothin’

I guess I could tell you about how I almost had a car accident today….

This is what happened – Today it is a beautiful fall day, the weather is just a tiny bit chilly, the sky is a dark blue and the leaves are starting to turn colors with just a few of them falling and blowing around on the road. I had my sunroof open and my radio turned up loudly and singing along to Sidewalk Prophet’s new song “Save My Life.” Now that I think about it I find it a bit ironic that I almost get in a terrible car wreck at the same time as song called Save my Life is playing on the radio.

I was driving and singing…..

Tell me what I need to hear

Tell me that I’m not forgotten

Show me there’s a God who can be more than all I ever wanted….. (those were words from the song)

All the sudden I see a flash of green coming fast to my right and realize a Green SUV is barreling down the road that is meeting up with the one I’m on looking as if he is going to pull out on the highway in front of me without stopping. I am going about 50 miles per hour… I have no time to stop…. “Is he gonna stop?!?” flashes through my mind as at the same time my mind has already answered back, “NO HE IS NOT!”

There is no avoiding the accident. I have no time to stop and he is already part way in the road right in front of me. I swerve into the empty oncoming lane and as I do it another thought flashes through my mind, “I am on a curve in the wrong lane is anyone coming toward me on the other side of that curve?” By now my car goes off the pavement on the left side of the road because he is still coming out, seriously am I driving and invisible car today?? I am partially in the grass and then on the road back and forth and somehow I manage to get back fully on the road and somehow back into my own lane. During all this I am seeing the other vehicle still coming on the side of my car knowing that at any second there will be the impact of him hitting me…

The Impact never came…

I am past him now looking in my rear-view mirror just in time to see him drive away as fast as he can.

Then it hits me… anger,

“WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU DOING YOU IDIOT?!” came roaring out of my mouth. And then at that same instant my body went into that Jellowy like feeling as the adrenaline rush I had been in for the last 20 seconds left my body. I was then shocked and like all…”What??”… “There is no way on this earth that I could have avoided an accident! What just happened here?” By now I had to pull over to the side of the road because I was so jellowy that I couldn’t drive.

I sat there on the side of the road for a few minutes just thinking about what had just happened. One second I am singing and in the snap of a finger I almost crash and it is all over with in less than 20 seconds. Wow things sure can change in such a short time! There could have been a very serious accident. Both myself, the driver of the other car, and possibly anyone else who could have been coming around one of those corners at that time could have been seriously injured or possibly killed. I still can not fathom any way it was at all possible for that accident to not happen but yet it didn’t happen. I sat there on the side of the road a few minutes longer thanking God and realizing just how quickly people’s lives can change and also how quickly we can die.

I have a very good friend right now who has stage 4 lung cancer her doctor told her that there is no cure for her illness. There are treatments to shrink the cancer and to help to prolong her life. No matter what the doctors tell her she keeps living her life as if she will live a normal amount of time. She believes she will live a long time and better yet God will cure her and I believe that too. As I write this today I wonder, what is a normal amount of time to live?? None of us are guaranteed anything. She has a cancer that some may say is a death sentence, yet I could have died today in less than 20 seconds and I am not even sick. We are all dying and we have been since the day we were born.

And that prompts me to I ask you question….if you were to die today where would you go? I will ask myself the same question though I already know the answer. If I died today I fully believe I would go to Heaven.

My next thought is, of all the people I know who do not believe in Jesus, or who do believe yet haven’t given their lives to him….What if they died today, where would they go?? ya you know the answer as do I.

I had to stop writing for a while after I wrote that because that thought hit me like a ton of bricks and makes me really sad.

Sobering thoughts today here on the blog.

If this is true why do I not tell more people about Jesus? The truth is its uncomfortable sometimes. I always think that people do not want me to tell them this stuff or that they may be offended and become angry. Who knows maybe you are reading this right now and offended. I may even get flack for this post in the comments or a few emails that is IF I am brave enough to publish this.

Why do I feel this way? Well I used to not believe and I did not want some Christian telling me what I did not care to hear. I felt like I was being judged when someone told me about Jesus. I was never against anyone who was a Christian I just thought to each his own and let them believe what they believed and I wanted to be left alone to believe what I believed. My in-laws were Christians and I would even pray with them when they prayed at dinner to not make waves, I never really told them I did not believe though they did all know I did not go to church. I even went to church a few times as a kid and also an adult. I thought I believed for a short amount of time but never really understood the whole God/Jesus thing (read here for that story). I look back now that I do understand and I know its that I just never knew about the relationship with Jesus part. Nobody ever told me about that part, I wonder why? Maybe because they thought I did not care to hear it…Yes I know I just made a full circle but that brings me right back to this…because I did not care to hear it I think it most likely made them uncomfortable and they did not want to offend me. I could be wrong and its past now, this is just some of my ponderings that go on in my head that just happen to be coming out on the keyboard today.

AAAANYWAYYY… back to the not having a wreck story…. Today I was driving down the road singing and in the snap of a finger I could have died. What if I would have died and nobody had ever told me that all I had to do was ask Jesus to lead my life and accept him as my savior that I would be saved? What would have happened to me if I were not saved? I would have went to Hell.

Harsh I know but I have to say it because whether or not we choose to have Jesus as our savior IS a matter of life and death.

Which leads me to one last question. If having Jesus in a person’s life is a matter of life and death then why would I not be opening my mouth to tell someone about him? It is much better to be uncomfortable and take a chance on making people angry than the consequences of not doing it.

I think today God wants me to not hush my mouth sometimes. I think maybe sometimes I tend to hush it to much in the wrong areas. I think he wants me to open it up and tell people about Jesus no matter how uncomfortable it makes me feel and not worry about if it will make the other person uncomfortable or offend them. I need tell them, it’s my job while I am on this earth. Plus since Jesus has been in my life I am alive more than I ever was before. He is the best thing that ever happened to me. Why in the world would I not want to share that??!

Well that’s all I have for today. I thought I had nothing to write but seems like once again I have a whole page full.

I am sorry if this post seems so harsh but that is what God showed me today to share on day 3 of 31 Days of Hushin’ My Mouth. I decided to leave this post just as I wrote it, so that means no looking back to proofread because I don’t dare want to chance rethinking what I wrote, woohoo I am feeling brave today 😉 Come back tomorrow for day 4, your guess is as good as mine as to what the subject will be 😀

Thank you for reading today,

Blessings,

P.S. If you do not know Jesus, you may leave a comment and I will try my best to help you get the answers you need. There is also a link right –> here that has a lot of info about him too.

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Romans 10:9

To read the rest of the posts in this series you can click here – 31 Days of Hushin’ My Mouth

#write31days

A Few Thoughts about Forgiveness

August 12, 2014August 14, 201418 Comments

The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant – Matthew 18:21-35

²¹Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”

²²Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

²³“Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. ²⁴As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. ²⁵Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

²⁶“At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ ²⁷The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

²⁸“But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.

²⁹“His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’

³⁰“But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. ³¹When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.

³²“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. ³³Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ ³⁴In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

³⁵“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

When I first read the parable above the last two verses confused me. At first glance I took it to say – ‘if we do not forgive someone we will be put in jail and tortured.’ Is that how you read it? After all it does say in verse 34 “in anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured until he paid back what he owed.” It then goes on to say in verse 35, “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

When I asked to be forgiven of my sins and accepted Jesus Christ as my savior I know I did not become a perfect person. I still continue to make mistakes and yet he always forgives me. There also have been times in my life that I was so hurt by someone that I had a really hard time forgiving them and it took me a long while to do it. Thankfully eventually I did forgive them but what if I hadn’t?

If we don’t forgive someone is God going to throw us in jail and let us be tortured until we do? Or if we ask God to forgive us for not forgiving them are we then forgiven and given a get out of jail free card?

I would like to say that forgiving is an easy thing to do, but when we feel like someone has taken something from us, or they have done something that hurts us, we want them to know it and we want them to pay for it. I often see in the news about horrendous acts of violence in which someone has been murdered and then later I will hear that the family has forgiven them, I know that has to be a really hard thing to do. Something that terrible has never happened to me so I have no idea how that feels at all but I do know that to forgive is what Jesus has said we have to do here. We have to forgive the debt, no matter how big and no matter what it is.

After thinking about this scripture for a while I got to thinking about how I have felt in the past when I have been angry at someone and did not forgive them right away. What I realized is that when I don’t forgive someone anger and resentment starts building up inside of me and gradually my vision becomes clouded to the point that I can’t see God as well. With all that anger clogging my mind it separates me from him in a way that makes it really hard to be at peace.

If we don’t forgive someone as time goes by we may think those feelings of anger and resentment went away but when we see the person again or think about them it comes boiling back up. Not forgiving someone boils underneath the surface, it never ever fully goes away it just sits there festering until it takes away our joy and it takes away our peace.

In a way isn’t that like we are locked up in a prison of our own making?

So could this parable mean that when we don’t forgive we are allowing ourselves be in our own prison right here right now until we choose to forgive?

This scripture doesn’t say we won’t get into Heaven or that God will be mean to us if we don’t forgive…what it says is ‘He turned him over to the jailers to be tortured’… So maybe #34 & 35 mean to us that by not forgiving we are allowing satan to torture us with these feelings we harbor of anger and resentment and that we will not have peace until we pay back what we owe which is forgiveness.

The forgiveness that we owe is the forgiveness that Jesus gave us on the cross. Jesus died for our sins while we were still sinners, so we need to die to our feelings of wanting to be paid back by others in what we think is rightfully ours, such as an apology, revenge or money.

God wants us to forgive others without expecting to receive anything at all back in return…forgive from our heart. When we forgive from our heart then we can fully let all the anger and resentment go. When we let all that stuff go then that is when we will experience true peace and the full gift of the forgiveness that God has given to us.

What are your thoughts on this parable ? Let me know what you think by leaving your comment in the section below.

Thanks for reading,