Delighted Dad

Dear Child,
You look for great ways to bring Me glory. You feel frustrated and somehow stuck in the ordinary things of life. Know this: I delight in the ordinary. I delight in a life lived simply and obediently before Me. When you choose to embrace the small struggles and simple pleasures of this one day, you honor Me. You cannot offer higher praise to Me than the praise of a calm and joyous life. Do each small task as an offering to Me, for I see and appreciate your work. Enter into each conversation with a determination to let My Words come out through you, for I hear and delight in such conversation. In this way, the most common life becomes extraordinary. The simplest day becomes holy.
I am with you in this ordinary day.
God
Diligent child,

Yes, it has been hard, I know,but that tough training period is nearly over now. As I told you before, I have made use of these months to prepare you for promotion-not to punish you. I have been trusting you to trust Me. Thank you for trusting! I realize it has not been easy.
I especially want to thank you for listening for My voice when all those other conflicting voices arose. I know how hard it was-especially when all the others thought they were hearing from Me and kept telling you that you were not. But you were, child. Believe Me, you were! because you wanted My will above all else, you walked in My Will.
Now do you see the fruit of those days? You have learned to hear My voice above all the clamor and you are stronger- more resilient . Anyone who really knows you can see it. How can I describe MY joy? At last! You chose to stand fast. You set your heart to trust Me, even in those times when the enemy told you I has left you and you had missed the way.
And what about you tantrums? I never took them seriously. They certainly never offended Me. As is often the case with My children, the frustration expressed by your lips had nothing to do with the deeper faith of your heart, expressed by your will. When you told Me you were trusting and then willed to walk on with Me, I took you at your word. I admit , you did ask your fair share of hard questions. But consider My servant Job. Did he not do the same? My assessment is: in all your railing and flailing you never sinned, though We both know your patience did wear thin at times. Dangerously thin. But after all, you were being stretched to your very limits, were you not? I think so.
Stop feeling guilty and enjoy your rest. The rest is a part of the training too. New joys, new powers and new conquests await you, but I do want you prepared to enjoy them!
Delightedly,Dad

Dear One

Dear One,
Your life is filled with so many things-so many people and plans and places and appointments. You rise early, and you go to bed late. And though you may stop and turn to Me briefly, in only a moment you are off again into your own thoughts and imaginations and pursuits.
Do you think that I am part of one world and not of another? Do you think that I Am the God of prayers and church and not the God of business and relationships? Don't you know that there is no place you can go apart from My Spirit- that My presence goes with you always?
If you go up to heaven, I am there. if you sink to the depths, I am there also. If you fly to the far side of the ocean, I am still there. There is no darkness so deep that My light cannot penetrate and dispel it.
Oh how I long for the time when you will welcome Me into every boardroom and living room, every conference and conversation. I want to be your confidant. I want to be your closest friend.
I want to be your God.
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Where can I go to get away from Your Spirit?
Where can I run from You?
If I go to the heavens, you are there.
If I lie down in the grave, you are there.
If I rise with he sun in the East and settle in the west beyond the sea, even there you would guide me.
With Your right hand You would hold me.
I could say, "The darkness will hide me. Let the light around me turn into night." But even the darkness is not dark to you. The night is as light as the day; darkness and light are the same to You.
Psalm 139:7-12

Dear God.

Dear God,
I don't know any other way to tell You than to just come out and say it: I've let You down, Father, and I'm so sorry.
It happened the same way it's happened so many times before: I felt the pull of the temptation. I walked over to take a closer look- telling myself that I wouldn't get too close. But I just keep walking- closer and closer. With each step my conscious thoughts- of You, of what I was about to do, of where I was going- began to shut down.
By the time I got to the edge of it, I was numb. Numb to You. Numb to the promises I've made. Numb to the hurt my actions would cause me and those I love. All the warnings I'd heard just a short while before were silenced. My mind and my heart were iced over with nothingness. And then I took the final step. It was as if I were on autopilot.
Then when the deed was gone, the freeze on my heart began to thaw and reality began to dawn once again. The ache in my heart began to anew. The shame. The regret.
It took everything in me to come to You this time. Voices in my head tried to tell me that You were sick of my weakness. Sick of my sin. Sick of me. But somewhere deep in my heart. I remembered Your Son and His sacrifice.
Lord God, is it possible for me to finally master this sin? Will I ever have victory over it? Do You even hear me after I've disappointed You so many times?
Your Penitent Child

Heart's Supply

My precious child,
Today are you aware of your emptiness, your spiritual poverty, your personal neediness? Do you feel weak or in some way inadequate? Well, let Me tell you a wonderful secret of My Kingdom. When you are most empty, the one who fulfils you is very near. When you are poor in spirit, great spiritual riches are at hand. When you are the most needy, the one who meets your need draws close to hear you cry. For, you see, My kingdom is unlike any worldly kingdom. In this worlds system. the soul who is poor, weak, needy, or empty is often despised and ignored. But in My Kingdom, when you feel bound by great need, you are actually in a position to know the exciting truth that will free you. And here is that truth: Your need is the very thing that causes you to cry out to Me. And it is when you do cry out to Me that I will come into your heart and heal you and make you whole. So cry out to Me in your time of spiritual emptiness, and I will fill you with My Own Spirit.
Your heart's supply,
God
Those people who knows they have great spiritual need is happy, because the kingdom of Heaven belongs to them. Matthew 5:3

I am very happy to brag about my weaknesses, Then Christ's power can live in Me. For this reason I am happy when I have weaknesses, insults, hard times, sufferings, and all kinds of troubles for Christ. Because when I am weak, then I am truly strong.
2 Corinthians 12:9b-10

Get up, cry out in the night, even as the night begins. Pour out your heart like water in prayer to the Lord. Lift up your hands in prayer to Him for the life of your children who are fainting with hunger on every street corner.
Lamentations 2:19

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It's amazing what a few minutes and blank page can do for me. It seems this is the moment I come alive. The words that rest deep in my soul find a way to flourish and come alive, in their own unique way. I've resisted the chances to take a seat in this black leather chair, and spend some time releasing all that I hold inside.

I was hoping this year would bypass that "day" that comes very year, on that one Sunday in May. Unfortunately, just by my simple existence, I was reminded. I wasn't quite sure what to do with myself. I was fixated intently on that one thing I needed from Target. The aforementioned was not accomplished. I was out, sat in my car and cried. I cried in frustration and helplessness. I asked myself, "Why?" I closed my eyes for a moment, searching for a memory to hold onto, and I just cried harder. I started the car in attempts to distract myself, and then the horrid reality of grandma. I miss my grandma so much. I really miss being her little girl and how excited she would be just to see me. How she would huge me and wouldn't want to let go. Her constant agonizing over the idea that I needed anything, and what i said "no" - her supply of detergent and household goods would consume my backseat. I don't think I will ever understand what cancer was supposed to mean in their lives. In every positive way, one could see a "new beginning, something learned" - but that isn't good enough for me. As I spent some time with my brother, the reality ached me even more, because he misses his mom, just like I miss her. He claims I got to know her long that he did and in years, yes, I have that - but how do you explain the distance I managed to keep, in every effort to remain independent? Seeing him question and asking me to recall aspects of mom, that isn't fair either, again, death isn't fair. He kept asking, "what did she look like with hair?" All I could say because of pictures...was that it was long and sort of wavy, she had good hair. He only remembers her sick, and my thoughts are consumed with the same images.

I'm constantly amazing by how much I remember them, and how often I want to just fall to the floor. Instead, I'm captivated by a few silent days at work, doing what I have to do for kids, and returning to my usual state, when i convince myself for the hudredth time, I'm never going to have an answer to my enduring, "WHY!" I really hate that, you know. Things just happen. How logical does that sound? Why does this world have to be so much out of control? Yet, the irony is in certain aspects we have control? None of it makes sense.

They will rest somewhere in my sphere, I dont' know that I have reasons to doubt I will forget them completley, but man, does it hurt when you remember. It hurts to stop for even that brief moment and smile because you remember the way would trace my hand out of tortilla dough, and I would have my own hand-shaped tortilla with butter. Or, to thing of mom and how helpess she felt raising me. I'm angry and saddened all at the same time! Circumstances steered my decisions to crawl inside myself and remain angry and put out with the world. Yet, she didn't know what it took to get me to "talk" about anything wihtout bursting into rage. How guilty I feel that I never allowed those moments for my momt o know, and I to know her. I know, that she loved me. I cna't deny that, I have been reminded by countless people, of how my mom adored me and the things I did and continued to do Her praises never ran short, behind my back, so to speak.

It seems when these moments of finding time to write, I still find myself battling the same battle of missing them, of losing them, of wondering how to start anew. I want an answer, I know. I'll never get it, I know. I'm just wasting time, I dont' want to know that part. I see the progress time has provided, and I don't think its due to any of my adapting - but time has a funny way of moving circumstances along.

No matter, hwo close you want them to remain, they aren't going to stay that close anymore...and although, I could stay curled up on the couch with grandma's blanket, it no long becomes that favorite blanket, because its no longer her house. I'm hesitant to touch it because it still doesn't seem "right." I shouldn't have it, it belongs to her. Time will continue to provide those outs, those outs I am trying desperately to hold to, because its really scary to think I'll move on, and do certain things, and there's nothing to share. Yeah, they're dead. It still pains and frustrates the hell out of me, when I'm sitting in a room, and people are talking about their mothers - more than the simple act of talking about their mothers (I can handle that) it's when they start talking about their age. Well. I'm 57 and my mom is 72 and reallyhealthy. i just get really frustrated. Why do those people have second chances. what did they do that was so right?

Honestly you know what scares me the most? The word forever. That's the word I can't seem to write without words and shudder consuming my being. I remember one day before school one morning, and my grandpa while I was in elementary school would always walk me to school. Well, this one morning we had breakfast, dropped grandma off at work and came back to the house and he sat at the breakfast bar and I sat at the dining room table. Somehow we started talking about death. I eventually shared what I thought death looked like. I said, "we come back right, Papo?" He said, "OH no, Amy when you die that's it, you don't come back again." I remember for months, I could not sleep alone. I would wake up in the middle of the night in tears and run to my mom's room and I would crawl in bed with her. She would take a shower, and I would cry, because I didn't want to be apart from her. The night I did that, she got really frustrated with me, and she said "WHy do you keep crying?" Then I told her what grandpa and I talked about, and she said, "Amy, I'm not going anywhere." I often wonder if she remembers that time? The time I was naive to how this world worked that I thought people never die. Since then, the concept of "forever" runs a little deep.

I really try not to be consumed with my life and the events that have occured in my life. More often than run, I try to walk briskly, becuase I understand nothing will ever replace those times. That time, will eventually erase the heartaches, fears, and disappointments and somehow bring peace that does pass all understanding. Much of the time, it does seem I have the world fitted in my hand, that words have this way of expressing themselves in an elegant sort of way. All of that, will never measure up, to the battle I face. The battle of identity, what to do, how to do it. Nothing ever seems quite right, because I'm in this "place" and I'm missing my family. I'm missing the one integral person who gave me birth to that birth grow-up. To know my grandma, (you would have to know her to understand) you can't find a more generous, loving, kind person on the face of this earth. I would have friends who did not have homes and were in college and she would cook for them and act as if they were part of the family. I guess, I am really glad I spent so much time with my grandma, considering they lived just down the street. I loved it there, from card games to just sitting and watching the Spanish station. (Who knows what they were saying :) )

The question remains: "Is when will it stop?" When will the sense of "forever" not bring me to tears, because I think I still have unlived fantasy that our lives will rehappen and somehow they will pick up at the most perfect time, and we will reunite. Not that, I will die...and that will end the existence. Now..the fefar...death. I can imagine death by my own hand, but because time chooses it? Death? Who is he?

Silent

Remember the day when time seemed to have stopped?
When the minute hand refused to move.
The eyes of those you love began to fill with tears.
The big, empty room was siddenly filled with a
heaviness that was indescribable.
I will never forget.
I will remember how your life suddently became no more.


**My words become trapped n a crevice where I fear to tread. They swirl around and wreak havoc. Often times, leaving me wordless.***