Poetry Sunday: A Mother's Trials

Prov. 31: 10, 27-28 "Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness. Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her."

A Mother’s Trials

Six children born to parents 

At different eras and times

One during a peaceful age 

One during wartime crimes

Two were born surprisingly

Two lost along the way

Then came two bouncing girls

Making the family a buffet.

The mother’s trials were endless

With her six kids underwing

While father being the breadwinner

Made mother’s trials the sting.

Nothing perfect happened

In the years that followed suit

One son went into the service

While the other a different route

Four kids left to figure out

What right and wrong would come

Mother taking a job to help

The kids not under her thumb.

The years passed by so quickly

Each different memories to hold.

Some boast of great harmony

While some had pasts of cold.

Not every life runs perfectly 

Not every childhood is grand

A mother’s trials are silent

With each child in a different hand.

A mother remembers the good times

While the child will store the bad.

But both will hold a great life 

No matter which one was had.

A mother’s trial is what forged us

Whether we like the image we see.

Her trials are what formed and shaped

The intricate family.

As Mother’s Days will come and go

Just as each life will come to pass

Remember through trials and errors

It’s our Mothers love that will last!

~*~*~*~*~*~*

My mother and dad would've been married 61

years this year. He's passed over and she waits for the day to see him again. But this is MY story, not hers. I just want what is best for her, a great day!

January Third - Change

Rom. 3:23 “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

January 3rd, 2019

“Make a POSITIVE change in the world by changing YOU first.” Joni

I’m full of these quotes. I think I’ll put together a book of quotes that are solely mine or should I say soulfully mine! I thought with the new year I’d see a change in people. I dunno, I think I expect people to realize the minute things in life like I do and sometimes they can’t even grasp the big things. I have to shake my head, I’ll pray in hopes I’ll see SOME change this year in others, not just myself. 

Change is hard stuff, I know. It’s not to be all puffed up in words, change is about taking action to move! How many people make new year’s resolutions, only to set themselves up for failure. How good that must feel when people tell themselves what a failure they are because they couldn’t change ONE thing. I never make resolutions and I never ay I'm going to do something and not do it, what a letdown. Stress-free living is not about letdowns.

Today the dismantling of Christmas took place. With the absence of Adam, this Christmas decorating and tearing down had a new back-breaking meaning! Talk about change! My son is now at his own place making his own rules and doing his own thing, while we had to accept the change and do things a little differently this Christmas.

Last night, I took all the ornaments off of the tree and boxed them up, readied them for the basement. I didn’t overdo it because I was sitting in my wheelchair and hubby placed everything on a small tv table so I had easy access to wrap and box the tree ornaments. He would do the tree and lights while I would do the other ornaments, mainly my snowmen! 

On this day, the tree came tumbling down so to speak, and we had the house looking like its old self in no time. I even had time to take a shower. Ah, the beloved shower that I missed for well over thirty days! Don’t get me wrong, I used the old-fashioned bucket and rag to bathe but it certainly is not the same as cleansing the whole body shower! 

We are now finding peaceful common ground. He is relaxing in taking care of my every need, and I am finding a sense of peace in being able to care more for myself. I have new freedoms in washing, and cleaning and do the Suzie Homemaker jobs that I LOVED before my accident. It was a stress-free Christmas and a relaxing calendar change, so much so my blog became a memory for a spell. I need to get back to telling my story but wanted some fill-ins for the New Year! 

The New Year - a blank page for you to write in every day to make a CHANGE! Change is free, not easy but free! Find the freedom in CHANGE! 

It's Hard...

Pss. 63:8 “My soul followeth hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth me.” 

It’s Hard…

As you know I haven’t written in awhile and many of my friends might be wondering how I’m doing. A meme on Facebook wishing you a good day doesn’t tell you, a meme exclaiming all is right with the world is not a picture in my window that all is well and a meme certainly can’t carry the pain I have on a daily basis. 

I’ve stopped complaining about the cold, wind and snow that left the trees bare right up until this week when we did a leap into summer, no spring, right into summer. We were in the thirties and forties two weeks ago, then bam the eighties. That is not a complaint by any means but it kind of throws you into the unpreparedness of the seasons.

All I have in my wardrobe is turtlenecks and fuzzy socks and they don’t bode well for eighty-degree heat. I have pants that don’t fit, shirts that drape me, and pains that won’t leave me. At one hundred pounds even my size six jeans is too big so now I don’t even have shorts for the summer. I have tennis shoes and sandals but I prefer wearing clothes as to not scare anyone from looking at this skeleton of a body. 

I’m slowly changing up my protocol, I’ve gone gluten-free so I can eat food, but nothing seems to be working these days, and I think my PH is so wonkey, that it is keeping me in the disabled column. The extremely cold horrendous snowy winter was not a friend to my illness in any way.

Then there is the grass that finally turned green and with days on end of clouds and some rain, the grass began rapidly springing up like a time-lapse show of growth. Then there was the thought of mowing; that was my summertime pleasure. I knew in this condition, my summer would be spent in the house and no pushing the lawn mower from one row of overgrown grass to the next. I more than likely would just be sitting at the window watching it grow as the world outside the window went on around me.

Yes, I do have a husband and a son who are more than capable of mowing but my son works about forty-five hours a week and my husband’s schedule has changed to five days a week. Granted he only works five hours a day but no one feels like coming home, after being on your feet for hours on end, to mow the lawn now, do they?

I had been asking for a riding mower for the nine years that we’ve lived here but it was just not feasible on a part-time salary and only one person working. It was on my bucket list of things to do before I die, own a riding mower. Yeah, that’s sad, mowing makes me that happy. 

When we first moved here the owner had a really nice riding mower and I took care of all three properties for four hours a day. Each week a new set of growth sprung up keeping me happy and busy until the belt broke, and the owner never got the machine fixed. He didn’t care; he’s a millionaire and doesn’t have to look at the three-foot-high grass. Hubby’s mom gave us an old faithful rusted up push mower that lasted until a few years ago when it finally went kaput! Even then we’d thought of a riding mower but illnesses kept it out of the budget. A newer push mower was affordable, somewhat.

Now this year I’m faced with an illness that should’ve kept the option of a riding mower out of the equation but I can smell my husband’s fear. It's hard; he’s trying so hard to be supportive and he even tried giving up sugar and cigarettes for me but fear won out. Not everyone is as strong as I am and I totally understand where he is coming from. I think everyone has some small measure of fear in the back of their minds that this just isn’t going to work. No one has DARED voiced those sentiments but instinctively I sense the emotions.

On Thursday, the third of May, he let me know he was stopping by Walmart for a hitch for his truck (I thought he already had one). I assumed the hitch was for a trailer so he could take his mother a bench he made for her for Mother’s Day. When he got home and I prodded him for information he announced he needed to find a trailer for a riding lawn mower he was purchasing. I cried. Tears of joy leaked down my cheek and a faucet full of tears came streaming down. 

I told him, “Don’t you dare tease me!” He assured me he wasn’t. I asked if he could get it delivered and he announced that they wanted $250 for delivery. He called around asking if anyone had a trailer, his brothers' trailer had bad tires. I was calling around asking to borrow money but to no avail, maybe the rider wasn’t in the cards. 

Friday morning came and when the small trailer his brother-in-law had was just that, too small, he decided to go rent one. Not realizing how cheap the rental was, after a lot of running around from store to store, he finally arrived at Walmart to pick up the floor model riding lawn mower to deliver to my waiting heart.

When he pulled up with the mower I couldn’t stop the tears. I was visualizing the many hours of enjoyment on the mower and how my husband went above and beyond to see me happy even by going in debt to own this machine that was now lighting my face with tears of happiness.

After about twenty minutes of the how-to’s, I was well on my way to mowing my lawn! He took the trailer back and left me alone with my new friend, Murray the mower; not a John Deere, or a Craftsman but Murray was MINE, all mine!!!!

When he returned home half of my lawn was already mowed. It’s a big lawn and I had to save myself some to cut the next day. I parked the mower right outside my window so I could wake the next day and see that it all wasn’t just a dream.

While walking and maneuvering might be hard this summer, mowing my lawn will NOT be a problem for any of us. Life is hard all around, not just for me, for everyone. My petty annoyances are nothing to what some other people have to go through. I am blessed to be alive, I cherish every moment I get, and I’m most thankful for a husband who loves me more than the sun shines, the earth spins and flowers bloom! (But no, not more than pork chops)

Be blessed and be grateful! God created it and it was good!

And I Wait...

Pss. 59:9 “Because of his strength will I wait upon thee: for God is my defence.”

And I wait…

I don’t know what to think and I really don’t want opinions of what I should do. These past two weeks I’ve had a setback. I mentioned it before with all that’s happened and I feel the setback was the wheat bread and the eating of the toxic grains.

I’ve eaten all these wonderful foods all of my life and never in a million years would I imagine something so good for you could be one of the elements causing this disease in me. I’m not even fifty-five years young and already I’m being affected by the strong-arm of an illness that has laid its hands on me, gripping me, expecting me to ‘submit’. I can’t do it. I won’t give up on God like others have done, I just won’t!

I hear people say they care about me but in all honesty, I don’t feel it. How can months (sometimes years) go by and people say ‘I care about you’ and nothing more? How is that caring? You thought about me? Because you think about me and my suffering, that’s caring? I just don’t get it. 

I’m trying to be okay with people passively thinking about me when it’s convenient for them. I’m trying to understand why I sit alone crying my eyes out and no one to listen to me or hug me and say it will all be all right. Just a comforting hug could go a long way in my isolated world.

I notice people give up too easy too. If they’re trying to lose weight, and it doesn’t happen instantaneously they give up. If they pray, and the prayer goes unanswered they give up on God for not being quick with a response. I’ve seen people give up on God who has received miracles, then just gave up with all that hokey stuff and lived life for themselves now that the miracle is over; enough time has passed, they should be safe, right? I guess so, if that is what you believe.

I myself feel I received a miracle of the regaining of my walking ability. For a couple of years the pain was so bad I was relinquished to using a cane and allowed onlookers to pity me with their eyes. People don’t realize their eyes are like speakers when sizing people up the volume is set to high and the bass is felt loud and clear from the person you draw eye contact from. I don’t need the eye contact to feel the faces of pity looking at me.

Since my diagnosis, I’ve come a long way in regaining my strength and the ability to walk, so much so I proudly traipsed around feeling invincible. No one is invincible; a few slices of bread and overconfidence will knock you on your butt and take it all away with one night of sleep. Let me tell you if you don’t have those backup supporters who say, ‘they care about you’ the fall hurts even more.

I’m a mess this week. I had a bad day that led to a couple more bad days and now I try to pick myself up from the rubble I’ve left strewn about the place. I’ve needed a good strong physical hug but even that is scarce because my pain is so bad, it hurts to have a hug. I’m straining to see the light at the end of the tunnel that I know is there. When the pain is so overwhelming it is hard to see or hear anything.

I love the fact that people turn to me for strength, direction, assistance, aid in helping them but in times of my hurting, those tasks are impossible so I shy away from the very venue of that portion of love I receive. I’m hurting, how can I help someone when I’m in the throes of a setback and no one can visually see how bad my days are, again because ‘they care’ but not enough to consider I might be having a hard time or bad day myself.

I want to gently show my friends that while I’m having this hard time, I still can see the light way off at the end of the tunnel. My tears stream, my pain unbearable, my cries to the Lord louder than ever and the echo, the echo of my voice is haunting. In the days of these struggles, the scripture that stands out to me is from Isaiah 40:31

 “But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”

I have a birthday coming up and I’m not even looking forward to the day. It’s just another day. That’s what people say when they get older, y’know? A good thing my son, who is young, says it now so he has no false illusions about the world around him. It’s just another day. I should get a plaque stating that and hang it on the wall! 

Along with my setback comes grumpiness, bitterness, and downright insensitivity. This is the point where I’m supposed ‘to think’ but I don’t. I put no rein on my thoughts or insensitive blurts. I fail. I don’t think of others and how they might be feeling when I boast of my weight loss when they can’t lose a pound to save their life, or my lack of pain when there’s has them bound to drug relief, or my rejoicing in how great I’m doing walking with a bounce in my step and light in my life. Maybe they want to hear the hard-grained steps I have to bear to wake up each day in the light of optimism. Maybe they long to hear of a setback so they can say ‘aha, I knew you should’ve gone another route’. I’m on the edge about to fall over the cliff and can’t find the upbeat rhythm of words they need to hear to get through their bad day. So there, I’m having a momentary lapse.

I have a loving relationship with God and I know we’ll get through this band of pain together. I wonder sometimes if people think that God has a special light set to shine just on my face but let me tell you, God’s love has no perimeter, His love for us is as personal as any loving relationship we’ll ever have in life. He has no preferential treatment for just me. He loves us all the same. Do we all love Him the same? I don’t know. I think we all try but we all have that period of ‘now we wait’, how each of us handles this period of patience is most definitely different! 

1 John 4:13 “Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.”

Light In The Darkness

John 9:5 “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

Light in the Darkness

One spark, that’s all it takes to get the fire under you to burn brightly, to spread so others can see the light. We become conditioned to spreading hate, bad news, or controversial topics. Our hearts are set on seeing a reaction of disgruntled people joining together to fan the flames to form a riotous response.

Can you even imagine the inferno of passion you could ignite for God? Imagine the HOPE you could instill if you put aside the dark negative mechanisms that drive your day. I believe my mission in life is to bring hope to the lost, light to the dark and love to a world consumed in hate. I might be that one spark that’s needed to fan the flames.

When I was diagnosed with this disease, I felt fear and sadness flood through my screen. It was as if I told my friends, ‘hey, I’m going to die’ and their reaction was felt, even for a moment. That was a fleeting moment because my next step was to go to God; I asked Him, what could I do for You? I have this disease that everyone fears, how I can I show them there is nothing to fear and that with God all things are possible? Thus my journey began, journaling, documenting and researching and relaying a positive spin on my disease.

Job 23:10-11 “But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. My foot hath held his steps, his way have I kept, and not declined.”

I remember my mother-in-law and her reaction to the ‘devastating illness’, was to come out to my house and see me. An ironic response to me but I had to understand, even she, a good Christian woman, believes this disease to be about fear and death. I had to set her straight as well as my friends. No one understood where I was coming from. I stood in the doorway holding a candle of hope and yet they stood, looking on with fear in their eyes trying to penetrate the light I held.

I was being luminous where they once saw darkness. I was hope and life where they once cradled death. I was the candle being set down in a forest of negative vibrations trying to bring a light to the woods that surround the world.

Fear is a prevalent reaction in this world. Satan has a way of slithering in and using fear to his advantage and people are like flies to bug zappers. The first response is not to see God in any given situation, people turn to what they are accustomed to and that is fear. Even with the best of intentions, even when they know the power of God humans have an innate ability to trust the dark before the light.

When I asked God at the beginning of this Lenten season what I could do for Him, since I had given up so much over the year, and His response was ‘think’. I’m telling you now that has been harder than giving up all the toxic elements in my diet! I have to think before speaking, think before just blurting something out, think before writing that grumbling response. I also have to think and meditate on what will be written on any given day. A challenge for sure but a task I believe I can handle. 

Mark 7: 20-23  “And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.”

God asks us all to think. Before we react to people with a defensive spewing of hate, think, and not for yourself, but what He would expect to hear coming out of our mouths. When we say we are Christian do we act like it or do we give people a reason to not want to be ‘Christlike’? Do we show the world that we’re full of anxiety and hate and that our first response is to fear?  I would hope that we all know where a fear response comes from.

It’s hard I know. Change is hard. Being strong is hard. Being a light in the enveloping world of darkness is strenuously hard. I never gave off the impression that choosing the right from wrong or the light from dark was an easy journey. If you don’t understand the struggles whether from the Bible, or a sci-fi novel, or a fictional tale of how the west was won, you should KNOW every aspect of life is hard. The choice in choosing the EASY road or the hard road is quite simple, pick what comes easy, all *cowards do and that is why so many want to choose that route. (*more on that in another post)

Think. Did I just call everyone a coward who chooses the easy road? I believe I did. I may be wrong or right but whatever I blurted out was from a stance of understanding the rewards of choosing the hard route. Examples? Let’s say someone commits suicide. To me, they took the easy way out of a difficult life. Look what they missed; a chance to try and HEAL from the warped darkness that shrouded them because the road seemed too hard. They didn’t give a spark a chance to light the fire of hope.

To me, and this is only one woman’s opinion, the easy route is filled with more darkness. An example is people think wealth will make them happy. Look at Robin Williams, he had enough money to live happily ever after but money was the deception that satan used, and in the end, the easy route got him nowhere, literally a dead end.

I think of my fellow man who consumes enough junk food in a lifetime as an easy route to feeling good and filled with life, but in the end, does everyone feel good? No, they feel bloated in a society that labels them in a negative light. To change their diet is hard stuff, again, the easy route is accepting death over life.

I choose life over death. When someone says, you’re going to die, I look at them and without thinking I spit out, AREN’T WE ALL? Then God taps me on the shoulder, a Light in the darkness has lit the world on fire, He whispers, “I AM THE HARD ROAD, WALK WITH ME.”

There IS hope, you just have to be willing to see the Light in dark places; a spark about to ignite into a flaming bush, a match to candle, the candle to dry wood, a breath of hope enflaming a sea of negativity, a Sonrise to the plethora of stars in the night sky.  

John 8:12 “Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”