Poetry Sunday ~ Christmas' Past

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Gal. 4:10 "Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years."

This will be my last post of the roller-coaster ride I call 2017! Not a great year but an enlightening year where God felt I was worthy to receive a second chance at life. So many lives were taken this year and here I am with a new lease. Thank you, Lord.

I'm sharing the last poem I wrote in 2017, not a great one but a card to my mother who still mourns for her husband of sixty years. I try to make them simple and not sad for her.

May you all have a Happy, Blessed New Year in 2018!

Merry Christmas

12-12-2017

I fondly remember Christmas past

The steps, the lights, the peace

Our laughter filling up the house

The memories that I release.

My Christmas’ of the present

No longer hold the past

They stay behind as memories

That never seems to last.

Our future is uncertain

Never knowing where we’ll roam

The joy of Christmas present

Is in the place that you call home.

Home is neither here nor there

It’s a place with which I start

To feel the love nestled close

Endearing to my heart.

2 Pet. 3:8 "But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day."

Quotation Saturday

Job 16:20 “My friends scorn me: but mine eye poureth out tears unto God.”

DONE

“Thy will be done, my Lord. Because you know the weakness in the heart of your

children, and you assign each of them only the burden they can bear. May you

understand my love–because it is the only thing I have that is really mine, the only thing that I will be able to take with me into the next life. Please allow it to be courageous and pure; please make it capable of surviving the snares of the world.” 

― Paulo Coelho

“There are greater things to be achieved in every new year, and each and everyone must prepare themselves to be great, not by words of the mouth, but by alot of sacrifices.” 

― Michael Bassey Johnson

“Only one life, it will soon be past,

only what’s done for Christ will last.” 

― Elizabeth George

“Every work you do should be done unto the Lord and your love to God must show in the quality of your product” 

― Sunday Adelaja

“I climb mountains, while you keep sinking in sand.” 

― Jenna Karel

FINISHED

“What's done is done. Say good-bye to the past, and hello to the future And we're

wasting time, when already we've wasted enough. We've got everything

ahead, waiting for us. "Just the right words to make me feel real, alive, free! Free enough to forget thoughts of revenge.” 

― V.C. Andrews

“I decree and I declare that I am not a raw material but rather a finished product. God knows me and knows the reason for which he created me. I am not here on earth to merely live and depart.” 

― Israelmore Ayivor

“I am committed to my dreams.

It does not matter how slow, I am moving towards my dreams, I will get to the finish line.” 

― Lailah Gifty Akita

“It's over. Absolutely, completely, eternally over” 

― Alyson Noel

THE END

“No, this is not the beginning of a new chapter in my life; this is the beginning of a new book! That first book is already closed, ended, and tossed into the seas; this new book is newly opened, has just begun! Look, it is the first page! And it is a beautiful one!” 

― C. JoyBell C.

“the nurse smiled and patted my arm. “Don’t give up yet. Sometimes when we think God has written The End, what he really means is The Beginning.” 

― Rachel Van Dyken, Ruin

“So this is how it ends, she thought, when the call was over, and she was soothed by the banality of it.” 

― Emily St. John Mandel

“Regardless of how important we are, our importance is made important in the impacts we make on earth” 

― Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

GOODBYE

“What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.” 

― Jack Kerouac,

“The reason it hurts so much to separate is because our souls are connected. Maybe they always have been and will be. Maybe we've lived a thousand lives before this one and in each of them we've found each other. And maybe each time, we've been forced apart for the same reasons. That means that this goodbye is both a goodbye for the past ten thousand years and a prelude to what will come.” 

― Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook

“I hope no one who reads this book has been quite as miserable as Susan and Lucy were that night; but if you have been - if you've been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you - you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing is ever going to happen again.” 

― C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

“I was trying to feel some kind of good-bye. I mean I’ve left schools and places I didn’t even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don’t care if it’s a sad good-bye or a bad good-bye, but when I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it. If you don’t you feel even worse.” 

― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnight till it be morrow.” 

― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“Remember me and smile, for it's better to forget than to remember me and cry.” 

― Dr. Seuss

Lent: Day Seventeen ~ Never Fear the End

Prov. 14:27 The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life, to depart from the snares of death.

Never Fear the End

This post was going to be about the end times but you know, when God places something on my heart to write, I have to write it not caring about what it is ‘I’ wanted to write. He is such an amazing and powerful God.

My own hand when writing these Lent post does not guide me and sometimes I’m even amazed at what I wrote. I hope you’re feeling the tingling chills that I’m feeling as I write and you read this post.

Yesterday was March 20 and all over I read it was the first day of spring (due to the vernal equinox) and while I await spring, my mind drifted back to forty years ago when cancer took my grandmother’s life. I was about to turn eight years old in three days, and that would be the day my grandmother was ‘laid to rest’ as they say. Placed gently in her grave on my 8^th birthday.

For three days I watched as we the family cried from heartache and stood around a once vibrant woman who succumbed to cancer and now we looked on at her lifeless body. Can you imagine a small child trying to drink in the reality of death? Her beautiful pale blue gown can still be seen in my mind today as I write, like it was just yesterday that it had happened.

Then death struck again just two months after my grandmother’s death, her husband died, in his sleep, mourning her loss, watching a Lawrence Welk show I imagine; the tomato juice still fresh on his lips when his daughter found him. There were two deaths, two months apart, she on the 20th and he on the 22nd. Death, the finality of it all scared me for a while in those years but when I became a born again Christian, God placed something on my heart, Never Fear the End. Not a lot to go on, but I carry it with me to this day.

I imagine on the crux of death The Comforter is there watching over you, when you fear, He relieves that fear and the still small part of you clinging to life knows there is something beautiful awaiting you with no more pain, where only Light and beauty abounds.

On Monday we received a message that Steven’s cousin, Mary, was in the hospital with fluid on her lungs. She had been battling an extremely painful cancer privately for four and a half years now and was now in the hospital requesting prayer. For the years of battle, she never let on to anyone that she was suffering in so much pain. She spared her family and friends pain, and suffered alone. I know words can’t convey fear, but for her to be asking for prayer, I knew she was at the point where she knew she was dying and was now lying in fear.

I immediately went to prayer for her. You see, this family is such a close knit Christian family, it is not hard for you to meet someone once or twice and feel a bond with them. Mary and I bonded. Maybe the rest of the family never knew, but we did. Mary had a way of connecting with anyone and everyone.

We had returned to Nebraska, coming from Texas, to attend Steven’s grandmother’s funeral. Mary and I had only met a few times but as soon as our eyes met, we knew each other and went immediately for an embrace. She was happy to see me as I her. A beautiful young lady with brunette bouncy pixie cut hair circling her angelic face.

I mean really, she had flawless skin; perfect sparkling eyes and her smile could light the world. I think I was drawn to her because of the Light she emitted. I was off crying and she seen me, came over to me, put her arm around me and asked me if I needed to talk.

I told her how I had just met her brother Christopher for the first time. He was born in 1982, the same year I lost my son Christopher. I was crying because it was like seeing my son in him, alive and aging.

She said, “I guess that is our connection, and the fact you share my mother’s birthday.” We giggled like schoolgirls through tears. I told her how I was born on my mother’s birthday and she said, “That’s funny, I was born three days before my mom’s birthday, on the 20^th!” More giggles, more tears. Giggling schoolgirls who were years apart in age but bonding as if we were the very same age.

I looked at her wide-eyed and said, “That’s the day my grandmother passed away.” More bonding through tears and when we parted her last words to me were, “You better be here when I come back home to visit.” I assured her I would.

As she clings to life in Chicago, I’m here waiting for her to come home. She did. The words ring in my ear and reach out as I whisper to her as she lay dying…Never Fear the End.

*update: I wrote this yesterday. This morning Mary is home, with her Heavenly Father.

She is no longer suffering in pain and I am comforted in knowing she is at peace. The day He sent her into this world is the day she parted this world. Thirty years old.

Rest In Peace, Mary.

Pss. 23:1-6 The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

Another one bites the dust

Job 16:3 Shall vain words have an end? or what emboldeneth thee that thou answerest?
***

Well it has officially come to an end. Next Wednesday the boards will be swept clean like old cobwebs moved out of the attic. F2K ends another successful session, and October is when the next class will be available to anyone interested.

I’ll post more as we near the date, like the registration link to WVU’s (Writers Village University) F2K! It’s a free writing course and a successful FREE writing course for 15 years now and still going strong.

This session was a positive experience in that, at the close of the doors, we still had  well over fifty people active in their sixth lesson. Normally as we near the sixth week, the classrooms dwindle down to maybe four or five a room, and some rooms are left empty with one student and that student walks the halls looking for a person to critique his/her work.

Not this time, oh no. We’ve had a surge of students and they liked the new format so much, they stayed on so they didn’t miss anything exciting that was happening. Besides the drama of a bad apple who wanted to spoil everyone’s learning, we soared to new heights this session and I’m happy to report the bad apple went foul and was never seen/heard from again. So that’s why he waited until lesson six! Poor little man, had nothing better to do with his life so he attacked me. I pray for him and hope it made him feel like the BIG man on campus. (as little as he appeared)

I hold onto things in a big way. I’m always telling my son to ‘let things go’ and Steven is always telling me ‘just let it go’, but I have a tendency to hold onto things like gum on a shoe. It just sticks with me.

Words from my son:
Adam says, “I’m scarred, inside.”
Mom replies, “It’ll get better, you’ll heal.”
“No mom, scars don’t heal. They stay there, see?” he says pointing to a big scar on his leg. “They never go away, you just have to live with it.”

So this is why I hold onto things that have hurt me in the past? I’m scarred and the scar is never going away, I just have to deal with it? Hmm.. gives me something to think about.

But on a happier note, F2k and the new format (graciously bows to Bob Hembree), with all its groups, discussions along with the fun ability to post pictures, and the NEW certificate of completion, is a triumphant success.

“Writer’s write right, and leaders lead... creators create and artist succeed!” ~joni