The Truth Hurts

Gen.1:1 “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”

The Truth Hurts

Well, yesterday was a good day even with summer rearing its ugly head to let me know it hasn’t gone too far away. Sometimes summer does that, it holds onto the season until the very last day and sometimes longer not wanting to let go and release the cooler temperatures of autumn!

After a quite refreshing couple of days in the fifties, eighty degrees raised the bar yesterday. Sure I stayed inside and did my work but I could feel the warmth tapping on the closed windows wanting to heat the house. Then last night we had a thunderstorm that washed away the heat in a light show beyond comparison. Flashing across the sky, lightning lit up the south, west and northern portions of the sky, the strobe light blinked in red and bluish hues. 

You could say I got a wake-up call yesterday in speaking the truth, right or wrong? I called my mother like I normally do at the same time every evening. I was in a relaxed mode as we had settled in to watch our movie but I pause the movie every evening to call my mother back home.

I could sense harshness in her tone but I shrugged it off as the conversation continued. She had said that she had a bad day, I knew what that meant but I prodded for more info and maybe I should have just ended the call by saying maybe a better day tomorrow but  it’s my mother, I needed to know if she was okay. 

A little back-story might help you with where I’m going with this. My mother lost her best friend, her husband of sixty years and she misses him intensely! A bad day means she just sits there thinking about him, his illness, his hospital stay, and most heart-wrenchingly, his death. As is to be expected, she has her good days and her bad days.

It hurts me to no end that I can’t be there for her but my calls have got to be enough at this juncture in my life and MY healing. She went on how my sister took her out to lunch and a little shopping. I know it’s good for her to get out and that is her healing mechanism, to shop. It always has been.

She told me about a book she read (this is where the conversation went downhill) about a young boy who died and went to heaven and came back and told this story of meeting Jesus in heaven and his deceased sister (that he had no knowledge of before the coma). The story Heaven Is for Real is the book she was referring to. 

She went on to tell me that because of THAT book she believes Heaven is for real and that ‘I’ should read the book to see for myself. I told her I READ a book that tells me heaven is for real called The Holy Bible. She retorted, “Oh, I’m going to read that one too.”

But then her tone became one of anger and she started berating me, “Why do you always have a conflicting response? Everything I say, you always try to correct me!”

Calmly I spoke and said, “I think I need to call you tomorrow.” I was not going to allow her bad day to leak through the phone and cause ME to have a bad day (too late) also. It already had in ways you don’t want to know. 

Was I wrong in telling her the truth? Should I let her believe Jesus is up there with a rainbow crown prancing with unicorns? Was I wrong in directing her to the bible? Should I let my mother holler at me like a two-year-old because she is grieving? I did and ended the call and afterward, I cried.

I told my son what had happened because he had overheard me, after talking to my mother, very loudly vocalizing my hurt from the phone call and then suffering a chest-tightening anxiety attack. 

His response? “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” 

Yeah, I spat that at him more times than once, now it was his turn to fling those sentiments at me. Boy, I'm batting a thousand in the feel good vibes!

I explained to him that I respect our difference in beliefs; I don’t force my belief on him, I already lost that battle and he is his own person believing what he wants. But no one wants to respect MY beliefs. So now here I am…

Tears roll down my cheek as I wonder if all of this is in vain. Am I writing the truth, yes I know it is MY truth, to believers or non-believers? Do the non-believers think I’m an overbearing, pompous, bible thumping donkey? Do believers believe the same truth? Prayer…lots of prayer time for ME coming up in the following weeks, I’ll let you know how it turns out.

I know grief has no time limit. I understand the mourning process. I have lost all four grandparents (not the same as a husband), I’ve lost two children (not the same as a husband), I’ve lost a father, along with aunts and uncles to illness or suicide (not the same as a husband); so maybe I don’t understand my mothers’ grief. Maybe it IS normal for her to buy my father's cologne so she can inhale the fragrance he once wore. 

I don’t understand the loss of a husband and truly hope I don’t have to ever cross that bridge but one thing I AM certain of is Heaven, FOR ME! I’m not certain if my father is there, I don’t know if my mother will wind up there, I don’t even know if I’M going to end up there but… I DO KNOW HEAVEN IS THERE! I will strive to reach heaven, long for it, and always feel it within my grasp. 

Maybe I should just shut my mouth and stop my fingers now.

Matt. 18:3 “And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven."

They killed him... to save a child

Concordia, Kansas

Matt. 10:38 “And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.”

I’m sure you’ve all heard by now about the seventeen-year-old gorilla Harambe.

Defending what they [officials] did because of the uproar of an innocent gorilla being shot to death, "That child's life was in danger. People who question that don't understand you can't take a risk with a silverback gorilla - this is a dangerous animal," Cincinnati Zoo Director Thane Maynard said.

The unattended child climbed through a protective barrier then fell fifteen feet and the fall didn’t kill him my guess is because he landed in the water below. That was the water of the endangered gorilla’s home. Harambe saw the child and ran over and the humongous gorilla looked like he was petting the boy, then he dragged him around the exhibit as the much watched video shows. He wasn’t aggressively shaking the boy and showed no signs of hurting him but quick action called for this almost extinct gorilla to be killed.

This is just another uproar since the demise of Cecil the Lion was inhumanely killed, by yet another Doctor, of a different field, but a doctor nonetheless. What has me bewildered is the reason for this post. Why did they kill the gorilla when he was not showing aggression? They couldn’t distract him? They couldn’t steer the screaming people above AWAY from the exhibit? I do understand that the child’s life matters but is this any different than the police officer who shoots first, explains later?

Anyway, the media spinmasters are doing their turn on the wheels of the matter. I see people posting memes about abortions? That people care more about some gorilla than the hundreds of babies killed everyday in abortion clinics? I’d like to put my spin on the matter: People care more about pointing fingers at others than they do pointing a finger at their own self?

I don’t know why this issue called to my mind a time where a man was being hung on a cross. Some cried out in disbelief, some were shedding tears of sorrow, and some were just standing around gawking waiting for the man to die. We claim to have come so far in thousands of years but essentially we are right there in the crowd, pointing, gawking or crying. 

I’m the one shedding tears of sorrow that human beings have not learned how to be civil to one another and we are still to this day hanging people on a cross when they’re right or wrong. Children die, people are careless, men are trigger happy all in the name of justice? Whose justice?

While you are all busy pointing fingers and gawking, allow me to ask you this, if you believe in heaven and that you have a slight chance of making it there, who do you think will be there with you? You think you’ll have a seat next to Mother Teresa? Saint Patrick? Peter, Paul, Mary? Let me enlighten you a bit, that person you’re laughing at, making fun of, taunting and lashing out at will be there right beside you. You might have to look him/her straight in the face and explain why you hated them so much before you enter heaven. That will be justice; the sweet smell of justice in the umpth degree!

THIS is the very reason we are to love our enemy as we love ourselves. It’s not to make ME feel better it is to make Him know and understand the reason He died on the cross for you. If you don’t practice what He preached, then He died in vain. 

1 Cor. 1:17 “For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.”