“And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” – Romans 8:28

Laughter is the best medicine. It helps heal the heart and keeps us youthful!

Life can be funny, until it is not. 

Life can give us a wake-up call, usually a circumstance or situation that is beyond our control.

You may have made a plan for your life, and then something happens that turns your world upside down.

The very thing you had envisioned or dreamed for your life doesn’t happen, and we have no choice but to shift gears into another direction. The plan you had made for your life was squashed.

We can fall into the dismay, grief and disbelief of our circumstances for a while and question God, “Why did this happen to me?” and then go through a time of mourning the loss of what was.

When the heartbreak of the situation hits you so hard, it changes you. The heart cracks open to the realization of a power that exists that is greater you!

We may have experienced a loss through death, disease, divorce, or betrayal that hits you so hard, it thwarts you on a new path, a path that was not part of your plan, but it becomes the path which is before you.

We may go through many heartbreaks in our life, until we finally wake up and hear the calling for our lives.

People make Plans, and God Laughs

Hearing the Call- August 2015

The day I stood next to my children, at the deathbed of their father, watching him take his last breath had rocked our world and cut like a knife.

The kids and I had known their Dad was sick during the last year of his life, but he denied it, and didn’t allow us to take him to the doctor, nor did he open up and share his life with us during that time. That year, he turned 55 years old. It was a fast, scary rollercoaster for all of us. We discovered that it wasn’t just a deepened addiction to alcohol he was experiencing.

He also became mentally irrational, lost his job, his home, his truck, his mind, and the support of his children and me. We could not save him, this time, from his own direction and destruction.

He had found a church where he was baptized 3 weeks before being admitted to the hospital. He had also purchased a Greyhound ticket to “go home,” which was still in his wallet the last weekend of his life.

It was late Friday, August 21, 2015 when he was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer that had already spread throughout his body and into his brain.

I sensed something was wrong when he didn’t call me on Thursday, to tell me about the results of his biopsy. Without hearing from him, I couldn’t sleep, and every ounce of my being knew something was terribly wrong. I heard the call. It was a higher voice, telling me to go…and GO NOW! I rushed to the hospital, just in time to meet the doctor in his room.

The doctor told me of his diagnosis, and the previous night, he had had an embolism which collapsed his left lung, as well as a fast growing tumor in his throat. The doctor said to call everyone close and tell them to get to the hospital if they wanted to see him, as they were preparing to move him up to critical care.

Something within me felt a force that was stronger than life itself in order to pull it all together to hold myself up to make the phone calls to my children and his family to tell them to drop everything and get to the hospital if they wanted to see him.

It was Saturday morning when the kids and I were together with him in the hospital. The boys stopped and picked up Jack in the Box. It would be the last meal with their Dad. He was wearing an oxygen mask, and could barely breathe, but he never lost his sense of humor, singing the song, “Its getting harder and harder to breath”, as they wheeled his hospital bed up to critical care.. The pain in my heart was put on hold as I held it together for him, and the kids, to have the last conversations to plan with him, what was to come next.

The last words he said to me were late on Saturday night. “Have you ever seen somebody die? Well, you better leave the room.” I told him, I’m not going anywhere.

On Sunday, hospice nurses had talked to the kids and I about the options before us, and it was dire.

On Monday, we had to move him to hospice, where we could turn the radio on for him so he could transition with dignity. And by Monday at 10pm, he had taken his last breath.

His heartbeat was strong, but his breathing had ceased. It was when his heart stopped, that his soul had left his body. The heart was the last organ to go.

The moments of his transition were devastating. This wasn’t something I could not protect my kids from. This wasn’t something I ever thought I would ever go through, sitting next to my son, feeling his loss too.

The suddenness of how fast he left, was more traumatic then I would even know at that time. My family had just experienced a life change that could never be reversed.

The grief felt from his loss was not just my own but also the grief felt in my children’s hearts too.

Over the next few months, I tried to get on with life as normal and run my business, but my heart and mind were not there. It was hard to function as if nothing happened. and I found I just couldn’t do it at the pace I used too.

I attended grief counseling for the following year and learnt that grief is a process that takes it own time, and we cannot force it.

The grief of loss opens the heart in ways we do not know as the pain is endured.

A few years after that time, I found myself and my strength through my conviction to my spirituality and connection with God. And put myself in situations in which I would experience and endure even more grief.

Although I searched for meaning, purpose, and direction in my life,  my spirituality and faith in God continued to be tested over the next years to come. I would experience darkness at the depths of my soul, as if I had been sent into the Wolves’ Den and spit back out, saved by God’s love.

When I prayed for love and support, God heard me and guided me. God put me in circumstances that would force the healing of my heart, to remind me of Gods daily presence in my life.

Gods Love for my life gave me even more purpose, faith and trust, not only in God, but also in myself.

From these experiences, I have learned to listen to the voice of God and trust in God’s answers. God takes me to a place of humbleness, gratitude, and eternal service. Of course, it was not by my “wants” or “desires,” but by the Grace of God, which carried me and directed me and took me to a place of acknowledgement and acceptance of the truth of God’s love in my life. I am eternally grateful.

As I begin to share portions of my journey with you, with an open heart, I am vulnerable, but yet, I gain strength in the sharing. As it is with hope, you come to hear Gods sweet whisper, in which leads us to the precious moments we are to experience.

I will always remember, it is the heart, which is the strongest organ, and the last to go.

The journey of faith stands the test of time, and when we ask for God’s help, be prepared to answer the call, God will take you and lead you.

 “And since we know he hears us when we make our requests, we also know that he will give us what we ask for.” – John 5:15