Love, your special one

I have started a blog post several times over the last few days. Trying to find the words to describe how I am feeling lately, how hard it is to raise 2 children while working and taking care of a home and how to deal with this lingering grief and upcoming anniversary of my dad's death.

It is amazing how life goes on. How our lives just keep going.

I have written before about winter being all about death. It is simply the truth in my life. 3 deaths over a 4 week period. Two of them are easier to remember and bring a sense of peace and joy in my life. But my dad. My dad.

When I was a kid, my dad called me his "special  one". Of course my siblings said it was because I was "special" but my dad just had a special place in his heart for me. I was a sensitive kid. Took everything personally and would often break out in a tantrum at the drop of a hat. My dad saw me. He understood what was going on with me. He knew that I just needed him and just needed to be heard.

Last summer our family went to Florida on vacation with my husband's family. We were all in a house for a week and it was an amazing week. A week filled with adventures of checking crab traps, riding on jet ski's, swimming in the ocean and seeing the Blue Angels fly. It was a trip that Henry still talks about.

That trip was the first time I realized how much alike Henry and I are. Henry is a sensitive kid. He has always been. He gets his feelings hurt easily and when he hurts someone else he feels this intense regret and remorse. He feels things and I see that. One of the nights we were there, Henry got his feelings hurt. So I walked with him for awhile down to the end of the dock where his dad was fishing. As we walked, we stopped and talked for awhile. I told my Henry that he was my special one. That he was the one I see and know how he is feeling. He cried even more when I told him that. And to this day, I tell him all the time that he is my special one.

My dad taught me how to be a good parent (mom did too) but he taught me how to SEE my kids. How to acknowledge their emotions and how to make sure they know their value and worth.

As this week comes and I remember each day of the days leading up to this death, I am trying to choose to remember the things that he taught me. The things that I carry on through his legacy. The things that make me, me because of him.

It is interesting that even after death, I can still learn from him. I can see how things he did changed me and shaped me into the person I am today. I see him in each of my siblings and in my children and my nephew.

He is still around in each of us yet it doesn't make it easier.

This week is hard. It is a week I dread each year. It is a week where I burst into tears for the smallest things. Where I am on edge constantly and where I long to go back and say more and do more. Yet that is grief.

Death changes you. Grief changes you, there is no denying that. Yet in the midst of my grief and my longing for a different story, I find grace and beauty in the world around me. I find it in my son, my daughter and my beautiful family.

I know God's grace surrounds me at these times. I know that God is with me through it all and I know that my dad is simply a veil away, longing and hoping he too was with  us.

God Bless you, dad. I miss you. - Your Special One

"Heaven is in Hawaii"

This is the name of Henry's new song that he has been singing to me for the past few days. There is a video of it here. 

He started singing this song the other day and at first I was like "umm so my dad left us all and went to Hawaii and that is where he has been all this time" And Henry said "Mom, Heaven is in Hawaii"

5 year old kids are so intuitive. Henry knows that this season of the year is hard for me. He knows that over the next few weeks I will remember the loss of my dad and both of my dad's parents. They all died within a 4 week period. And here he is, singing a song to me all about my dad and how he is in heaven in Hawaii. :-)

Last year, without knowing what the winter would bring, I wrote a blog that I refused to live in fear since it was winter. That I wasn't going to allow my own grief to control my life and that whatever happened that winter I would embrace it. Within 5 weeks of that blog both of my dad's parents passed away. 

To be honest, coming to this conclusion is what probably got me through their deaths. It wasn't that it was unexpected but 4 weeks apart, to the day, was. It wasn't that they were young and still had a lot of life in front of them- no they were over 80, almost 90 and had lived long full lives. But the pain of losing both of your grandparents within a month was hard. 

However, I had already committed to not allowing my own grief control me that winter, so I didn't. I embraced it. I embraced their deaths and allowed myself to lean into the pain of it, to lean into the pain of my own grief coming up and to lean into the pain that life and death are really just a part of our time on earth and when it is all said and done we move on to the next phase. 

God has given me the strength that I need to also embrace this winter. To embrace whatever is to come. To know that I have the strength to get through whatever life throws at me this winter.

Life is hard and messy and filled with pain. But it is also incredibly beautiful if you just stop and live in the moment of the life you are living. 

My doctor recently told me that as she continues in her practice year after year, she has come to realize that birth and death are the two most beautiful experiences she gets to have. To be able to hand someone their new baby is incredibly beautiful and to be able to sit with a patient at the end of their life brings a great deal of peace and beauty to her life. She told me that she didn't expect this when she first started in family practice but she is surprised how much it has changed her. It was simply beautiful to hear her put it that way. 

Birth and death are beautiful. We come from the ground and to the ground we return. 

And apparently when we die we just go to Hawaii so that sounds fine to me!

Embrace your life, embrace whatever is coming and know that you are never alone. God is always with you and you are stronger than you think you are.

(oh and yes, I know my daughter is climbing on the table here...it's her new favorite thing)

The Value of A Dream

Once a month I have to attend a mentor group as part of my candidacy for ministry process. The group has good people in it and the conversation is interesting but last night I did not want to go. It was dreary out, the holidays have been overwhelming and all I wanted to do was curl up and watch the Bachelor. But I went b/c I am required.

Marilyn, our mentor, shared that her church didn't celebrate Epiphany the day before so we were going to celebrate epiphany.

I had just preached on epiphany the day before so I was sure I knew everything she had to say (I can get ahead of myself a bit). I was surprised at how much I learned or thought about last night. Things I knew or had read but didn't put much focus on really stuck out to me. The Bible is interesting that way. When you read a passage over and over again you often find different themes or words popping out at you that you didn't ever hear before. It is what makes it possible for Pastors to preach on the same text over and over again.

Last night, Marilyn, made a point to mention each time the scripture said the word "dream".

1. Joseph has a dream telling him that Mary will have a child conceived by the Holy Spirit and he is to name him Jesus.

2. The wise men have a dream warning them to not go back to their home land through Jerusalem as they had come in fear that Herod may harm then.

3. An angel of the Lord appears to Joseph in a dream telling him to take Mary and baby Jesus to Egypt b/c Herod is trying to have them killed.

4. An angel of the Lord appears to Joseph again in a dream telling him it is safe to return to the land of Israel because Herod had died.

Dreams. What if Joseph and the wise men hadn't listened to their dreams. The whole narrative of the Bible would have been different. Mary would have been a single mother, shunned by her community raising the Christ child alone. The wise men would have gone back to Herod and either been killed for keeping the location of the child a secret or Jesus may have been found and killed due to them telling Herod where he was. Mary, Joseph and Jesus may not have fled to Egypt where they found refuge and they may not have returned to the town of Nazareth where Jesus would be raised and start his ministry.

So much would be different. Dreams have significance in our lives. It is amazing what kind of answers or guidance you can get from them if you are open to what they are saying.

Several times in my life I have had dreams that helped to change the course of what I was doing. Before I went into ministry I had dreams of being a Pastor. Too many to count but it took a significant event in my life, the death of my father, for me to finally listen to them and choosing to listen changed my life forever and for the better.

Two stand out to me the most. Right after my cousin Skyler died, his sister, Brittany, asked for our Bari Nani (great-grandmother) to come to her in a dream. That SAME night she came to me. Bari Nani was young and beautiful wearing a pink suit- which I later found out from her daughter that she owned a pink suit- and she was sitting with a young blonde blue eyed boy. She told me that she had Skyler and that all was well. When I told Brittany about the dream she froze, she didn't tell me that she had asked for Bari Nani to come to her and it was overwhelming what peace it brought to both of us.

The second was about a year after my dad passed. I wasn't doing okay. I was struggling on a daily basis and everyone saw it. I tried to hide it and pretend like life was normal but it wasn't. I had a dream one night where my dad showed up in my doorway, looked at me and said "It will all be okay". I woke up the next morning and had energy like I hadn't in a long time, I felt okay. I called my mom and told her about the dream and she, like Brittany, was silent. She then told me that she was on the back deck the night before yelling at my father to find a way to tell me everything would be okay. From that moment on, everything was. It changed me.

Dreams can change us. Dreams are so significant in our lives and often times we dismiss them as our minds wondering or as nothing. Yet when we hold onto the dream, listen to what it was saying, maybe just maybe we will be hearing the voice of God through the ones that we love. Guiding us, helping us and holding us.

I for one am glad that Joseph and the wise men listened to their dreams. They had faith and trusted in that faith. Enough to change the course of their life. When we do this, when we put our full trust and faith in God it is amazing what it can do for your life.

Listen to your dreams. You never know what it may do for you.

Blessings to all