Brain Freeze

Crapbag! This is has been my term for the past few months when I am frustrated. Lewd and crewd it is, but so be it. It's better than a lot of other words that can fly out of my mouth without a moments notice.
Just read a horrible book that has me depressed and missing my mother. My family is in bed, and I am up despite the fact that I am exhausted. So many thought running through my mind. Feeling shell shocked again, just as the Doc said I would. I hate this feeling. I want to crawl into a cave and hide from the world for about six months. I would want to take my boys with me of course, because when I am not with them it is worse. Yet, sometimes I feel an immense need to have a break. They are spending a rare night with my dad and stepmom tomorrow night which will be good for them adn good for my dad, and hopefully good for me.
I was painting again this week. It was nice to feel the brush in my hands again and mix the paint and play with colors on the canvas. I went downstairs to get my glue sticks for my hot glue gun. I didn't remember, as I opened the drawer that my glue sticks lay behind the box containing my mother's ashes. I was stunned, I couldn't breath for a minute and felt oddly still, almost disembodied for a minute or two. Of course in my traumatised brain, I laughed it off and kept going. This is the issue, I can't pretend to laugh, I can't pretend to not feel, to not care. I have to let this go. My inner sense of control combined with my obstinance will not let me grieve properly. Hence, I am pushing these feelings back, and trying to just move on, when that is not normal.
I always thought that my cousin was a drama queen for falling apart before mom died and then many times afterward. Now I realize that she is acting exactly how I should be acting. Will this madness ever end. I'm trapped inside my brain, and I can't get out. Praying for God to help me.

Be Still and Know that I am God

I started reading my Daily devotional today, as well as writing in my prayer journal. The piece of scripture: "Be still and know that I am God" Psalm 46:10 lept out at me today. The author of the devotional explained that in several translations 'still' means 'rest'. This verse is special to me just as the verse "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:6-7.
I love these verses because worry and anxiety over the safety and care of my family has always plagued me. I worry about my children's health and safety daily, I worry about our finances, I worry about my dad and stepmom, about my husband's job. You name it, and I worry. During my 'Dark Times' the worry and fear can take over and I wallow in my own depression for a week or more. I learned in my devotion this morning that if I will make sure to have quiet time with God a daily ritual, that my fears will subside as I grow to trust God even more every day.
This morning was wonderful. Our new dog Marley was playing in the backyard, my boys were playing happily by themselves in the playroom, Brad was watching basketball and I was reading my devotion and writing in my prayer journal. The only bad thing that we did today was to not go to church. Connor is getting over his ear infection and Brad may have the flu, so we decided to stay at home. I know God is okay with that. Besides, there are times when I am sitting in church when my mind wanders and I am not paying attention to God while I am in His house! Today, at home with my family, reading about trusting God in my devotional, made me give God praise wholeheartedly and with so much emotion and joy that it made up for not being in His house this morning.
We cleaned out my mom's house yesterday and it is completely empty. To see her home as nothing but an empty shell added yet another layer of sadness to the mountain growing inside me. Yet as the sadness comes, a relief is also present and somehow gives me a sense of balance. I don't have to worry about her house anymore and I don't have to go into her house and be assaulted by her presence everywhere I turn. The memories that I found in her drawers and her smell all around me sent me into a tailspin everytime I walked through those doors. I miss her very much. This week I am not angry with her and her alcoholism and lack of nurturing. Instead I long to hear her voice, even if she were to give me a talking to about something I had done or not done. I just want to be able to tell her I love her again. the anger is much easier to face. This longing for something I can never have again in this life is much harder to bare. However the anger will kill me on the inside, and the mourning will enable me to grow and become closer to God. I choose to mourn, and God will take care of me. I will be stil and know that He is there with me, through it all.

Mr. Sandman Leave me alone

I finally went to see our family physician today. I had been putting the visit off since Mom had passed because I felt like I had gained weight and he is such a strong believer in me and my athletic ability (such that it was) that I didn't want to let him down. As soon as I told him that mom had died, he understood. I don't even think that I must have gained any weight after all because he didn't mention it, and he would have. My foot has not healed enough for full out running yet,but it will in time. The other night I came to the realization that I am TERRIFIED of going to bed at night. If I take a nap during the day with Connor or on the weekend, I am fine. However, going to bed in the night is a different story. I lay there and images of my mom's final hours, and seconds flash across my mind. I see them placing the magnet on her pacemaker, making her heart stop. I see the heart rate monitor register the flat line and the 0 under respitory. The worst image is permanently burnt into my mind. It is of her on the embalming table in the funeral home. I had to go in and identify her. It was horrible. I wish that I could reach into my brain and rip that image out and throw it into a fire.
All of these images, and my extreme fear of sleep, my mood swings, and overall numbness toward my mother's death led Dr. Moore to diagnose me with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Before mom had even died I thought I was suffering from PTSD from the three times that I had found her unresponsive. So now the question is, will this ever go away??? Will these images leave me at peace. I am being haunted and it is terrible. Dr. Moore is a Christian like myself and he told me that it could very well be Satan attacking me, knocking me down, and making me miserable. I believe this could be the case. He recommended praying for my children, or just talking to God and asking him to take those images away. I will do that tonight, once I brave getting into the bed. I would rather sit up and pass out from sleep meds in a chair than go into that bed at night. Another sad part of this is my sweet husband can't sleep well without me in the bed! So he is pestering me to come to bed and didn't realize until tonight that I just can't. Not before taking my anti anxiety meds.
I have become a legal pill popper. A person relying on meds to keep me sane. On the one hand I am happy to have them to take because they help, but on the other hand I don't want to need them.

What will our Birthday be like in Heaven?

I can only Imagine - Mercy Me

I can only imagine what it will be like, when I walk by Your side...
I can only imagine, what my eyes will see, when Your Face is before me!
I can only imagine. I can only imagine.
Surrounded by Your Glory, what will my heart feel?
Will I dance for you, Jesus? Or in awe of You, be still?
Will I stand in Your presence, or to my knees will I fall?
Will I sing 'Hallelujah!'? Will I be able to speak at all?
I can only imagine! I can only imagine!

I can only imagine, when that day comes, when I find myself standing in the Son!
I can only imagine, when all I will do, is forever, forever worship You!
I can only imagine! I can only imagine!

I posted this tonight because one of my friends from highschool, who passed away about a month after my mom, was able to celebrate her birthday in Heaven today. Her earthly father had passed before her, so I know that he was by her side today during the celebration she undoubtebly had in Heaven. Can you imagine what your birthday will be like in Heaven? My small mind can not even comprehend it. I just know that it will be a celebration to rival all others. However, I think that in heaven, your true birthday, will be the day that you died on earth. Because you were born a human, into sin and death, and because of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, you are in heaven celebrating your return to the heavenly father who created you.
I have thought about my mom's birthday this year with the realization that she will be celebrating in Heaven as well. Before we let her go that night in the hospital I told her to "go home to Granny, and Uncle Jack, Uncle Fred, and Aunt Caroline, but mostly to go home to your Father" When I was telling her this, I know she could hear me. I told her not to worry about leaving me, because I would be fine. Now as I imagine her birthday celebration in July I am so thankful that she will be surrounded by family and friends and most of all God himself. Who knows, maybe you even get gifts in Heaven, glorious gifts made of things that we still do not know we have here on Earth. I imagine the cakes to be made of the finest sugar and cream, wich the most delicious honey running through the icing. For my mom, I hope that the Angels give her chocolate, because above any other food, she would eat chocolate.
There is so much to look forward to in eternity. Reconnection with loved ones lost is the thing that I look forward to the most. I want to give my mother that last hug that I should have given her. I want to stand and hold my Granny's hand and tell her about my children and how much she would have loved them. I want to meet my grandfather, my mother's father, who died when mom was only 9 months old. I want to touch his face and place my hand in his, because I have heard that he was gentle and kind. I also want to meet my dad's father, Joseph Tucker and tell him what a wonderful father his son had been to me. And to run into my Granny Tucker's arms and tell her thank you for teaching me how to crotchette and for giving me Dr. Peppers everytime I came to her house. I lost her with I was only 6 and have vague memories of her, but in each one I sense a feeling of warmth, along with gentleness, shrouded in a straightbacked, elegant southern bell with delicate hands and an intricately woven bun.
These peopel will be there to greet me one day when my time comes and I am excited for that day. I am in no hurry, mind you. But when it comes, I will be ready to kiss the feet of my saviour and tell him Thank you a million times for giving me grace to fall on my knees and know that his love for me will remain no matter how bad I have been or how far I have fallen. This my friends, is what we live for on Earth. OUr day of recogning, when we recognize the person who has cradled us in His hands since the day we were born.
Hold on tight, this will be a bumpy road until we reach the end. But when our journey is over, it is only then, that our lives will begin.

A little piece of Heaven

Today was a gorgeous day in the south. We have many sunny warm, often hot days here, but today was perfect. The sky was clear blue, a deep azure blue that looked as though it could have been sliced in two with a sharp piece of glass. The temperature was 70 degrees and the sun was bright. A minimal breeze fluttered around us as if it were our own personal fan and kept us comfortable. I was sitting by the lake at our local park with my three year old son and told him that I think we were seeing a little piece of Heaven today.
Since my mom died, I have been reading Randy Alcorn's book, 'Heaven'. I read it off and on, for short periods of time. One thing that I wanted to learn from his book was what my mom might be experiencing in Heaven. Mainly, what will heaven look like? Everything that Dr. Alcorn has read and studied has led him to believe that the present Heaven will look just like our current Earth, but with more vibrant colors, perfect shapes, perfect weather, everything will be exquisitly proportioned and fit to our needs in the present heaven.
After reading this passage I am noticing little glimpses of heaven here on earth. My favorite glimpse has been watching my boys play together and laugh thier loud, rolling, cackle laugh that my mom used to love to hear over the phone. When I watch them laughing together this way I feel like I am getting a little piece of Heaven.
Another glimpse would be when something I hear or see causes strong feelings to emerge inside me and I get goosebumps on my skin. This is when I feel the Holy Spirit stir within me. I imagine in Heaven, my skin will tingle with that sense of joy and expectation all of the time in the precense of Jesus.
Watching my sweet boys sleep at night, cuddling them in my arms, snuggling up to them and stealing kisses from their soft plump cheeks. Those all feel like Heaven.
I was reading a post on facebook that my friend's son had made her laugh really hard, the good kind of belly laugh where tears come to your eyes, and I realize that when that happens, it is a little piece of heaven. Laughter has been rare for me the past three months. I had been longing to have a good belly laugh to soothe my soul. My wonderful friend Jaime came by to see me the other day and gave me a ton of good laughs! We still have a chandelier hanging in the ceiling of the room that was once a dining room, but is now part of the playroom. She hit her head going back and forth in that room 3 different times! Each time, instead of inquiring about her wellfare, I fell to my knees with a belly laugh that made tears come to my eyes. I laughed so hard that I had to tell her I was sorry for not worrying about her head! Of course she laughed too, and the kids caught on to our laughter and pretty soon my house was filled with laughter! It was a beautiful sound. I realized then that I was getting to hear what Heaven must sound like. A chorus of laughter brought on by the ultimate joy of being with our Creator and our Saviour for eternity. And then I felt blessed.

Self Righteousness

Self Righteousness is a trait that I absolutely cannot stand. Imagine my surprise when I had a flashback of a very self righteous moment of my own. It was triggered by an event yesterday, where a young African American man knocked on the door of our house. My boys were home with me, it was 4:00 in the afternoon and we were completely vulnerable. I opened the door slightly to the young man on my doorstep and listened to him give his spill about how he was working with a company called Urban Community movement or something like that. According to this young man, the company he worked for had a mission to give kids from underprivledged communities a chance to make it in life. He then explained that working door to door was not an exciting or enjoyable task, but he was working for his 5 year old daughter. As he was speaking, my son’s stood in the back of our foyer anxiously watching me and listening to him, not because he was an African American, or a man, but because he was a stranger on our doorstep. My expression was friendly and I acted as though I was listening attentively as he showed me the list of magazines that he was selling. What I was really paying attention to was the fact that it was pouring down rain, and he had no umbrella. His coat was probably at one time what we would refer to as a rain coat, but as he was talking to me I could tell that it was soaked. Beads of water streamed down his face as he talked and I fought the urge to ask him inside out of the dripping rain. In the back of my mind I pictured myself inviting him in and then him pulling a gun or grabbing me in front of my children. So, the fear won, and I let him stand in the rain. After he had given me his speech, I knew that I could not buy anything from him without my husband giving me the “Why did you do that? We didn’t need any magazines” speech. I looked down and told him that I didn’t really have a check book of my own and that my husband usually made the financial decisions and that he could come back if he wanted. He said okay and asked what time my husband would be home, I told him around five. He smiled and said have a good day and walked down my steps out into the downpour. As I watched him go into the rain and across the street I knew that I couldn’t just let him leave. My compassion for this man was so great that I told the kids to put their snacks on the couch and come with me to the car. I found an umbrella downstairs and we all three jumped in the car. The whole time my oldest son said, “Mom, should you be doing this? He will probably be okay?” and I told him no, that the man needed an umbrella. We found him leaving our neighbors house and crossing the street. I drove up to him and rolled my window down. “I thought you might need an umbrella,” I told him and handed it to him out my window. He smiled and said “Thank you.” Then I before I knew it I said, “Well, I have a little checking account of my own that I might can buy some magazines out of, walk over that way and I will pull over” So we followed him up the hill and then I stopped expecting him to just walk up to the window with the umbrella in hand. Instead he jumped into the front seat of my car. My heart started racing and I glanced anxiously back at the boys who just stared at him as he sat in my front seat. I was in my pajama pants and a t-shirt, and had no shoes on. He got out his pamphlet and I asked him how much Men’s Journal was, “Fifty dollars for three years.” He told me. Yikes. I didn’t have that kind of money. So I asked him to find the cheapest one on there and it was Women’s Day for $35.00. I hastily made out my check and filled out the form, all the while nervous that I was putting my children in danger even though he seemed perfectly nice. After thanking me, he folded up his pamphlet, opened the car door and the umbrella and walked on down the street.
What bothers me about this exchange was that all the while I felt sorry for this man, I had a general distrust of him. There was a smell that hung about him that I can’t quite place but that repelled me not in a gross way, but more of a weary fearful way. He smelled like pal mal cigarettes, mixed with the slight hint of beer from the day before, along with a musty odor that clung to his clothes. When he was in front of me at my door I could smell him and it made me not want to look him in the face. When he got into my car, the scent was so overpowering that I wanted to roll the window down. After he left, I could still smell it in my nostrils. His smell does not bother me as much as my reaction to him does. I was compassionate, and hospitable, although fearful and distrustful at the same time. Even after we got back to our house I thought that I had done the wrong thing, that I had just given him $35 that I would never see any magazines. Then I looked at the picture of my mother on my prized antique dresser in the living room and remembered a time when I showed less compassion and zero tolerance and was ashamed.

Mom had only been baptized about a year before I became pregnant with Connor. She was very active in her church and was really becoming a good person, the person that she probably always was underneath the veil of alcohol. I was eating an early dinner with her at a restaurant in Trussville, and I can't remember if I had Tucker with me or not, but I know that I was pregnant with Connor. I was in a bad mood, as usual for those days and we were sitting at the table when a hispanic boy, about the age of 8 walked up to our table to ask for money. The memory is hazy but I think that my mom might have given him a $5 bill. I do remember that I was not very charitable and even got angry at the fact that the restaurant had let a soliciter of any kind in the building. After the boy left our table I told my mom that I was going to tell the hostess that there was a child soliciting money from the tables and that she might want to get rid of him. Sure enough, about five minutes later the manager walked the boy out of the restaurant. My mother was infuriated with me. She told me that I was not a good Christian, that I was a hypocrite and a spoiled one at that. I remember that we argued over it for a few minutes and then I realized that she was right, and I wanted to run outside into the parking lot and take the boy a few dollars that I had in my purse. When I walked outside, he was no where to be found. I remember I cried back at the table over what I had done and that mom told me to forget about it because there was nothing I could do about it at that point. I still felt bad for weeks later and wished to see the little boy again.
On that day, my mother was a better represenative of Christ than I was and the realization hit me hard. I had been baptized years earlier, had been a member of a church for years, and even taught Sunday School. How could this woman who drank half of her life away be closer to God's word than I was?? Easily, she had been brought to her knees and had felt His hands lift her up. At the time Brad and I both had successful careers, one precious child already and another healthy baby boy on the way. It had been years since I had been on my knees before God because I thought I had it all together and basically was doing fine on my own.
That all changed when Connor was born a few months after this incident at the restaurant. After a 14 hour labor of suffering from constant vomiting as a result of being allergic to my epidural, I was dehydrated and felt very close to death. I had an emergency c-section and saw Connor for a second before I had to turn my head on the operating table and throw up again. Hours later as I sat in my room alone, the NICU doctor came with a nurse to tell me that my baby had a hole in his lung that had deflated when he had taken his first deep breath coming out of my womb. The doctor said that he would have to stay down in the NICU for monitoring but that I could come down and see him the next day. I laid in the hospital bed that night, in and out of conciousness looking at the empty bassinet beside me thinking, "Where is my baby? This isn't supposed to happen, he was fine!" The next morning on my way down to the NICU in a wheel chair the same Dr found me and told me that Connor had tested positive for Group B strep and would need to have a spinal tap, and stay hooked up to an iv for antibiotics for a minimal of 14 days. Thankfully they caught the Group B strep before it became spinal meningitis, and our doctor informed us that it was actually God's hand that caused them to find the bacteria in the first place. If Connor's lung had not collapsed, then they would not have ran the routine bacteria test. We could have gone home with a healthy baby,only to have to return with a terminally ill baby a few days later. I had been on my knees at that point for 5 days and was afraid to stop praying. I would not feel as though Connor was out of the clutches of that bacteria until I walked out of the hospital with him. Each day, as I held my tiny baby, who was hooked up to an IV in his little hands, then his feet, and finally his forhead, I would beg God to make him healthy and strong. On day 14 my husband and I walked out of that hospital with our baby boy and brought him home. My dad was there with Tucker and they both loved on him in our den before we took him upstairs to lay in his crib for the first time. I saw my dad eyes well up with tears as he patted Connor's little back and say "Welcome Home little man"
Once again a circumstance had brought me to my knees and I realized how much I still needed God in my life everyday. Not just the days that are going bad, but the good days as well. Now I thank God for the sun as it rises, the rain as it falls, my car as it runs, our house as it stands and most of all I thank God for my children, my husband and my family.
I pray that I am no longer self righteous because I have no right to be. I am NOTHING without God. I pray that the boy who came to our house yesterday did not sense my fear of him, or my reaction to his smell. I pray that he saw a little piece of Christ in me, because that was my inention. I think now that I know where I have smelled that particular mix of smells before. There was a homeless man who hung out around a bank building that I worked at downtown. We all spoke to him and were friendly to him, but he had the same smell. I now pray that the boy that I gave my umbrella to, had a place to sleep that night. I hope that he was not homeless. I am ashamed for being so sensitive to his smell and for fearing his presence around my children. I can only hope that he felt my sincere desire to help him.