Monday's Mourning Ministry - I Want to Stroll Over Heaven With You ~Alan Jackson

Monday's Mourning Ministry

I Want to Stroll Over Heaven With You

~Alan Jackson

I Want to Stroll Over Heaven With You

~Alan Jackson

If I surveyed all the good things that come to me from Above

If I could count all the blessings from the storehouse of love

I'd simply ask for a favor of Him beyond mortal king

And I'm sure that He'd grant it again

I want to stroll over Heaven with you some glad Day

When all our troubles and heartaches are vanished away

Then we'll enjoy the beauty where all things are new

I want to stroll over Heaven with you...

So many places of beauty, we long to see here below

But times and treasures have kept us from making plans as you know

But come the morning of the rapture, together we'll stand anew

Then we'll stroll over Heaven with you...

I want to stroll over Heaven with you some glad Day

When all our troubles and heartaches are vanished away

Then we'll enjoy the beauty where all things are new

I want to stroll over Heaven with you...

I want to stroll over Heaven with you...

Picture, from video "I will never leave you"
Video: http://youtu.be/h7FSLheFb94

Thursday's Therapy - More on "Not Letting Go"

Thursday's Therapy

More on "Not Letting Go"

After last week's Thursday's Therapy where we addressed the subject of "To Let Go," or "Not To Let Go," we discovered the elucidated theory of Dr. Louis E. LaGrand that spells out his view of "Not Letting Go":

Speak to Your Loved One

Dr. LaGrand thinks it's good to have a conversation with a deceased loved one, that it's an effective therapeutic outlet for your inner turmoil, and that when you feel like you are being heard, you receive comfort. He points out that in many Christian denominations, they teach "the doctrine of the communion of saints" which he describes as "involving the belief that the deceased loved ones, who are in heaven, are able to hear you and intercede with God for those on earth." 

He goes on to say, 

If you talk to your loved one, some remarkable things can occur, such as:

• It will provide an outlet and release as you deal with many changes in the days ahead.
• It gives motivation toward adjusting to a new world.
• It is a way to demonstrate love in separation. The deceased is always a thought away in your heart and it may well be an important way for you to remind yourself that love never dies. Though separated, you will always have a relationship.
• It can be a wake-up ritual.
• It is an effective emotional release.
• It bolsters much needed confidence.
• It promotes inner peace to be able to tell a loved one when something happens.

Dr. LaGrand concludes:

Even though we live in a world designed to keep the spiritual and the soulful on the periphery, it does not mean that we cannot intelligently choose to speak to a deceased loved one.

from Healing Grief, Finding Peace: 101 Ways to Cope with the Death of Your Loved One by Dr. Louis E. LaGrand

Friday's Faith - When Trying to Clean Her Room...

Friday's Faith

When Trying to Clean Her Room...

What's a parent to do

When the child for whom you're longing

Leaves behind only her belongings?

It breaks your heart in two.

Each little note she's written

Expressing her childlike heart

Gives your heart a wrenching start

For this child for whom you're smitten.

Each outfit that you touch

Takes your heart right back to when

Her life with yours was so tightly woven-in,

Yet now ripped apart, it hurts your heart so much.

Each stuffed animal that she hugged

Now just stares at you, forlorn

For the little girl who from them was so abruptly torn;

You hold onto them and cry while your aching heart is tugged.

What are parents to do who've been left behind

By the child they so dearly loved

Leaving only her belongings behind

When each and ev'ry one of them reminds them of her love?

When cleaning piles up from her room,

It seems to pile upon our gloom.

It's as if each pile we pack,

Piles upon our grief pile stack...

And yet our God provides a vision

Of our little girl in Heaven

Helping Him to build her Heavenly room

...With each loving stack we've packed in gloom.

As she builds with Him her room Above,

There's stack upon stack of our symbols of love

Surrounding her to comfort her

With current signs of our love for her.

And since she knows we'll rejoin her soon

She helps her God prepare our room...

Our God of Love makes all love's symbols fit together

As lovingly as a mother bird selects each nest's feather

To build His child a room of love

Reflecting Love's Spirit throughout her Home above.

And He reveals to us we too have a part

In continuing to build up our child's heart,

So now we embrace each loving symbol,

Knowing her Heavenly room will, such love, resemble

Till we too can gather There where all His children will assemble.

Our child, when we gather your things together now,

We will weep,

But we will also before our Father gratefully bow,

Thanking Him that in His loving arms you sleep...

Picture, thanks to Grieving Mothers 

Friday's Faith - The Prints You Left Behind...

Friday's Faith

The Prints You Left Behind...

Baby, what folks don't know

Is you left your prints on us

Before you ever did go,

Prints that reach deeper than skin,

Down into the heart, and down into the soul.

Your love, Your laughter burrows in,

Your gentle spirit, the wisdom of a friend,

Your kindness buried deep, now leaves a gaping hole.

Our hearts are split wide open

Now that you are gone...

And yet the Sprit's spoken ~

You're not gone; you're just not home!

We must learn new ways to commune

Just like the Son did with His Father

To keep their hearts in tune,

To let their love still flow like water.

Thank you that you touched me in such a deep way.

May we practice communing one with another

That our hearts may flow together in a new way

Until we're joined together again on that Final Day

When God reunites a precious daughter with her mother.

Until that time, your prints reach so deep;

My love for you just grows and grows, tall as the mountain steep.

Your spirit reaches in, touches my body, soul, spirit, and mind,

Picking up where we left off, with the prints you left behind...

Picture - thanks to Lessons Learned in Life's Photos

Poem - The Prints You Left Behind - Angie Bennett Prince - 11/17/2011

Friday's Faith - If Heaven Had a Phone...

Friday's Faith

If Heaven Had a Phone...

If Heaven had a phone

And I could call and talk to you,

Reaching across miles and miles, through distances unknown,

What would be the words I would want to say to you

I've "said" only with tears, Baby, to you since you've been gone...?

First of all, I love you with all my heart~

My tears fill many buckets with that love;

I'm just not the same since we've been apart:

Life's lost so much meaning since you went above...

(Words are so insufficient to say what th' heart must say;

It seems my heart's cry to you speaks better than words any day...)

My tears speak a language that's so hard to translate;

They send their cries through sorrow straight through to Heav'ns Gate...

They seem to know my heart, more than just do words alone;

Perhaps my tears are better than talking on the phone...!

And baby girl when you appear to me with your great big smile,

It has a language of its own that transcends many-a-mile.

Perhaps God has a "phone" plan better than any other

When th' spirit signals messages back 'nd forth, from th' child to th' mother...

A communication system that's been there since before you were born

That conveys love's messages to you better than any human horn.

So who needs a phone plan when we can "talk" through the air:

When hearts cry out one to another, each beat becomes a prayer...

Poem - If Heaven Had a Phone... - Angie Bennett Prince - 2/24/2011