Tuesday's Trust - A Prayer for You, and a Revelation...

Tuesday's Trust

A Prayer for You, and a Revelation...

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

~Ephesians 3:14-21

Over the years of reading this Scripture, I had always wondered in reading it, "How is it that we might ever have the power to really grasp the depths of Christ's love for us?" How is such comprehension really possible? In reading this familiar Scripture this week, I became aware for the first time that God is also telling us another very critical answer to a mysterious dilemma. In this Scripture, God is telling us that He wants us to know His love…, that love... that surpasses all knowledge…! 

We have so many questions about our deceased child, questions many of which will not fully be answered this side of Heaven. So how is it we live with such vacuum of knowledge of that which we  feel we really need to know? God tells us here. 

Whenever I have pleadingly asked Him a question about my child, I have noticed that He doesn't always directly answer me; instead, He comes to me and meets me in my pain, and somehow there is an alchemy there, resulting in a transformation that takes place in my heart, such that my questions that were all-important in the moment are no longer so all important as I experience and am overwhelmed with being in the presence of God Himself, and of feeling such amazing and tender love toward me and toward my child, and suddenly, that IS enough. The questions just seem to melt into thin air.

And now, I see why. He tells us here, that love of His, of which He wants us to know the height and depth, the width and length, is the only thing in this world that can surpass all knowledge, to the point that the details really don't matter. His love is everything that our soul needs, that our hearts crave, that our minds melt in, that our bodies bask in, and that love is all that we really need to begin to heal the brokenness that has befallen us due to the drastic devastation of Hell's worst evil that can ever befall a mommy and daddy, for it is the only thing, the only thing, that could ever be enough to absorb such evil and satisfy its hungry jowls. And then He amazingly uses that extreme vulnerability in our hearts and souls, our bodies and minds, to draw us under His wing, to be touched by His love,  to experience the sweetness of His presence, which gives us hope for yet another day...

Picture, thanks to ~Daily Scripture Promises 

Friday's Faith - The Occasional Comforting Visit… This One, Near Mother's Day

Friday's Faith

The Occasional Comforting Visit… 

This One, Near Mother's Day

In the middle of a cantankerous stew with family over inheritance issues, my spirit was too wound up to sleep. In a state of unrest, it is hard to rest. One of the stews involved a very precious gift given to me by my mother, a "Double-Wedding-Ring Quilt" that had been handmade by my grandmother and my mother in the 1930's in preparation for my mother's marriage to my daddy in 1939. 

There has been quite an uproar taking place in my family over this issue recently, and it is so unfortunate. There are three of us daughters, and Mother had three of these double-wedding ring quilts, so there was one for each of us girls, but seemingly now, they have all "disappeared."  The item was given in such love and now seemed to be surrounded by such hate…

I was tossing and turning, and praying to God to help me settle down, when all of a sudden, an inner vision came to me, a vision of the heart, in which my mother who looked to be about the age she was when she married my daddy came to me with her brunette hair, her smooth skin and gentle smile and looked at me with such love. She lovingly reached for the double-wedding-ring quilt that she had wanted to give me, held it in her arms, and then gently pulled it up over me, covering my broken heart with her beloved quilt and with her sweet touch. What a feeling of love came over me amidst her sweet blanketing. My spirit settled down, the unrest disappeared, the love overtook me, and I was able to gently go to sleep as my heart and body were tenderly being covered with her love…

Such comforting visits by my loved ones, usually my father, my mother, my brother, or my child seem to come at critical times in my life, with reminders that Love overcomes all. 

And indeed, it does…

~~~

1 Corinthians 13

1 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

John 15

 9 “As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Now remain in My love.

I Peter 4:8

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.

Picture, thanks to ~Out of the Ashes

Tuesday's Trust - Love Conquers All

Tuesday's Trust

Love Conquers All

Perhaps Love is more important than life. We are taught by the addiction specialists,

"Don't enable your child."

And while that may be important at some level, perhaps love is more important even than life. Love conquers all. Our child's heart and soul lasts forever. Life comes and goes and is replaced by new Life when our child is connected to the One who is Love.

Perhaps I deified "life" too much. Perhaps I turned my child's "life" into an idol to protect it more than protecting her heart with my love.

I fought my love for her, fearing it would hurt her life! (I could be manipulated by her "addictive" ploys, and it might cost her her "life," I told myself.)

So I implemented "tough love" to save her "life." But her heart was hurt, and her soul was put at risk. Fortunately, God's love is bigger than ours, and He went out to the farthest corners to "go after the lost sheep until He found it.*" (And in doing so, He was true both to His own heart AND was answering our desperate prayers cried out in love for our child.)

So when she lost her "LIFE" which I was valuing above all, I felt like a complete failure at some level (and still fight this). (At other levels, I understood I am not God and I cannot prevent catastrophes from happening, but still, my attempts at love and discipline did not save her "life.")

God got my attention enough to help me share our deep love with her two nights before she was killed. She and I hugged so tightly before she left.

Love conquers all...

It wasn't enough to save her "life" but it was enough to save her "love" and her "soul." (She came by the house on the day she was ultimately killed and recorded a c.d. full of songs that indicated her heart was turning back to God.)

And God, who is so much bigger and stronger than I, saved her "love," her "soul," and her eternal "Life."

She is with Him; she is safe; she is alive; her soul is safe, and

she is in the arms of Love forever.

Love conquers all.

*Luke 15:3-7

Then Jesus told them this parable: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent."