Happy Birthday Roderick

Dear Roderick

Happy Birthday! How are you doing?  I know the answer.  You are doing great and I am so happy to know that but I miss you so much.  We are having a party for you and I so wish you could be here physically but I know you will be here in spirit.  This year has been a rough one trying to live without you in the house.  I never knew how much your energy brought to our home but I know you love to see the bond that has formed between Tyler and Angeline.  They miss you, you know?  Also your dad and I, we have learned to hold onto each other through it all.  All four of us, we hold onto each other and the love we would like to give to you we now give to each other.  I know you want us to be happy and I know that you see the big picture and the reason why we should be happy so we choose to live by faith and focus on the blessings so that our struggles and grief can shrink evermore. 

I will forever be grateful for what you have brought to our lives and the 16 years you were with us.  We are forever changed for having you with us.  We will continue to enjoy your presence with the memories and the life lessons you left with us.  Your life has not been in vain.  As you enjoy the happiness of heaven remember to look down on us and cheer us on.  When you look down from heaven and see us make wrong choices pray to God for us to show us the way.  We want our life to continue to bring joy to those around us but especially to the Father who loves us so much and who’s love you experience now in a way that we cannot comprehend. 

Your friends and your cousins they love you so much.  I can only imagine the joy you feel when you look down and see how they celebrate you and that they choose to do it by giving and sharing love rather then by becoming bitter and angry.  Yes the ripple effects of your life are not going to end soon.  Your life was a giant splash and the ripples go on and on and on. 

Thank-You so much Roderick for everything you’ve given us and for everything you have been to us.

Love You Always

Mommy

What a day it must be for you in heaven today, celebrating your first birthday there.

I’m trying to imagine how birthdays are celebrated in heaven, and oh, the cake, how good it would taste.  I’m wondering if you were patient to wait with eating the cake before the birthday song is sung? :)

I can’t join you for your party but I’m sure you’ll watch us celebrate down here. This morning I missed you walking up close to me and bragging about your height, and being in better shape then me, witch of course I’m not going to argue now that you have the angels help you with your workout. Teasing you with the peach fuzz on your cheek would be fun, but almost a year has passed since I’ve seen you so who knows how many of those would still be there?  It’s been sooo empty without you, many time’s I look around and wonder, was it a dream that you were part of our family, or was it real? It was so real. So real that until this day I can’t understand why you don’t come join us for your favorite meals or different activities. 

Your short life here has taught me how important it is to live life to the fullest and what an impression you leave when you move on from here.

I really miss you Roderick, the word “miss” doesn’t fully describe it but don’t know how else to put it.

Have a heavenly birthday

Love you

Dad

Joy vs Happiness

  Joy vs Happiness

Last week I wrote about Joy In The Journey.  That blog applies when we are going through a difficult time, a time when happiness seems far away.  A time when life seems dark, when we are going through a valley.  In our case right now a time of grieving.  There is a difference between joy and happiness.  We can’t always have happiness but we can always have Joy.   The Joy of the Lord is in our hearts.  It’s there when we think of the wonderful life we enjoyed with Roderick, it’s there when we see our family drawing together and choosing to go through this together, it’s there when our friends cry with us and come to visit us and share their wonderful memories of Roderick, it’s there because we realize we don’t have to go through this alone, it’s there when the Lord sends a sweet dream about Roderick, it’s there all the time, it doesn’t leave.  When the darkness is so thick you can feel it the joy shines a bright light on our path, when we have more questions then answers the joy shines onto the statements that we know to be true, God loves us, comforts us, and is grieving with us; when we cry uncontrollably the joy shines through our tears.  Yes the Joy of the Lord is truly our strength. 

   Happiness on the other hand is a different thing.  When asked how we are doing, we don’t answer, “We are so happy right now”.  No it’s difficult.  We’re not happy that we are separated from Roderick.  We are not happy that our house feels so empty.  We’re not happy that we have to ask for a table for four instead of five when we go out to eat, it doesn’t seem right.  There are so many adjustments to make that don’t seem right, it doesn’t make us happy.  We will be happy again even though right now it's still a bit difficult to be happy.  I will confess that until it happens. 

   I came across a face book page yesterday for moms who have lost children.  I don’t mean to be judgmental or mean but I decided that page was not for me.  I don’t know if I grieve differently then most moms or if I’m just not on this journey long enough and am just so ignorant but I found it discouraging.  There were moms who said their child had left 20 years ago and it was just getting harder all the time or eight years ago or five years ago.  I read only one comment that sounded encouraging.  No we will be happy again, in fact, I believe we are doing Roderick wrong if we cannot again be happy.  He would want that for us, he is happy where he is at and he lived a happy life here on earth, he would never want us to be stuck in sadness forever or until we get to go to heaven.

   So while we walk through this valley of grief, of sadness, we can’t say that we are happy.  I don’t think you can be sad and happy at the same time but we will climb out of this valley of sadness and again find a field of happiness and while we climb, the joy of the Lord is always with us giving us strength to keep climbing.

   2017 we will watch the Lord make something beautiful out of tragedy.

Joy In The Journey

  Do you sometimes wish that you could go to heaven, if Jake and you could go together?  My niece asked me a question something like this not to long ago. 

   Not just Jake and I but all four of us, yes I do, it would have to be all four of us because I could not bare the thought of Tyler and Angeline having to go through another tragedy but if in someway the four of us could all enter the gates of heaven and meet Roderick there and all be together again, that would be so amazing.  Being surrounded with the kind of love that we could only taste a tiny bit of here.  Who wouldn’t want that?

   I do not need to think along these lines for long and I realize I am content to stay here a little longer.  My kids they still need me, I cannot leave them living in a home without a mother, now when they are their normal sweet selves anybody would be there for them and love them but when they have their moments that are not so loving and sweet then I’m convinced that nobody would love them the way I do.  Now I know that God would be there for them and I also know that should that be the case God would send people to be there for them even at their worst moments but so I feel.  Maybe when they are on their own and have their own families then I could go, they wouldn’t need me much anymore but no, I don’t want my grandchildren to have to go to grandparents day every year and borrow someone else’s grandma because their grandma can’t make it.  I don’t want my grandkids to wonder why their grandma is not there to watch their games, dance, or piano recital like their friends’ grandmas.  I guess I’ll have to wait awhile before I’m ready to go but I don’t mind because Roderick is so well taken care of in heaven.  Here our kids need their parents, who gave birth to them to take care of them until they learn to understand the love of their real father but in heaven they have not the parents who gave birth to them but the father who actually planned their lives before they were born and who knit them together in their mother’s womb, so I have no reason to worry about Roderick.  When I pray for Tyler and Angeline about my concerns for them or their struggles and desire for them to make the right choices I no longer have any concerns or worries about Roderick.  Instead I always add to my prayers “Thank-you Lord that Roderick is with You in heaven”.

  When I think about how beautiful and how wonderful heaven is with no worries, no weariness and only all joy and happiness forever and ever then I think, ‘what is another 60 years compared to eternity and even though there is sadness and grief I have to go through I am quite content to deal with that for a little longer and finish my course here on earth and focus on the joys in my journey for in the end it will be worth it all.

  

   Maybe this sounds sad and discouraging but quite honestly since Roderick has moved to heaven I have spent so much time reading about heaven and imagining it that it has become so real to me and I find it brings me joy in the journey.  I feel like everyone should read about heaven, it makes the struggles and trials seem so insignificant while the joys and victories seem so much greater.  We don’t want to just waste our time on this earth sitting and waiting until we get to go to heaven but if we truly knew the joy of heaven this journey would be so much more enjoyable.  It’s like running a race but focusing on the reward in the end.  Yes there are aches and pains but they seem insignificant because your running a race and you know you are winning.  If you’re only running through this life but you have no idea what your running for, you’re just running and running aaannd running having no idea when it will end, you begin to feel the pain in the muscles and the aches in the bones and all you can think about is when will this pain end, why do I keep running, what’s the use yet you can’t stop because life continues and you have to go with it.  I truly believe the more real heaven is to us the more we can enjoy the race but only if we actually run the race not if we sit down and wait until heaven will come to us now that’s just depressing.

Joy In The Journey

Verse:

Along with friends and family, we travel up the road

A happy band of pilgrims, Heaven is our goal

And we love this life we're living, discovering each day

That the joys of the journey are many on the way

Verse:

Now we're moving with a purpose, an eternal point of view

Like the years that hurry by us, we're only passing through

Now we work for Jesus gladly, to give our best away

Satisfied in knowing our labor's not in vain

Chorus:

And there's joy in the journey, good times in the going

It's not all in the reaping, there's plenty in the sowing

Taking pleasure in the progress, we make from day to day

Oh, there's joy in the journey, to Heaven all the way

(key change)

Verse:

Well, it's true there are some struggles, and sure there are some tears

But they're so outweighed by blessing they just fade and disappear

Now we're helping one another as to higher ground we climb

And the light on the horizon gets brighter all the time