My Life is My Gift to God

My Life is My Gift to God

I mentioned a couple times how my life is my gift to God.  Not long after Tyler went to heaven, I read the book Imagine Heaven by John Burke.  In this book John Burke mentioned Ben Breedlove a young man from his church.  I googled him and saw his video.  He suffered from a heart condition. December 6, 2011, he collapsed in school when he was 18, he had a dream that he was in this white room.  He talked about the peace he felt and how he wished he hadn’t come back.   

Dec 25, 2011, he had another cardio arrest and this time got to stay in heaven.  Just days before his death he did a YouTube video sharing his testimony.  What impacted me was what his sister shared on the funeral, I watched that on YouTube as well.  Here is what she said:  I’d like to share a part of Ben’s story that I was the only one who was privileged to hear from him.  One night after Ben had collapsed at West-lake, I came home from college to be with my family.  I was looking for Ben one night and I couldn’t find him.  I was kind of worried but eventually I found him sitting out on the dock of our house at lake Austin.  I went out there and I asked him “Ben are you okay?” “What are you doing out here?”  He told me that the stillness of the water and the quiet in the middle of the night was the closest feeling to that peace that he felt in his vision.  He told me that he would go out there at night to ask God questions.  I asked him to tell me about his dream in more detail.  And he made two things very clear to me.  He told me that even though he called it a dream he was awake and it was very real and he told me that when he looked into that mirror in his words he said, “I knew I was ready for something a lot more important”.  After he finished telling me about his dream, I asked him if he was happy that he woke up.  He said, “I guess” and then he started to cry really hard and I didn’t know what to say to him, so I just said the first things that came to my mind.  I told Ben “We are so happy that you are still here with us. You might not want to be here, but you must remember this is not our life.  Our life is eternal and that is God’s gift to us and this life is our gift to God” and he looked up at me and he said “I think your right and I also think that God let me feel that peace before I came back so that I would know that heaven is worth it”.  The next week he actually collapsed again on Saturday night, we were able to bring him back and he was to weak to go to church the next morning so we had church with our family and my dad shared Philippians 4:7 with us ‘And the peace that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus’. My dad looked at Ben and he said, “We don’t know what that peace feels like, but you do don’t you?”  Ben said “Yes!” and my dad asked him if he could explain that peace to us.  Ben said its just like the verse says he can’t describe it; you just have to be there.

When the pain is so raw and everything seems so hard that there seems to be no light and I don’t really want to be here I tell myself, this is not my life; my life is eternal; this is my gift to God and I can survive another day for Him and another and another because when my eternal life begins, my Gift from God begins, no more pain, no more darkness, no more nights, yay!  I can give another day to the Lord, however dark it may be, in fact I can give Him as many days as He wants because I do not need to worry, I will die one day and go to heaven and then there is an eternity of happiness and even if I live to be a hundred which statistically is not likely and is not my greatest desire but it’s still just a spec of life that I give compared to eternity. 

I heard a message recently where the Pastor said that there was a void in each of us which many of us try to fill with different things here on earth but only eternity will fill that void.  I know that only Christ can fill the emptiness in us but it was a new thought to me that there is also a void in us that yearns for heaven our eternal home and Christ doesn’t want us to fill that void with stuff on this earth He wants us to yearn for heaven, our eternal home.  For me it took my boys going to heaven to really yearn for heaven, but I realize the void should have been there before and was at times but I didn’t pay attention to it.  2 Timothy 4:8 And now the prize awaits me—the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on the day of his return.  And the prize is not just for me but for all who eagerly look forward to his appearing.

I’m not trying to imply that we can’t have happy joyful lives here on earth or that it’s okay to live depressed all the time but I believe that when our lives are going well here we tend to far overrate earth and far underrate heaven.  I think it would be good for all of us to slow down enough and do a good study on heaven and realize there is so much more after our life on earth and in doing that allow ourselves to feel that void and awaken that yearning for heaven so that we can live a blessed life and give that blessed life as a gift to God knowing that eternal life awaits us.

After our boys went to heaven we heard a message in church one time where the speaker talked about wisdom and then he asked the questions, why do you wait to read a good book on marriage until your marriage is on the rocks, or why do you wait to read a good book on finances until you’re facing bankruptcy, why do you wait to read a good book on child training until your children go astray and I wanted to get up and scream, why do you wait to read a book on grief until your children die, why don’t you say that? What is the difference? I know why, because you don’t think your children will die.  But what if they will, what then? I didn’t think mine would either.  I think if we would all focus on our heavenly destination a bit more, we would be a little more willing to talk about it too.  I know in my grief I was being much to harsh and that would not be the right thing to say but I do believe that we should talk about heaven a littler more, the better question might have been, why do you wait to read a book on heaven until your loved one goes there.  Why aren’t we interested in getting to know the place we all want to go to after this life. 

I read the book, Man’s Search For Meaning, by concentration camp survivor, Viktor Frankl, who wrote about how to overcome horrible suffering and how in the end it makes you stronger.  We know that suffering makes us stronger but then he said that we needed to understand that it was only the kind of suffering that we could not help.  Making yourself suffer or staying in suffering when there is a way out just makes us weak and pathetic (don't take this out of context though, sometimes we challenge ourselves on purpose to become strong in some area, that's great but I mean having a victim mentality being able to rise above in victory but staying a victim or even making yourself a victim of something).  Also, if you have a blessed life don’t feel guilty about it, God has blessed you and you are a blessing to all of us who’ve been through suffering.  The fact that you feel blessed means you are overcoming and positive because we all have enough reason to be depressed.  I’m also very blessed.  True, when Roderick went home to be with the Lord we had to go through a very dark valley of grief but were hopeful as two years were nearing that the sun was going to shine again but then were knocked even deeper into a darker valley when Tyler left.  We do not know what the future holds but we know that in the midst of suffering we still find joy and if life continues without knocking us down for awhile we can heal and live in sunshine and happiness again but there are those who have to live with chronic pain, severe mental illness, or any kind of daily struggle like paralysis etc.  There is no hope for a better life here on earth and they too can find joy but it’s a daily challenge and to them I say what I said, this is not your life this is your gift to God and although you get to give many more challenging days to God it will still feel like no more then a little muscle pain in your race towards your eternal gift of peace, love an happiness forever in the presence of Jesus Christ.  And the fact that you are yearning for heaven and sticking it out for God will earn you a special crown.
Let’s live our lives not as our lives but as God’s and let’s do it joyfully even through the darkest valleys and the most horrible nights because our eternal life is coming.  Especially for those days when we don’t really want to be here.

February 21 -March 19

February 21 – March 19

It will be four years ago tomorrow when Roderick went to heaven.  I remember when Jake and I got up to say something almost four years ago at the Roderick Rempel floor hockey tournament, it was emotional for me and took a lot of strength.  When I was done and left the stage Tyler was the first one to leave the audience and come to me.  I remember him saying ‘aw mom’, so compassionately.  That touched me deeply.  Today we’re also remembering him.  I know we all miss him very much but I always come back to the peace and love he is experiencing in heaven right now and I’m convinced the one most important message he would like to give us after having been in heaven is how much Jesus loves us all.  You might be struggling and might even have doubts and a lot of questions when it comes to God and heaven but deep in your heart just hold on to this ‘Jesus and His love are with you and never leave you through it all’.  (This was suppose to be part of my little Speech at the Board game Cafe which was postponed due to the Corona Virus yesterday the 13^th).

We are again in the middle of a meaningful yet tough time.  Three weeks ago, it was Roderick’s birthday on February 21.  Quite a few friends and family messaged and remembered his birthday.  A couple of Roderick’s friends dropped off some flowers.  Angeline and I spend some time looking at videos and photos of Roderick and remembering him. After school we had Birthday Cake for Roderick’s Birthday and Angeline started singing happy birthday to him.  Jake and I joined in.  Before supper we went to drop off the flowers at the cemetery and then went to Tony Romas for his birthday supper. 

Tomorrow three weeks later is the anniversary of his passing.  That is always a sad day.  We usually just spend it quietly but today we are first having the Tyler Rempel Board Game Cafe, so I have spent more time this week remembering Tyler and going through photos of him for the memorabilia at the cafe then Roderick.  It has been a sad week for me, I’ve cried a lot, I love to go through photos and remember all the good times with the boys.  Seeing their faces in photos is the only way to see them; well I guess there is my imagination as well and my memory, their images are forever etched in there, but photos help a lot.  Though I love to remember the boys and see photos it is also sad to be reminded what we are missing. 

Tomorrow it will be four years since Roderick went to heaven.  Slowly but surely, we are healing and slowly but surely, he fades into the past, but we know that he is not just in the past he is alive and well in heaven and his life is more real then ever.  We will be reunited and, on that day, he will come leaping back from the past and it will be like we have never been separated at all.  It is those spiritual eyes of faith that keep the boys alive and well in our hearts.  We are human beings and we live on this earth so humanly speaking we cannot help but seeing them fade into the past because their life on this earth is over but spiritually by faith, they stay alive and close by.  The closer heaven is the closer our boys stay.

On Wednesday the 18^th is Tyler’s birthday and sandwiched between Tyler’s birthday and the anniversary of Roderick’s passing is Jake’s birthday on the 17^th.  Therefore, we have a lot of different things to celebrate and remember and need to find a way to switch our moods from sad to happy and back to happy and sad together.

This post is a bit scattered, but it gives you a glance into our lives this time of year.  It’s a time that in some ways we wish we could miss yet refuse to miss and always want to remember.  It’s a time we long for people to remember while at the same time are relieved when it’s all over again for a year.  Jake has suggested moving his birthday and celebrating it some other time and all though it might not be the best time to do a big party Angeline and I still long to make him feel special on that day.  It reminds us in the middle sandwiched between two days of great loss how much we still have.  Someone who loves us, takes care of us, gives his everything to help us in our pain, longs to be able to take all our pain away, that birthday is special and it’s even special that it’s sandwiched between the two reminders of loss. 

I’m back to finish this post.  Today is the 14^th, the day Roderick went to heaven four years ago.  The Tyler Rempel Board Game Cafe was postponed because the government asked the school to cancel all social events due to the COVID 19 Pandemic.  I was going to wait to post this until I could say how that went but now, we will leave that on the back-burner and remember Roderick and all those special times with him which most often include Tyler as well.