In a Bubble

In a Bubble

In a Bubble

Its been quite the month.  When all this started I rejoiced that Angeline would be at home for three weeks over spring break rather then one week but after so many things seemed to happen in a week, school closed, all social events closed, all entertainment closed it seemed things were changing to fast, I was beginning to feel a bit down, not scared or fearful but it seemed my mood was just being pressed down a bit.  It all happened the same week which marked the anniversary of Roderick’s passing and Tyler’s birthday which is a bit of a heavy week anyway.  Angeline works as a cashier at a grocery store so her job won’t stop which is a good thing, I knew that she would need to get out of the house a bit from time to time.  A couple of times I felt a little anxiety thinking what if Angeline catches the virus due to working as a cashier and what if hers were one of the rare cases that was fatal.  I could not loose another child. 

 One morning I thought of Revelations and what if the end of the earth is here.  I don’t believe that this is the end of the world but at the same time it brought me joy, not the thought of people dying but the thought of this world ending, pain and suffering gone and eternal joy beginning.  We even talked about it and agreed if we could all three of us go together it would be the best thing ever.  I know that you have a million reasons why that wouldn’t be a good thing, there could be a lot of suffering before, perilous times come and so on, I realize that and I don’t wish death on any family but just the thought of all of us being able to go to heaven.  It seems we could endure quite a bit of hardships if we only knew it would end in bliss.  What I’m trying to say is the thought of this world of pain ending and all of us living in eternal bliss together with the ones who’ve gone on before that is a joyful thought.

Since then I’ve felt peace, I’ve even found a renewed peace in the fact that we might not all die at the same time.  As I’ve said before I’ve dealt with a lot of anxiety over Angeline and feeling like we could not loose our daughter in any way, there’s no way we could survive that again while at the same time knowing more then ever that we don’t know if we will have her tomorrow, there is no guarantee.  I’ve asked God to let me stay longer because Angeline and Jake cannot handle anymore pain.  I still want that, I know in light of eternity our life down here is a small price to pay and I want to stick around a bit longer to help my daughter in any way I can but I also know that if Angeline gets to go home at a young age I can endure that and rejoice with her for entering eternal bliss and I can still survive and give my life here on earth to God as long as God wants me here because the death rate so far is %100 we all get to go into eternity eventually.  I’m also assured that if I go first Angeline will be fine.  God will take care of her even if I’m not here (as I’m saying this I’m not a hundred percent sure I mean it but even so, it’s the truth), it will be painful for a bit, but God will take care of her.  And we will be reunited. 

In a Bubble

I feel like this whole corona virus thing shows me that God truly has the final authority in this world.  I know that is how it is in our home, with the boys going to heaven we have no choice but to put our faith in God in order to endure but the rest of the world seemed to think that they the people had the world under control.  Now I don’t mean all of you, I have amazing Godly friends and there are many of them on this earth, but I mean the world as a whole.  Now I feel like God is showing the whole world that He is the final authority not so much by the creation of the virus but healing or ending it.  The whole world is affected and even the most powerful nations have no control over it unless their people obey and listen to authority and even then with all the efforts of social distancing it’s still very hard to know what the future holds and how long we’ll deal with this.  I’m not trying to say that sickness and death is a good thing and that I’m glad for it.  My heart goes out to every sick person and especially to all who have lost loved ones, but I feel a peace in the authority of my Savior.  I believe a lot of good will come out of this crisis and I’m excited to see what the Lord will do.

Jake and I listened to Pastor Greg Laurie’s message yesterday.  This is what he said “the devil may have thought I’ll cause anxiety by shutting down business, schools, sports events, restaurants and most importantly live worship services but then the Lord would say in response, I’ll bring together neighbors and restore the family unit, I’ll bring dinner back to the kitchen table, I’ll help people to slow down their lives and appreciate what really matters, I’ll teach my children to rely on me and not the world.  I’ll teach my children to trust me and not their money and material possessions finally I’ll teach families to read the Bible and pray together again.

God is still in control in our lives but only if we allow Him to be.  I am one of the people who have learned to trust God even more through all of this.  I feel like God has put our family in this bubble.  The storm is raging but it can’t touch us.  I don’t mean that we are immune to the corona virus or that we won’t get sick.  I hope we won’t but what I mean is while so many out there are scrambling, nervous and even scared, I feel at peace and know that we are in the hands of our loving Savior who cares so deeply for us.  That doesn’t mean that it’s not lonely at times and a bit depressing to stay home so much but I can always come back to the loving arms of my Savior at peace and O so grateful that we are altogether as a family safe in the bubble while the storm rages.  Whatever may be ahead He will not leave us for a single second. 



If you are new to this blog and wonder what happened to our boys you can find it in the post titled Our Story, on the web version it is featured on the right side of the screen.

Woe is me

Woe is Me!

If you have been blessed  and haven’t had to go through the pain of loosing someone very close to you at an early age, don’t feel you have to back off, you are a blessing to us who’ve been through that kind of loss.  And honestly those are the friends who have encouraged me the most, the ones who haven’t lost their own children and understand that they can never fully understand what I’m going through but they listen and try to understand, and although its true and I can say from experience that, we do not know what it’s like when one of our children passes from this life into eternity until it happens to us, it’s also true that any normal mom who loves her children knows that it would be horribly hard, in fact it seems impossible to those who haven’t been there yet for us who are there it is possible and so for me to be stuck in the illusion that no one understands who hasn’t been there is just totally unreasonable.  I’ve found that the encouragement and the admiration of the positive moms who haven’t been through this has been much more helpful then the pity of moms who know what it is.  That doesn’t mean that I do not feel encouraged by parents who have lost a child and come through victoriously, I admire them, they are an amazing encouragement but we don’t want pity we want encouragement and admiration.  Is admiration the right word? I’m not sure, it might seem a little cocky to desire admiration but its encouraging when people notice our strength and determination to walk through this victoriously even though we fail at it many times.  I’ve noticed this in Angeline as well.  She doesn’t want pity.  I’ve heard others say this who’ve lost loved ones and I agree it is hard to be around people who have a woe is me attitude when loosing a loved one. 

I have also found that us who have children in heaven, we want to talk about it.  Not necessarily always about our children in heaven but often about the pain and suffering we go through.  And so it has at times been hard for me especially in the beginning to talk with moms who are in the midst of grief because we both want to talk and be understood, now I know that seems selfish and I need to learn to listen even in the midst of my own grief which I’m trying to do and is easier at this point already, but I’m saying this to thank all of you who were willing to come over again and again to listen to me.  Even though you haven’t experienced this you wanted to know what we were going through and how we coped but especially also how God in His love came to comfort us, those are the experiences that I love to talk about the most.  How God sent dreams and revealed His great love in so many ways, as well as revelations and imaginations about heaven and my sons’ lives up there now.  I find that I have many friends who really want to know how I’m doing it and what makes it possible for me.  Being able to talk about how God is helping us through helps me go through the dark days.  Every time I get to share our victories I’m just filled with gratitude for what God has done for us in the midst of our pain, it helps me to believe that the sun will shine again, this will eventually be able to be something beautiful like gold purified by fire.  God will work it out for good and we will become better for it. 

And so I would like to encourage all of you out there, don’t be afraid to walk with someone who is going through suffering, its true some aren’t open to it and have a woe is me attitude so if they are upset at you wanting to walk with them thinking you can never understand them don’t let that make you feel like you’ll never try again.  Don’t be afraid to ask how we are doing it. 

And to us moms who are grieving let’s not do it with a woe is me attitude.  We are not the one and only group of people that has been hurt so bad by the lost of our son or daughter that no one can understand or help us.  There are many people on this earth who go through much more pain.  We have a lot to be thankful for especially if we have the confidence that our children are in heaven where they are surrounded by peace, love and happiness in the presence of our Savior who didn’t just bear them in his body like we did in our womb but he’s the one who meticulously formed them in our womb and created them.  He is well able to take care of them and we know we will see them again. 

Just a quick disclaimer before I end this post, to those of you who’ve seen me at my worst, I’ll admit I have had times where I’ve had a woe is me attitude, I’m not trying to have a holier then thou attitude here, but please don’t back off.  Give me some grace in those times, I will try my best to be the person I claim to be.

If you are new to this blog and wonder what happened to our boys you can find it in the post titled Our Story, on the web version it is featured on the right side of the screen.

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.

Overcoming Anxiety

Overcoming Anxiety

After Tyler passed away, we have battled anxiety a lot.  I did a post on how I overcome fear only three days before Tyler went to heaven not knowing that the fear, I was dealing with at the time was only a small taste of what was to come.  I have accepted the fact that our boys are in heaven, heaven has become so real to me, I look forward to the day that we can all be in heaven together, and honestly studying heaven and having two sons there has completely taken the sting of death away, or has it?  You decide after reading the next two posts.

As I wrote in a previous post, we really dealt with fear the first week or so after Tyler passed away and after I had that dream it was much better for me until February when we went on a Cruise to get away.  We had a balcony sweet and I remember being so afraid to fall asleep.  I made sure that the balcony doors were locked but Angeline and Anneka, (Angeline’s cousin who had come with us) were sleeping between our bed and the balcony doors and I was afraid they might sleep walk and go out and climb over the railing.  Even as I write this it seems like such a foolish fear and its just not like me.  Neither of them ever sleepwalked and I was not a deep sleeper, I would notice anything at night, yet what if this one night one of them would sleepwalk and I would sleep so deep that I wouldn’t notice it.  I had lots of fun during the day and enjoyed the cruise but once night rolled around I so longed to be home where there was no water and we could relax.  I was always able to pray and leave it to God and eventually fall asleep but every time I woke up, I would sit up and make sure I could see both in their beds.

When we finally got home, it didn’t get better.  I would get up at night four or five times a night to check on Angeline.  After a few weeks I decided this had to stop.  Getting up five times a night would not keep her alive and I wasn’t resting the way I should so I decided I would no longer get up at night.  I checked up on her first thing in the morning when I got up but that was it. It got better for a while but a year later we went to Hawaii and again brought one of Angeline’s cousins.  This time I lay awake at night worrying that something might happen to Jerrick (my sister’s son) and I would cause my sister to deal with the horrible pain we had dealt with.  When we went swimming with the dolphins the night before I lay awake worrying about every possible and impossible way something could happen to him and there was no way I could allow it yet I also knew that twice things had happen that I could never allow to happen.  I was just waiting until we’d get back and he would be safe with his mom.  I remember the relief I felt when my sister picked up her son at the airport and I could relax. 

Angeline had a nosebleed one night; I was worried it might have started bleeding again and she would not notice and just bleed out.  Over Christmas and January, an incident came up which caused Jake and I to fall into this dark hole of anxiety, there seemed to be no way out.  This time it got to the point where it really affected me.  When we needed to make decisions like if we were going to go on a trip or even some repairs we needed to make on one of our houses, I felt like we couldn’t do anything until we got out of this hole but there seemed no way out, together with my counselor and Jake’s we were able to make some changes and got out.  But it really made me realize how vulnerable we are yet. 

In her book Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World, Joanna Weaver writes, it works a little like a thick London fog—the kind of fog that is legendary.  Why, it wouldn’t be a Sherlock Holmes story without fog to obscure the villain and allow him to get away.  “Thick as pea soup,” Londoners describe it.  “Can’t see your hand in front of your face,” they say.     However, while physical fog may seem dense and almost solid, scientists tell us that a fog bank a hundred feet deep and covering seven city blocks is composed of less than one glass of water.  Divided into billions of droplets, it hasn’t much substance.  Yet it has the power to bring an entire city to a stand-still.  So, it is with anxiety.  Our mind disperses the problem into billions of fear droplets, obscuring God’s face.  Taking our anxiety to the Lord is often the last thing we think of when we are spiritually fogged in.  And yet only the “Son” has the power to disperse it.  Without him, one fear leads to another, and our lives slow to a painful crawl.

This is how I felt in January, my life became a painful crawl in the dense fog now looking back I see it had hardly any substance. 

When I felt like I was in this fog bank and couldn’t see ahead of me a friend sent me the song Prince of Peace by Hillsong United.  Here are the lyrics:  My heart a storm, clouds raging deep within/ The Prince of peace came bursting though the wind/ The violent sky held its breath/ And in your light I found rest/     Tearing through the night/ Riding on the storm/ Staring down the fight/ My eyes found Yours/ Shining like the sun/ Striding through my fear/  The Prince of peace met me there/     Hope like the sunlight piercing through the dark/ The Prince of peace came and broke into my heart/ The violent cross, the empty grave/ And in Your light I found grace/   Your love surrounds me when my thoughts wage war/ When night screams terror, there Your voice will roar/ Come death or shadow, God I know Your light will meet me there/     When fear comes knocking, there You’ll be my guard/  When day breeds trouble, there You’ll hold my heart/ Come storm or battle, God I know Your peace will meet me there. 

During the hardest day I listened to this song probably five times.  All of a sudden through the fog I found the Lord’s eyes looking at me so full of love and when night screamed such terror his eyes were there looking at me and I realized that even come death one more time God’s light will meet me there.  And the fact is death will come again, we all will die eventually.
Normally though the fog isn’t nearly that dense.  I can see and function normally and I do take my fears to the Lord. I have learned to do that.  When I fear something might happen to Angeline, I ask God to be with Angeline and thank him that he loves Angeline more then I do and will take care of her.  Whatever my fear may be I turn it into a prayer.  Yea I kind of wish God would snap His fingers and just take this anxiety away.  I’m sure He can do that but at the same time if in ten years I have overcome anxiety and no longer deal with it, it won’t matter that there was a time in my life where I had to pray myself through the night.  In fact, I’ll look back and realize it made me stronger. 

I’d be happy if God would just take the anxiety away, but He has not so far done that and it’s a journey we go through.  Step by step God will lead us, after all, our life on earth is our gift to God it doesn’t have to be easy.  Just because we spend more time praying ourselves through the nights doesn’t mean we are to be pitied or that we are broken, it’s okay and when we are fully healed, we will be just as thankful as someone who is healed instantly, even if healing for us only happens in heaven.  I have learned not to make a big deal out of the anxiety I am battling, with God I can have Joy and enjoy life even if I have to limp slightly due to anxiety but I also want to be diligent and do what I can to overcome it.  Levi Lusko said in his book, Through the Eyes of a Lion, after his daughter went to heaven, that he was okay if he had to walk with a limp for the rest of his life but if God would heal his limp he would not fake a limp.  I love that, I won’t make a big deal of the limp I am walking with but I don’t want to keep walking with a limp just out of habit if God heals the limp, I hope that makes sense.

Back to the question I asked in the beginning.  Has the sting of death been taken away?  I truly look forward to the day when my spirit will leave my body and I will be forever surrounded by peace and love and there will be no fear.  I’ve had a few tastes of such incredible love and peace from God that to live in that constantly is very exciting.  I talked to a retired teacher recently who said that she was having tests done.  She worried that her problem would be terminal. She wasn’t ready to go just now.  I don’t want to be insensitive because that is life, death is not a pleasant thought, but I thought ‘why not? you’ve had a great life? what would be more exciting then to be able to enter that peace and love’ (not that I said such and insensitive thing).  The thing I think first when I hear a loved one who serves the Lord has died is, how wonderful it will have been for them to enter that peace and love or when somebody has been healed of cancer I’m wondering if part of them isn’t almost disappointed when they realize they don’t get to go to heaven just yet.  Having said that; I get it though, I’m not ready to go yet either, Roderick and Tyler are doing well in heaven and don’t need me, I don’t believe they miss me because they can watch me run this race and in heaven there is patience but no impatience.  I don’t want my loved ones who are still here to have to go through the earthly pain of being separated from me just yet, they have dealt with enough of that pain for a while.

So then why am I so afraid that something will happen if the sting of death has been taken away.  If one of us would go to heaven it would be amazing to be reunited with the boys, experience the love and peace so I realize I have nothing to fear.  I know that the fear is having to go through that horrible pain here on earth one more time.  It just seems more then I could ever handle but why? God has never left me these two times, I am more convinced of heaven and His great love then ever and whatever is ahead of me with Him by my side I can go through anything but I also realize even though my spirit is alive and well there is a battle in my mind that I have to fight and though the spirit is stronger the mind is also strong and it will take some time.  Even after two years that battle does not seem to subside much but what I have learned is not to pay attention to that voice of anxiety,  some nights it screams so loud but God’s voice roars louder and I know that the night will end just like all the others have and so it doesn’t bother me so much.  Like I said before what makes me think I deserve an easy life, this is my gift to God and I’m telling you when I finish my race and step into eternity it will seem an easy price to pay no matter how hard it is in comparison to the reward I am getting there. 

Relationships

Relationships

One of the pitfalls of grieving is destroying good relationships.  I am not an expert on relationships and don’t have all the answers and I also know it takes two people to have a good relationship.  What I mean is I can desire a good relationship with someone and do all I can to build that relationship but if that person does not desire that relationship it remains just that a one-sided relationship.  As you read this blog it is not meant to condemn you just because you have relationships that are really struggling, it could be that you are the one who keeps running your race while the other person refuses to keep going.  But when we lose a loved one especially a child, we hold on to that relationship with all our might.  We don’t want to give it up. 

When we celebrate the birthdays of our boys, I sometimes struggle with how to celebrate.  Are we going to watch the same video every year and share the same memories?  We change, their friends change, sometimes a lot, but our boys don’t change, no new memories, no life changing experiences, they are who they are and will be who they are for the rest of our life.  The relationship with them doesn’t change, the pain of separation hurts so much that we remember only the good in them and if we remember the things that were annoying or painful even those memories become precious and we would like to tell them that they can be even more annoying and bring us even more pain, we don’t care we just want them to come back but if we get stuck and hold on to them to much our wonderful children, spouses, siblings or any loved ones who are still here will soon begin to feel that they are no longer important because if they cause us pain or do something annoying we now become frustrated quicker. 

As we all know when our children leave us on this earth, we celebrate their life.  Celebrating their life means remembering all the wonderful things about them.  We all come together, parents, siblings, grandparents, extended family, friends, teachers, everyone who has been a part of their precious life and we share stories, many of these stories would be forgotten and never shared if they continued to live but now that they are gone they become very precious to us.  After Roderick passed away, we as a family loved the stories told about Roderick.  It was so precious to see how much so many different people loved Roderick.  Then a year and nine months later Tyler went to heaven and again we celebrated his life and enjoyed the stories we heard but now Angeline was left alone. One day Angeline told me that she needed to be as smart as Tyler.  I told her she did not, why would she have to be as smart, Roderick wasn’t “but Roderick was athletic” she said. 

 She would also make comments like’ why don’t you have family pictures on the wallpaper on your phone? etc.  After the boys went to heaven, we had photos of them everywhere.  With her brothers being so celebrated she was beginning to feel like she had these two heroes for brothers but who was she? Left behind in pain and lonely and unnoticed.  She wasn’t able to express it like that and probably didn’t even know that that is how she felt but slowly I began to see that it was more important really to celebrate the people that were still here, the ones where it makes a difference.  Our boys are safe in heaven and they are happy.  Us crying for them and missing them won’t make them sadder or happier but I do believe that as they watch us from heaven, they are joyful, every time they see us encourage each other or love on each other.  The way I know my sons they would not want us to stay stuck in grief and pain.  It would make them both happy to see us happy and enjoy being around each other and so I have decided that my relationship with my Husband and daughter are a priority.  I love my boys and miss them but there’s nothing I can change in that relationship and they are safe and happy so when times get tough and we go through a deep valley I am willing to focus on these relationships even if it means putting my pain and grief aside for a bit. 

After Tyler passed away, we have dealt with a lot of anxiety.  Would we wake up and find another one of us has passed into eternity?  I often felt like we were so busy just trying to survive that we didn’t have time to really grieve Tyler’s passing.

I remember when I was young a very young widow once said that if she weren’t sad how would her husband in heaven feel if he looked down.  She felt that he would want to see that she missed him.  A lot of grieving people feel that way.  They feel their sadness proves how much they loved their loved one.  It’s true that grief is the price we pay for having loved deeply but at the same time I’m not sure how true that is because sometimes people who have not loved well and missed the chance to love deeply when they loose this person who they should have loved and who they should have treasured grieve even more.  Maybe it’s not grief then maybe its regret, I don’t know.  There too though none of us has loved perfectly so we all deal with some regret as well.  Anyway, I think we all agree that heaven is a happy place, full of love and no sin.  If that is the case and there is no jealousy and no selfishness, how could our loved ones ever feel hurt because we aren’t sad for them.  If they are in such a happy place wouldn’t they want us to be happy too.  They know that we are still on earth and that there is pain here but they also know that we are headed towards their happy place and that when we get there the worst pain we experience here will just be a little bit of muscle pain in this race of life.  As they watch us run this race, they want us to high five each other and encourage each other, because after all we are running towards the finish line where they are so surrounded by love and happiness.  As they cheer us on they love to see us happy and the last thing they want is for us to stop running and just stand and watch them in the stands while our loved ones who are still here with us keep running and leave us behind because we refused to take our eyes off our loved one in the stands long enough to see them running the race with us. 

So lets remember our loved ones who’ve gone on to heaven are watching us run our race (Hebrew 12:11) and although they can’t run with us right now because they have finished their race the last thing they want is to see us giving up on our race, they want us to keep running towards them and they understand that while we are running we don’t have a lot of time to stop and miss them but they are cheering us on anyway and they want all their loved ones to run the race together loving each other and encouraging each other even if in hard times we have to take our eyes off them a bit and focus on getting up this steep hill right now. That doesn’t mean that they will take their eyes off us and stop cheering us on from the stands.  They might just ask God to send an angel to give us a drink so we can make it up the hill.

A bit of Angeline's Story

A bit of Angeline’s Story

Tyler went to heaven just before Christmas, so Angeline didn’t go back to school before January.  I had decided that it was OK if she missed a lot in January, she only had to go to school if she wanted to, but she refused to miss.  She often dreaded going and at lunch time she would often text me that it was a bad day and she couldn’t understand her lessons, but she wouldn’t let me pick her up.  She would at times feel very alone over lunch as well and I was concerned but she felt if she missed one period, she would have an even harder time understanding.  She spent so much time doing homework and was very hard on herself fearing her mark would go down.  I constantly reminded her that it was quite alright if her mark would go down.  She had been through a lot and nobody would look down on her if her mark went down.  I was concerned and felt like she was being stretched to the limit and just hoped she wouldn’t snap although I didn’t know what that would look like.  At the end of January, she got her report card.  Her mark had gone way up, I found that hard to believe with all the stress she had been under.  So, I came to the conclusion she must be putting so much stress on herself because it kind of kept her from feeling the pain of the tragedy she had endured in loosing her brothers.  I don’t know if I was right or not.

After she got her report card I felt led to write the teachers a thank-you for being there for Angeline and helping her in her tough time to still excel in school but I also felt that if I did that I needed to be careful what I said because I didn’t want to embarrass Angeline and I knew she was quite sensitive when it came to that.  Even though this might seem like an easy thing to do I had this battle inside.  I should write but I don’t think I can write an email that Angeline would be good with so then I should maybe just not show her, but I can’t do that I need to let her read it first.  So finally, I decided to write the email and let Angeline read it and if she didn’t want me to send it I wouldn’t; at least she would know what I would have liked to say.  I hadn’t planned to write a long email, but it ended up being long.  This is the email I wrote and sent two years ago.

Good Morning Teachers, Principals, Support Staff and anybody at MBCI who has prayed for, encouraged or even just given Angeline an encouraging smile.

First, this email is not meant in any way shape or form to motivate or manipulate anybody to treat Angeline more special then any other student or give her good marks for Angeline would not celebrate her marks unless she knows she earned them, this is just a beautiful testimony to the impact you guys have by just being who you are anyway.

Secondly when I use terms like ‘the teachers favorite’ I’m not trying to imply that you teachers have favorites just solely the perspective of a young child.  I know you guys loved all of our three kids, Roderick who had such an amount of energy that he was often a challenge in the class room, Tyler who I believe was very quick to share his opinion when it differed from yours although I really don’t know how you would see him because I literally never knew what was going on in his grade, I never knew about any of his work or projects unless he needed something that he couldn’t find in the house, his marks were always good the comments on the report card were always good, he was a low maintenance kid, for lack of better words, then there’s Angeline who’s the teachers favorite except that she should share more although neither her nor you have ever said that but you’ll get what I’m trying to say later.

Anyway, I believe Angeline seems very stoic in class but that is not necessarily how she seems when she gets in the car nor in the texts that come our way during lunch time.  She has really struggled going back to school, while school was a distraction for her it was at the same time so stressful and overwhelming.  When she wasn’t doing well, and I would want to pick her up she refused for fear of missing something and then not getting it.  Even though she might seem to catch on quickly she has to give it her all to focus enough to get what she is supposed to do.  On several occasions I strongly advised her to give up her expectations and to be OK if her marks drop a bit in a time like this, she can’t do everything.  Since grade 6 it’s been her goal to just get high honors even if just once, now it seems within her reach and she refuses to give in though she has had weak moments on several occasions where she says she’s quitting and dropping out of school but as she says it she knows she’s not giving in. 

Angeline seemed to feel this pressure of having to now live up to her brothers and she couldn’t see how she could do it.  I have this book called Touching Heaven by Leanne Hadley.  She tells the story about a twelve-year-old boy who was dying.  He had 5 younger sisters and loved those sisters more then any brother ever had, and he didn’t want to die because he always thought that God had him born first so he could take care of his sisters.  A couple nights before he died, he had a dream and Jesus told him he could die in peace and that He (Jesus) would allow him to take care of his sisters from heaven.  I told Angeline this story one night and told her that if God gave this little boy a dream like that then why wouldn’t he allow Roderick and Tyler to take care of her from heaven.  Maybe God could still allow them to bring to her memory the knowledge they had in whatever way He chose whether through other people or just through thoughts or whatever.  I don’t know how it will be when we get to heaven, but this is a beautiful thought to me, and I encouraged Angeline that she didn’t have to feel like she had to do this on her own. 

When Angeline got into the car on Thursday, I asked her how her marks were, I knew she got her report card that day. You should have seen her face, she said “Great”.  I said “Really? That’s got to be really good because when I think your marks are great you are usually still disappointed.”  This mark to Angeline, Jake and I was far more then just a good mark it was a confirmation of God’s great love and care in our time of grief.  He knew how much a good mark meant to Angeline and I couldn’t help but think back to the story I had told her. 

That night I told Angeline another story.  I started by telling her that she might think I was a mean mom to have said something like this about my daughter, but I would tell her anyway.  Back when Angeline was in grade four and five her goal was to become the teacher’s favorite.  She had a friend who always had a hundred percent, got all her work done in class, never had to be reprimanded in class and she wanted to be like her.  To her this was the teachers favorite kid.  Now this wasn’t the case; her teacher talked fondly about Angeline and her sense of humor etc. but he also said that Angeline had a hard time focusing and was distracted so easily therefore often didn’t get the instructions right and (you won’t believe this teachers) she was far more interested in chatting with her friends then getting her work done.  In elementary Angeline’s teachers always talked about how chatty she was.  And she had such test anxiety that she failed quite a few of her tests.  I remember talking to a friend and telling her that it seemed Angeline’s greatest goal was to become the teachers favorite.  I said to her “Angeline is not even teacher’s favorite material at all.  Not what she perceives as teacher’s favorite.  I always thought she was so much like her brother Roderick minus the high level of energy.  She can’t sit still for long; she gets distracted sooo easily and can’t get instructions, she always must be told several times mostly because her thoughts wander before your done giving her instructions.  Studying isn’t her thing at all she’d much rather rump around outside.  She’s an amazing kid and has lots and lots of good qualities but they’re not being a teacher’s favorite”. 

When I told Angeline this story she smiled and said, “Just goes to show that people can change”.

You know when Roderick and Tyler went to be with Jesus a lot of stories have been told about them and we need that, it helps us to keep going but here is a part of Angeline’s story and I know it’s not over yet but I want to thank you all for the part you’ve played in this story and allowed God to use you to bring comfort to our amazing daughter. 

Sincerely

Lisa, Jake and Angeline

After I wrote this email I told Angeline I had written an email to the teachers and she could read it and if she wanted me to change anything I would or if she didn’t want me to send it I wouldn’t.  She went to read it but by the time she was done we already had company, most of my family came over that day.  Angeline was quiet that day and didn’t seem to enjoy company very much so as soon as the company was gone, I went to check on Angeline to see how she was doing.  She came to give me a hug and said, “I don’t deserve to have a mother like you” that was not what I had expected, I asked why she would say that and she  said, “you wrote that email about me”.  I said, “that’s how that made you feel, I thought you would think it sounded cheesy”.  She smiled and said, “it kinda does”.  “So, your ok if I send it?”  I asked.  She said yes.  That’s when I realized why God prompted me to send it and why He wouldn’t let me send it without letting her read it.