A Gift From The Past...

Tue, 30 Jul 2002

Wow, it seems like it has been awhile since I have written. I am excited to be sitting here again today because I feel like bursting with the good things of God, and yet, I don't know where this will go. It is as much of a mystery to me as it is to those who will be reading this. I feel a beginning because of what the "subject" is today, but what will the conclusion be? We shall see!

1 Corinthians 2:9
"no eye has seen, no ear has heard,
and no mind has imagined
what God has prepared for those who love him."
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Would my Grandma have imagined that I would be in possession of a book called "To Live Again" by Catherine Marshall? Would she have imagined that the very shoes she walked in when she lost her 14 year old daughter after a two-week illness, would be similar shoes that I would walk in some 60 years later? Would she have imagined that the way she lived her life would be witnessed by a young girl who listened to her stories and looked at her pictures and wondered why no tears fell as she talked about her daughter? I don't think she knew the depth of my listening then...

I know that I didn't.

As Phil lay in a hospital bed shortly before Easter one year, I thought about my Grandma, and the hospital bed that her daughter was in many years before. It dawned on me that the year was probably 1942 or 1943 and that would have made my Grandma 42-43 years old, approximately the same age that I was that day. I thought about leaving Phil that night to go home, and thanking God that I would be coming back in the morning to kiss him hello and see how he was doing. I thought about the fact that when my Grandma left her daughter's bedside shortly before Easter, she had had to say good-bye to her because her daughter died of kidney failure. I remember the stories of how she squeezed my Grandma's hand right before she left this earth...I was listening Grandma! But I would have never imagined...

Two years after my dad's sister Charmaine died, which is my middle name, his Dad died unexpectedly of a heart attack. That left my Grandma alone, to raise her only surviving son who was then age 10-11, having previously lost two daughters at birth before Charmaine was born. She had known her share of tragedy already in her early 40's!

Do you know...of course you don't, that my Dad's nickname was "Happy" when he was growing up? Can you imagine that? A young boy who lost his sister, his dad, and was being raised alone by his mother who struggled to make ends meet during the War, was described and nicknamed by all who knew him as "Happy"? Where would that joy come from? Only from our loving God!

About that same time, in the year 1949, a woman by the name of Catherine Marshall also lost her husband to a heart attack at the young age of 46. She was left with a young son of nine to raise on her own. I remember my Grandma mentioning this woman but I can't say that I paid a whole lot of attention to it. It was part of my Grandma's life, I knew that, but I didn't really know why. I think I do now! Now that I am reading her book, "To Live Again". I'm sure my Grandma drew a lot of strength and inspiration from her writings and her life, because this woman had learned to truly live again after the death of her husband, and she went on to publish his sermons and write books of her own, one of which I am now reading. I can barely put it down!! To me it is a gift from the past, delivered through a friend from the very hands of God. To tell you the truth, I'm having trouble remembering just who handed me this book at Bible Study, so if you are the one, would you please stand up and say "Hey, it was me!!". I want to be able to thank you for your obedience in buying this very old book, seemingly so outdated form the torn cover that will barely stay on from a garage sale, and for giving it to me to read! You have no idea what it means to me, but I hope form this e-mail you will understand a portion of it.

If I had gone through my Grandma's things, I would not have been surprised to have found this book among her collections. I know the odds of the book that I have being hers is out of this world, but I feel like it is. I feel like it is a piece of her life that she has left me with, and only through God's mighty and miraculous workings has it come into my possession. It does not look like an exciting book, and I wonder if I would have picked it up had I seen it? Maybe so, with a title like that and with what I am living through right now, but who knows. God knows, and He made it available to me in His perfect timing and His perfect way. I love it!!! I love to watch Him work! And we cannot even imagine what He has prepared for us, but it sure is fun watching Him do it!

This book is not only a gift from the past, from my Grandma to me, it is also a book about a woman who becomes an author, who talks about the thrill of writing, and also about the grief process in a way that is as fresh as the day it was written half century ago. Emotions and loss are the same today as they were then, and will probably always be. We love, we have to say good-bye, and we look forward to the reunion with our loved ones.

One of the problems I have with grief is that many describe it as something you will not heal from. I struggle with this concept because I believe the Great Healer! I know God can do anything. Catherine Marshall explains it this way:

Pg. 71
I certainly did not want time just to form a protective scab over a still grievously painful area. Surely, I thought, it would be far better for the wound to heal cleanly, really heal from the inside out.

And though intellectually I knew that I couldn't live in the memories, still who would want Time to come with a big eraser and obliterate every tender remembrance? Doesn't the future always have to be built on the past? Wouldn't real healing mean that what had gone before - the flaws in the weaving as well as the most perfect and treasured parts of the design - would all eventually fall into proper place? In that way and that alone, I thought, could the fabric of my life be all of one piece.
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..."all of one piece". Whole again, with a life that has been woven together through the good times and the bad, but that makes us who we are. Not less, but more! Not bitter but better! Not having lost someone, but thanking God for the time we were allowed to spend with them and looking forward to seeing them again for eternity.

This is how my Grandma lived her life, because of her faith. Had she learned many of these same things from the very book that I am reading today? Has she any idea that her life was a tremendous example to me of how to live a life of faith in our Creator? I sure hope so!

She goes on to talk about truth, and facing the cold hard fact that her husband was gone, and then she says something that really makes me think.

Pg. 73
But what is truth anyway? I wondered. And suddenly I thought that I recognized Truth in that intuitive way that it has flashed into the human mind since the beginning of time...

Perhaps it is this life that is the dream. One of these days I shall wake up and find Peter again and know that he's not dead at all.

Then I shall be what the world calls dead myself...
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When we die, we will be more fully alive than ever, but the world will not see it that way. We will be gone, we will be dead, we will be in that grave....NO WAY! We will be alive, and waiting for the rest of the world to catch up with us! That is how I think of Phil! Not ever in that grave out in Livermore! He is not there, that is simply a seed that has planted in the ground waiting for the day when Christ will return to take all of us home with Him. I believe Phil is already in heaven, his spirit is there.

2 Corinthians 5:8
Yes, we are fully confident, and we would rather be
away from these bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord.
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We don't have all the answers on how the new body works, but we will find out some day! Phil doesn't need that old body right now, but I know that he is not buried and dead. He is alive and with our Risen Lord!!

I don't know how we were able to do some of the things we did with Phil and to talk about the things we were able to talk about with him. It is a mystery to me that will probably always be a mystery, except that I know that God showed us the way, even when we didn't know where we were going. We were able to be honest with Phil and to not deny that he may soon be going home. She talks about this in her book and she says that not being able to talk about these things is "denying them and ourselves one of life's most precious experiences".

Pg. 78
"Are we not really handing the grossest insult imaginable to the dying when we assume that they have not the spiritual or character resources to handle this test courageously and victoriously?"
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It is a very precious experience. I'm not saying it is not painful and sad beyond words and that if we had our choice we would choose anything else rather than to have to say good-bye, but death is what it is and it will come to all of us. To be with someone in those final days and moments are times that will change how we view the world and life itself from then on.

Phil knew the end was coming soon, maybe more than Jim and I were even able to grasp. He knew that he no longer cared to eat. He knew that others were gathering to be with him. In fact, he said to me that he knew why family members were coming to be around him. I asked him if that was okay and he said it was, but that he didn't really want to talk. I told him that he didn't have to. To just enjoy being in their presence. He did. He was not dumb... he knew. If we had lied to him and told him all was well, we would have missed out on the honesty and the love that we were able to share with each other. He had the "spiritual and character resources to handle this test courageously and victoriously", even as a young boy. These are memories that we will always cherish and words that were exchanged that we will never forget. Bible readings that went on during those final days that comforted Phil like no medication could. He was awake, aware, and waiting for the trip home. We were with him, helping him to make this journey as best we could. We made some mistakes, we have a few regrets but that is all part of it. It is not what we should dwell on, but rather on the gift of our son.

What to do with what we are left with is the question now? Our lives, our lives without Phil, our lives changing and growing and moving on as they should. Asking God to heal our broken hearts from our loss, and praying that God will carry us through this time of missing someone we love with all our hearts.

As Catherine Marshall says:

pg. 73
But meantime, how am I going to force my subconscious mind to accept the fact that my husband is gone?
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There are times now when I will get busy in my day, and Phil is not on my mind. I never thought that would happen but it has. I will be busy doing things, thinking about other things going on in our lives and I will walk through my office here and see Phil's picture that hangs by my desk. I will see his sweet face smiling up out of the hot tub that he was baptized in and I will be taken aback...

"oh, that's right..."

and I will remember that I am now living my life without him and I am still surprised that I can. That my heart is not hurting all the time these days, and that healing has begun very slowly to stop the bleeding wound that has been hemorrhaging for months. Is it really possible that I will heal from this? I claim that it is. I want it to be so. I ask God for just that, and yet I am surprised that it is starting to happen...and I am grateful.

But how?...

pg 73 continuing on
"Part of the answer to that question came through finding that my recovery from these emotional wounds was in direct proportion to my ability to stop steeling myself against them and begin accepting the pain inherent in my personal loss. I now know that the healing process for any of life's frustrations, disappointment, and sorrows can begin the moment we stop resisting them. Tightly closed hands are not a position to receive anything - not even comfort. It matters little whether they are hands clenched in rebellion or just piteously trying to clutch the past.

Just as women have discovered that the pain of childbirth becomes supportable as they stop resisting it, open their total beings to it, and relax- so it is with emotional pain."
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I keep thinking about Phil's final journey being like childbirth, and then she talks about that very thing! Times change, people change, events change, but do our thoughts and emotions change all that much? It doesn't seem so. Are the very things that I hold onto and think about the very things that my Grandma read about years ago and clung to also? I think so! Was she able "To Live Again"? I know that she was because I witnessed it!

How did she do it? I believe she did it the same way I am finding it to be possible. Relax, breathe deep and fall into the loving arms of God. Stop resisting what is, and thank Him for what was. For the wonderful gift of knowing and loving a very special person for however long it lasted.

When I say that I love Phil, I do not like to use the past tense. I love my son, as I always have. Since he is as alive today as he was when he lived in our home, even more so, why should I say "loved". I continue to love him and think about him, and I always will.

Thank you for allowing me to share portions of this book with all of you. I am devouring it and it would not be surprising if portions of it will be included in e-mails still to come. I am learning from it and also feel a confirmation from it that I am on the right path and that I will live again, fully.

My Grandma could not be here to put her arms around me and hug me and tell me it will be alright, and that I will get through this with God's help.

No, she was not able to do that, but God did it for her.

Thank you to my friend for spotting this book at a yard sale, for thinking of me and for your obedience to God in giving it to me to read.

It is definitely a gift from the past, brought into the present, as only God can do!!

Love,
Diane