A Dwelling Place

In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.
If there were not,
would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?
And if I go and prepare a place for you,
I will come back again and take you to myself, (john 14)

I'm thinking about my father today. I'm wondering what kind of dwelling place Jesus prepared for him and what kind of dwelling place he will prepare for me.

I'm thinking of my brother who believes he is all alone, who despairs of ever seeing my father or anybody again after this lifetime. My heart goes out to him and I desperately want Jesus to console him...

I understand him. It must be so difficult for him to wrap his head around a "fantasy" that there is a soul and a Heavenly Father and a place outside of this one. At this point, for him to believe would be like asking me to put my faith in the tooth fairy. I don't mean that irreverently. I just mean that's how far removed his heart is from faith. He's on my mind today and in my prayers.

All Hallows' Eve

I woke up feeling like I had recently talked to my father. I was left with the trace of a feeling akin to the happy one after a holiday or family gathering or a memory that makes you smile. I searched my memory for why that could be. And then I remembered I had a dream about him.

Yes! He was bed or in a chair and I was happy to see him and asked him if I could give him one more hug. He looked like he did before he died. And by that I don't mean unhealthy and cancer-stricken but a jovial form of himself, reclined and round-bellyed in a T-shirt. He said something to the effect of, "of course" or maybe he didn't speak at all but it was understood. I remember holding his hand in mine and it felt so incredibly real and so warm that I wondered to myself how that could be. And I got close again to do it again and then I realize it no longer felt real and that I was dreaming. 

Today I realized that again he has visited me on the anniversary of his death. Also on the Eve of the first day in November- the month dedicated to the holy souls in purgatory. All Hallows' Eve. Gives a whole new meaning to Halloween

Signs From Heaven

Signs From Heaven

I used to have a very naive and strange idea that I would be closely united with my father after his death. I know that we are united with the communion of saints and that death no longer separates us. I believe we can pray to the saints and even pray to and pray for our relatives who have gone before us. But I guess my interpretation of what that union would look like differed from reality.

I thought that all I had to do was pray and that my dad would visit me in my dreams or that God would send me endless consolations to constantly comfort me. I believed that my father would send me signs of his present happiness from the other sign in big ways.

I was so sure of how things worked that when my sweet atheist brother insisted that we stop trying to comfort him with talk of heaven, my sister boldly assured him that he would be surprised and change his mind when my dad visited him in his dreams from the afterlife. He looked pointedly at both of us and told us we would be surprised when he didn’t.

I probably picked up this idea from other people’s anecdotes. I’ve heard of people smelling their loved one’s cologne or of finding an old voice message at just the right time or of visits in dreams. I even had a friend who told me that her mother appeared by her bedside one night. This friend had cancer and she was in deep anguish over leaving her children behind. Her mother appeared beside her in bed and came to comfort her with a smile. I asked her if she was terrified and she told me she wasn't at all. I believed every word of it. My friend has since died.

People talk about lesser signs. They find pennies on the ground or see monarch butterflies or cardinals as signs from heaven sent by the deceased. I saw all these things but the cynic in me brushed them away, hoping for something bigger. I didn’t need an actual appearance like my friend had but I’m not sure what I wanted that would have ever satisfied me.

On the two-month anniversary of my father’s death I did dream about him. I barely remember the dream but I did capture his last words which were in Spanish, “no lo dudes,” which is Spanish for “do not doubt it”. I think it was a message about my dreams to finish school but it took a bigger meaning in general.

The truth is, I won't be satisfied until I see him again. We were not created to be satisfied until we reach perfect communion with God. Earth is an exile and we cannot expect it to be heaven. We must wait patiently and exercise faith that we will be reunited again. Jesus came so that those who trust in Him would pass from death to life. In the meantime, those of us who have been left behind still have to live on earth.

It occurred to me that this is where I need to trust God and put my faith into practice. I can't expect daily consolations or signs from God in order to trust.  Believing in what we cannot see and having the patient assurance that what God promised will indeed come to pass is what separates from non believers. We must persevere in faith and in the the hope of his promise. The details will be revealed later.

“what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived--the things God has prepared for those who love Him.” 1 Corinthians 2:9

Take Me Back

Take me back please

To the springtime 

To the time when the weather

blossomed lily-white as you gently withered 

And like an army, your progeny summoned by your side

They called you a gentleman

Take me back to even before, when we actually spoke for the last time

And you opened your bills and paid them 

As if we had all the time in the world 

How I miss last spring! 

When your heart was still beating

And you hands were still warm 

Your light grew dim

You stopped speaking 

We ran out of things to say 

but there was still no other place to be than by your side 

Quiet but dignified 

Your thoughts a mystery 

The endless unknowing 

Of when the end would near

Please take me back there

To that mystical 

Quiet 

Holy

And strange time

When, like a spark!

suddenly animated 

Your voice arose

Amidst long lost friends and bright reunions

Angel choirs and chapel doors

In an ocean of confusion and bright lucidity

Agitation and beauty

You struggled 

You thirsted 

And oh- my heart hurts!

Our lives lived loudly, not respecting your holy demise

And I left your side 

Leaving -as if your end would wait for me

You surrendered quietly into the night

No Lo Dudes

Today was exactly two months since my father died. Last night I had a dream about my father-finally. I say "finally" because my dreams have been empty of any sign of him since his death.  Yet not one day has gone by where I haven't thought of him. 

As I was waking I felt his image fade away and his words becoming faint in my memory. Realizing he had just spoken to me, I grasped at the end of my dream to remember his words.  I could only recall the last three, "No lo dudes." 

No lo dudes. The words have been echoing in my aching heart all day. Do not doubt it. And yet, that's what I have been doing since he died. I've been doubting my father's current happiness, doubting God's goodness, doubting eternity and even doubting heaven. In my head I know that heaven is real, but his sudden and absolute absence shocked me and made me disconsolate. In the recesses of my heart I whispered, "Where are you, right now, at this very moment? Can you hear me?" Only silence ever followed.

I have been sad and pensive, ambling along like a sleep-walker with a bruised soul. "Do you see me?  Do I make you proud?"

Last night he answered me. I captured only the end of the message but it was spoken with solemn authority- a message I would not have conjured from my own imagination. It was a message from heaven. "No lo dudes".  Do not doubt it. 

No lo dudes.  Okay, Papi, I won't anymore. 

Looking Back

I found this old post that I never published last year around this time. I wrote it before my father became ill and I don't know why I never published it but I will do so now.....

Written Spring 2014 Regarding Fall 2013....

 6 months since the last time I wrote so much has changed. I went back  to school in the fall and was laid-off shortly after. It was a surreal experience. I knew since the acquisition it was only a matter of time but the way it came about was odd and secretive and unprofessional. First, my colleagues and contacts from the other branches stopped communicating with me all together. Clearly they had been told I would be laid off and ordered not to talk to me about it. Then I kept finding out about emails I was excluded from with important announcements or meetings that were being made to my region. I was floating around the office anxiously for weeks with a lot of free time on my hands just waiting to be summoned or something. I finally lost my patience when a colleague sauntered into my office with another office mate to check out her new future space. I grabbed my purse, left my key in the drawer and marched over to my manager's office. He had been ignoring my phone calls and queries. He wasn't in so I told his office mate to tell him I was "very upset and that I was looking for him". I got in my car and left knowing it was probably the last time I'd set foot in there. 

The phone call came. My manager was completely robotic and void of any expression at all. He made the required polite apologies for my distress and said all the legally-correct things and told me I did not need to return on Monday. 

In the meantime I had taken a second job as an elder care giver in anticipation of the lay-off but that lasted about 4 weeks. There was another crisis brewing at home. So I quit. Quitting the second job led to a mixup with Unemployment and I had to face a very uncomfortable hearing with my former latter employer (and friend) to clear my name and get my benefits reinstated. 

I can't even think back towards this past fall without anxiety and sorrow. The lay-off, the hearing were nothing compared to the crisis that ensued. October, especially, brings about a deep abiding ache in my soul. 

My beautiful sweet daughter had been struggling in isolation with deep depression and anxiety that led to serious suicide ideation. She had kept this hidden for over a year. 

When I finally took her to a psychiatrist, the medicine she was given exacerbated her suicide ideation. She was having break downs and panic attacks in school sometimes three times a day. We decided to hospitalize her. She was relieved to be able to fall apart in a safe place after holding herself together for so long. I can't even write about it without a resurfacing of pain and tears.

If you knew Izzy you would know that she's a tough stoic 15 yr old who allows herself no excuses to indulge. She's used to pain. When she suffered with excruciating heel pain during field hockey (from a temporary condition called Severs disease) she would push herself to run harder or when we walked endless miles on the boardwalk on family vacations, she wouldn't say a word about the pain. She would keep walking. She thought that if the rest of the world could walk so effortlessly then she had no excuse. 

I imagine this is what she told herself when  anxiety started to creep into her thoughts. She would push herself through the conflict or the test. When depression would cloud her thoughts she probably wondered why everybody else walked around contented and so she withdrew into herself with no excuse to absolve her. Living daily became painful. Anxiety about future events plagued her thoughts months in advance. She was stuck in an obsessive thought patterns that turned to self loathing. Eventually death seemed like a welcome relief.

So we hospitalized her, we medicated her, we loved her, we fed her and held her. We prayed for her and over her and then we did it all over again. 

It was a painful time mixed with God's beautiful grace. Because I've never been one to hide my family's "dirty laundry" I told everybody. This ensured me that we would be judged, I'm sure, but equally, if not more, covered in prayer. I've never understood the Christian's need to appear unbroken. We are all so broken. People fed us, they prayed for us, they brought prayer shawls for her, they visited her, they anointed her. When we chose to be transparent, people started confessing their struggles with depression too. It was a bittersweet time. I honestly don't understand how people go through crises when they don't believe in God's sovereignty. To think that there are poor afflicted souls who believe they are fatherless and they have to summon the strength from within themselves to get through tragedy is heartbreaking. Life is hard enough!

This ongoing journey has not been an easy one and it's not over but I look at Isabel today and she's changed. She's not cured, that will be a lifetime journey, but she has tools now to help her. She's growing as Jesus walks beside her in the dark valleys. My mother's heart yearns for the day when she will be filled with joy and light for more than moments at a time...until then I will pray.

I (Really) Can Do All Things...

So many wonderful things happened once I decided to put God first in my day and limit my Facebook time.

On the first day (which was the day I started blogging about the book), I decided to put my phone down and things got done. I didn't plan it that way nor did I have to pull myself up by the bootstraps. It just got done. The kitchen was cleaned, the kids did their chores, the laundry got caught up, dinner was on the table etc. As I was doing these things I kept marveling at all the wasted time I had thrown away before. I had peace. It was grace.

The following day I had to be out of the house early for the cleaners so I took the kids to mass in the morning and, again, things got done. Amazingly, there was a special prayer intention that sounded like it had been prepared especially for my daughter. So much so, that she suspected that I had actually called the rectory and requested that I ask them to pray for a very specific prayer intention at the mass! I explained to her that's not how it works. It was a God moment and it had been preordained for her to know that God knows her and knows her intimately. Its been like this for her all summer but that's a whole other blog.

That night my son asked me to take him to mass again the following morning and my oldest admitted her day felt orderly and peaceful because of if. I didn't make it to mass the following morning (baby steps!)  but I read my scripture. And so I have felt the presence of The Lord throughout the week and peace in my home.

But then as the week progressed I remembered the part I've been dreading. I decided to go back to school recently and went to sign up for some classes. There's a math placement test I've been putting off. This test would determine whether or not I would be qualified to take regular credit math courses at college in order to pursue nursing or if I would need to take non credit courses just to get me up to college level math.

This happened to me the first time I went to college and, of course, I failed and had to take the non credit math just so I could be eligible for regular math. 

20 years have passed and there's no record of it.   I was told I have to take that stupid math test again just to determine  if I can be eligible to go straight to Math 101 and Chemistry.

The advisor was so kind and handed me a practice paper and was confident that I would get the "5" score I needed. She said there would be a little bit of algebra, a little calculus, a little trig, etc. but that I shouldn't worry. I didn't want to contradict her because she seemed so sure but  I got D's in high school in algebra. They only passed me because they felt sorry for me.

I went home and studied what I could on Kahn academy. I did this a few times a week but when I would get to the (f)n problems with graphs and curves, I realized that there are simply some huge gaps in my education that a week's worth of Kahn cannot bridge. 

After starting to get a mild anxiety attack, I shut the computer quickly.  I decided that God didn't want me to stress (or maybe I didn't) but, at any rate, I was at peace with failing. I would do my very best but if my  lack of self discipline led me to repeat non credit courses, so be it. I even emailed my advisor  in advance asking what times and dates the non credit courses were held.

The test day came and I showed up for the exam. There was about 20 kids standing against walls and waiting on benches. Where all these people here for a placement test? I decided to be brave and ask aloud. A cute boy with brown hair was the only one who answered me.

"Yes, ma'am."  (I love good manners!)

I must have still looked lost because a younger woman pointed to a classroom and told me to sign up there. I went in there and a girl took my information and promptly sat me down at the first computer. I felt slightly spoiled that I had gotten the first seat with all those people waiting out there but I wasn't going to complain! i heard the proctor give an announcement to the hallway people and I used that opportunity to pray and bless myself and the computer with holy water from Lourdes.

A few minutes later that rest of the class filed in and took their seats. The proctor handed out the scrap paper and the exam started.

I was heartened by how much I knew and my heart was racing with glee as I got to answer 11 and realized there was just one one more question......But then, instead of printing out my results, a second part of the test started up and I realized that had just been the beginning! I noticed the girl beside me never once used the scarp paper while mine was all filled up. She finished her test before anybody else and I started to worry. But that's when I remembered that all I could do was my best and after that, just guess. And that's what I did... a lot. The end of the test has graphs and curves and "sic" and things I'd never done and all I could do was take a stab at one of the choices.

I was relieved when I got to the last question and hit the print button. I was handed my results and I made my way out.

I looked at my paper and saw the following :

This is what went through my mind;  Is  that a number 5 that I scored? What's Math 103 and Math 110?? Are they non credit courses? But wait, that says Math 101. Math 101? That's regular Math! OMG, I passed? I can't believe I passed!

Days later and I'm still  amazed that God did this for me.  I passed this test. I don't know if anybody will ever understand how amazing this is for me. Even now I have a tiny moment of panic that maybe I'm reading the paper wrong.

Tomorrow I have my follow up appointment with my advisor. She never did answer my email. I can't wait to go in there and show her my 5 score!