The Portal: Portal-ity Thoughts

Hey, it's been a minute. I've had a lot of thoughts on Hope since we started a new Bible study  by Jennifer Rothschild entitled   Heaven .  I highly recommend it for everyone.  It's a deep dive into a lot of questions about heaven, what it'll be like, what we will be like, misconceptions and a whole lot of truth. It gives hope.   Hope:  Certainty about the future because God is faithful.   In Hebrew:  a cord, something you're tied to; expectation with tension but security.   In Greek:  confident anticipation, not uncertainty.     In layman's terms: I expect this to happen because God said it would.   Why it matters:   Hope keeps faith from collapsing under grief , it gives endurance when answers don't come, and it fixes your eyes forward without ignoring reality.  (Thanks, ChatGPT) When you believe in Jesus, you can be confident in this hope. This promise God makes to us that upon our death, we will be with Him i...

I wrote this post a few months ago thinking I would submit it.  I didn't.  Today I found it, read it, started tweaking it, and now I'm not so sure I should post it at all.  Hopefully, it will speak to someone who has lost a child or was disappointed by life. John died overnight.  One moment we were a mostly happy family, and the next morning he was dead.  He was 24 years old, tall, dark and handsome.  He was funny and outgoing, and he genuinely cared about people, He was also an addict.  I hate that term, but I’ll use it here, so you understand.  I would normally refer to it as substance use disorder, or that he died from fentanyl poisoning, but the fact remained that John was very addicted to opioids.  Which turned into a heroin addiction and then to fentanyl poisoning.  The drug of the season.  The mass murderer of our children.   He was in the Army, 3,250 miles away from home, and was ...

You left us at 24, and today you'd be 32.  It's hard to wrap my head around that.  I guess you'll always be 24 - but down here, I'm watching your friends get older.  Get married.  Have children.  Get divorced, a nd in some cases, keep struggling.   I have some peace knowing your struggle is over.  If you were still fighting the same demons I don't know where that would have left either one of us or the family.  It was the hardest thing I've dealt with, other than your death, and I feel like we have dealt with a lot.  But, to watch your child be controlled by a substance, one that changes who they are, takes over their life, their thoughts, their minute-by-minute - it's the most helpless feeling I've ever had.  I couldn't fix it.  So, in one very small way, it helps . . .helps to know you are safe, in Heaven, with Jesus, and we will see you again.   Thank you for making that decision and for keeping your faith, even though you w...

 Dear John, I've wanted to let these words out for a while now, they've been burning inside my head, and at 1:38 a.m., they need to be set free.  I haven't been sleeping well.  Obviously.  The audible books and medication can't keep out the thoughts lately, and it seems that the window of 2:00 - 5:00 a.m. has become my nemesis.  I think the culmination of triggers lately has pushed my brain into a frenzied state and it's going wild at night.  The sadness, guilt, and frustration are at their peak in the wee hours and I am subject to their mercy. The current trigger, in addition to Grandpa's death, was being told I was "handling it well".  Handling the death of my father WELL??  Indeed, how does one handle death well?  Do you have any idea what that day was like?  Read on. I am assuming what was meant was I am handling it with a startling lack of emotion.  If they only knew.  Yes, outwardly I am going through the motions and ever...

Dear John, 1599 days have passed since we lost you.  I miss you.  I can't put into words how much I miss you.  It's a ripping, a tearing, a knife through the heart kind of missing you.  I dreamt about you last night.  Somehow, a bag of your things showed up and there were two shirts in the bag that smelled like you, still.  I gave one to Dad and told him to smell it.  I was busy pressing my face into the other one.  I might even miss your smelly feet . . . I was holding your nephew over the weekend, and I was looking deep into his eyes.  Your sister and I have been wondering if he's going to have his Daddy's brown eyes, or have hazel eyes like you did. On Sunday, as I held him, they were mostly green.  And his eye lashes - wow.  I asked him if I could have them and he said "yes, Grandma".  As we sat there and I tickled his baby flesh, I was so reminded of you.  I opened my mouth to tell him that Grandma used to have a litt...

My mother-in-law once told me her 50's were her favorite.  I should have had a clue when on the morning of my 50th birthday, my previous German Shepherd, Sarge, had the worst case of diarrhea I'd ever seen.  In the house!  With people coming over for a meal.  I'm sure glad we can't see the future.  It's not always bright.  I won't say my fifties have been my least favorite, because of my grandkids, but they have been the hardest and most painful years of my life. Six years later, and we've lost our son John to the opioid epidemic, my Dad and I, along with my mother-in-law all hang out at the cancer center, and it definitely has not been butterflies, unicorns, and rainbows.  I have a standing joke with a friend - I type in "uni" on my phone and this comes up:  🦋🦄🌈.  It reminds me that while life is not all butterflies, unicorns, and rainbows, people prefer it when it is.  We have a natural human instinct to look for the good, to try an...

You came to me in a dream. They are rare, but I covet them so. You were yourself, just as I remember you. The dream was so detailed, so strange, so comforting.   Grandma was there too – my family intact. In the dream, Grandpa didn't like where I parked my truck, so he moved it. (He stills tells me how to drive). We were on Litchfield Avenue, we grabbed a pizza at the old Dominos location, and he was concerned our food would get cold. He parked the truck so well, so close to someone’s house, that we couldn't find it!  We told Grandpa we lost the truck and he said, "I parked it at Lavash's", a name I've never heard of, but how odd. Also in the dream, a friend gave me a card announcing the opening of a salon – it was very much in color. It was so blue - as if you took a piece of the summer sky and mixed it with the opalescence of seashells. I'll never believe the "experts" when they say you dream in black and white. Anyway, John, you backed ...

As the year 3 mark approaches – I find myself in a quiet and melancholy place. Year one was shock and horror, people, appointments with the DA – almost a blur. I learned how to listen to books to put me to sleep – as I couldn’t read, and I am still struggling to finish one book the old fashioned way, although I’ve started many. Brain fog, disbelief, searching, what-ifs. It was a year of people not knowing what to do with us, of mountains of tears and extreme emotions.  Of anger and profound sadness.  A year where food lost its flavor and coffee became all that tasted good.    I avoided people, places, and questions.  It was a year that I couldn’t talk about him without crying, where I dreaded any kind of get together because of the questions that were asked and because of the reality of the lives we were living.  I said no.  I know it hurt people’s feelings, but how could they possibly understand how a wedding or a graduation party ripped our heart...