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 ...

Hey John, do you know what's different about year six? It falls on the same day. Heads up for those of you behind me in the nightmare.  It's very weird and it brings it all back in a strangely chronological way.  I don't know how to explain it, and I wasn't expecting it. Tonight, as I sit here, I remember you coming in from the field, you and I cooking dinner together, and that extra long hug you gave me in the hallway. I miss those hugs so much. What could we have done differently? If we would have known what the morning would bring, what could we have done?  The morning of November 4 changed our lives forever, it changed a lot of lives forever. This year feels so much like that year, and not just because it all falls on the same days - but the weather and the days leading up to tomorrow have just felt so dark. I am half expecting to wake up to flashing lights, badges, and EMTs.  I went to Frieda's today with my dear friends from Bible study. They have embraced...

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...

I lift up my eyes to the mountains where  does my help come from?   My help comes from the  Lord ,  the Maker of heaven and earth. Psalm 121 Yesterday, I wrote an article and submitted it to an online magazine.  In it, I made no reference to my faith – just grief.  I usually always end my writings with a positive faith-filled message.  But I didn’t.  Why?  Because someone commented on a piece I wrote, saying that it was "great up until the religious part."  Friends, without the religious part, the faith part, the actual reason for our hope part – it’s just words, in my opinion. So I wrote a sad piece on grief and what to expect, without sharing my hope. I'm about to correct that now. Because my hope, my faith, my Jesus? They are everything to me. I don’t understand a world where things just accidentally fell into place. Where there is no Creator, no author, no God of the Universe. ...

DAY 847 Dear John, Dad and I went to Israel.  You would have loved it.  You would have wanted to stay and join their Army.  They looked sharp in their uniform!   I know people think there is so much danger and unrest, at least us here in the US, but it’s not like everyone thinks. We are all guilty of a lot of assumptions as to what a place is really like.  Weird, really, when you’ve never experienced it for yourself, and it’s all based on the opinions of others and the media.  I felt that way before I went to New York – and it wasn’t at all what I thought it would be.  It’s like anywhere else with people, sites, food, and daily life.  How different would life be if we could all see the truth without all the haze that blinds us? Anyway, I wanted to tell you, John, that I have a whole new appreciation for Mary.  When we visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and stood in front of Mary’s statue, there is a sword plunged deep into her h...

Before John died, I had a 3 a.m. conversation with the Lord one night.  I knew about the drugs.  I knew what that meant.  I had been pleading for his life, for his healing, for his willingness to get help, for his trauma - that he would accept counseling, try meds for depression, anything...something.  As his mom, my heart was broken, I didn't know what to do, and God quietly asked: "Do you trust me?"   Do you trust me either way?   Do you trust me if the answer isn't what you were hoping for?  If the outcome isn't the answer, isn't the solution you were hoping for?  Will you trust that I know the whole picture?  That I am the creator of the universe and that John is my child first? I cried for hours before I answered.  I begged and pleaded and I knew that I had to surrender.  I finally said "yes, I trust you no matter what.  I trust you with John's life and I trust you with mine."  On mornings like this o...

John - JRTC at FT Polk Words and more words.  I can't tell you how many posts I've written lately and haven't published, or I deleted them altogether.   I submitted a couple to grief sites, just because I'm drowning in them. Usually writing helps me process, but life has been unusually dark lately and nothing that's coming off the keyboard feels quite right.   Don't worry, I didn't send in the super sarcastic ones, with titles such as:  Leper, Snarky Grief, and I Wish I Couldn't Imagine, they are still in the draft file. They are TMI and word vomit.  I read one to my husband the other day -  he cautioned me not to share it.  😳There are too many words and at the same time not enough words.  Not enough of the right words.  No words to take the pain of losing John away. I found this picture of him in his iCloud.  Unfortunately, when the police released his phone, it wouldn't work anymore.  I had gone through it previously, ...