Dear Mom, Happy Birthday

Dear Mom,

Today is your birthday.  You would have been sixty one today.  Crazy to think that this is another year we won’t be celebrating your birthday.  Things are getting better.  I can get through every holiday like a trooper now.  It’s your birthday and mine that get me every time.  How is it that February 25 is here and you are not?  If you were here we would go to Texas Roadhouse for your birthday dinner.  I would have made you a white cake with peanut butter icing.  What would you have asked for? 

My heart hurts today.  I feel like I’m being ripped in two.  I think about all that has happened that you weren't here for.  I learned how to make jewelry and you loved jewelry.  Are you mad that you didn't benefit from that?  Do you even know that now that you are in heaven or are you so busy you haven’t noticed what has been going on?  I started writing.  I’m not sure that I am good at it.  I suppose that is subjective but I do enjoy it.  Your oldest grandchild is starting to drive, your second is going to start driver’s ed in the summer, the baby is ten and he has hair.  You would be so proud of them.

Today I find myself in another battle.  The voices that haunt me are back for the day.  “It is your fault.” “You didn't fight hard enough.” “Did you really do everything that you could have?”  “What if you did this or what if you had done that?”  “You just gave up, you gave up and now she is gone.”  They persist with their accusations and it tears me apart.  Eventually reason comes into play and I realize what is happening.  I suppose I am a slow learner or after almost nine years I would be able to shut them down faster. 

I did not then and I do not now have the power to save anyone.  While I took on the responsibility to take care of you alone, I was not then and am not now an oncologist nor am I God.  Your life, just as mine, was in God’s hands and his hands alone.  I know that God has a plan to bring beauty from these ashes.  I revisit those last days and then I remember that even at the end God was there.  He sent his son to stand at the foot of your bed and take you home.  I know that.  I was there, I felt his presence.  I know you are home.  I know you are having a wonderful birthday in the presence of our Lord.  I know all of these things and I am so sad I am missing the party.  I can only imagine the kind of party that God would throw.  I can only imagine the joy he felt that you came to know him and you were saved and are with him now.  These thoughts bring me peace when I feel that I cannot hold on. 

I keep asking God to keep me moving.  I ask him to tell you how much I miss you and love you.  Sometimes I just get so mad at you and I tell him that too.  I didn't get all of my questions answered.  I didn't learn everything I needed to from you.  I can’t bake like you could.   I miss talking to you on the phone while I fix dinner.  I miss shopping with you.  I miss arguing with you.  I miss all of your expressions.  “What do you want to do now kong?”  “Do you have to go poo poo in the pee pee potty or pee pee in the poo poo potty?”  The kids still remember that one and they think it is so funny.  I walk through shadows today with the hope that tomorrow the sun will shine again.  God brings the light to my weary soul.  I know that he will bring me through this day like so many others. 

I keep moving because I have hope.  Hope for tomorrow, hope for His plan for my life, hope that one day I will see you again.  Hope that when July comes as it always has and it’s my birthday God will bring me through that battle as well.  This year we will be very busy.  Busy is good it is less time to dwell on things that I still have no control over.  Then the light bulb goes on and the lesson is learned yet again.  I am not in control.  I never have been and that is such a relief.  It relieves my soul to know I can go to my father and lay down my sorrows and troubles at his feet.  He will wipe my tears and pick me up again and we will go on with the journey he has for me.  And somehow I think maybe you know that too, that maybe he fills you in. 

Love until we meet again,

Heather 

If they don’t get older in the scrapbook, does that mean they will never leave?

My oldest daughter is a junior in high school this year.  My time for getting her scrapbooks caught up is ticking away like the second hand on a clock.  I may have to hire it done.  I’m not even sure you can do that.  I just know that my feet are stuck in the sands of the hourglass, and I am not getting it done.

I think part of me thinks if I don’t get it done, then she will stay with me.  I’m not ready for her to go.  Sure; there are days when I am more than ready to see what comes next for her. I am terrified to not have her here.  How do you go from spending every minute with them, to sending them away to school?  I don’t remember that section in the book we received at the hospital..  You go from having them with you twenty-four hours a day, to not having them with you at all. 

I know by the time we were juniors in college, we didn’t even go home for the summer any more.  We just stayed at college and came home for major holidays.  I can’t decide if that was a blessing to our parents, or if they struggled also.

My middle child, a high school freshman, went away to honor band for a weekend recently.  I was lost.  I kept thinking that a part of  me was missing.  There are supposed to be three of them here, not two.  It was odd.  This letting go business is hard. 

We have started the journey of looking at prospective colleges with my oldest daughter, and true to my nature, I notice the quality of the food at each place.  It is good that colleges provide food.  If left to her own devices, she may starve.  She won’t have a stove in her room, so she wouldn’t be able to make a pizza, and that is pretty much the only thing she can cook.  She once tried to make a hot dog in the microwave and she cooked it for four minutes.  Do you know what a hot dog looks like after four minutes under nuclear heat? I’ll tell you - it doesn’t look like a hot dog anymore.  This doesn’t instill a lot of confidence in her striking out on her own. 

When I worried about her going to first grade, I wondered how she would carry her lunch tray to the table without spilling it. Now the first thing I worry about for her in college is her food situation again. 

Of course, I also worry about her safety, her study habits, and her ability to make friends.  She is pretty quiet. If she and another quiet girl met, they could be good friends—but then again, if they are both quiet, who is going to talk first?

I met the love of my life my senior year in high school.  I had him for support during college.  She hasn’t started dating.  This is a fact that I am happy about currently, because I have seen how some of those high school boys drive; heck, I have seen how SHE drives, and it is a frightening prospect. 

There are upsides to her leaving, of course. It’s one more person to write actual letters to; I remember waiting anxiously for mail.  Back then, you waited days for letters.  Now with email, the wait is minutes.  I suppose in that instance, the immediate-gratification era has a point in its favor.  With cell phones and email, we can be connected at all times.  And she’s good about calling me. As it is, she calls me from her room, when I am downstairs. 

So if I never finish the scrapbook, will she never leave?  Will I be holding her back from all she is yet to discover and be?  Should I force her to do things she doesn't think she wants to do, just so she doesn't miss out on the experience?  What will I do when I do let her go, and she pulls a Heather, and doesn't come home at the holidays?  Does that reflect well on my parenting, or poorly?  Which part is easier—sending them to college or marrying them off?  If I hit menopause when she does get married, can I request a winter wedding, so I won’t sweat like a pig and stain the satiny dress I will be required to wear?  Are teenagers so difficult to understand and deal with so it will be easier to see them go? 

Oh, how I wish I could ask my mother or grandmother about these things

My questions are many, but the solutions are clear.  When crunch time comes, the scrapbooks will be done, and I will let her go.  She will spread her wings and she will leave the nest to see what the world has to offer, and experience what God has planned for her. 

I just need to realize that while she is my child, she is also a child of God, and I don’t own her.  I have to hope that I have taught her something about the world and that she knows how to get through life without too many scrapes.  God is as much with her as he is with me, and he will be with both of us during the next chapter. 

After all, once in high school, I caught the kitchen on fire making a Pop Tart for breakfast.  All she did was overcook a hot dog, and the microwave is still in working order.  She is already ahead … and I turned out fine.  Right?

My Statement

The name of my first book is God Has Better Things to do Than My Laundry.  I clarify that it’s my first book so that you won’t think that I am an expert by any stretch of the imagination.  This body of work is far from what The Notebook was to Nicholas Sparks.  As you will notice the first word in the title of my book is God.  It seems that there is some confusion by people that I have never met and maybe even by some I have as to what this book is about.

I am here to clarify for you.  This book is about our lives, my life to be more specific about it, although perhaps there are those that can identify with what I write about.  Perhaps you have been where I have; you have experienced much of the same things that I have.  I happen to be a Christian.  I believe in the Father and I believe in the Son.  I believe that Jesus came down and died on a cross for me and not just for me but for you also.  I believe it even though I cannot see it, but I have to challenge you to look at the faces of your children and the sunset on a warm summer day and try to explain it any other way.  My belief in God is talked about in my book.  God is a headliner in the title of my book.  God made the mere possibility of the book a thought in my head and He is the one who made it possible. 

I do not claim to be a professional.  I do not even claim to be good.  I write not for the fame of those who have come before me but because to not write seems an impossibility.  Because if I don’t write I will never get to say all I have to say.  Because If I don’t write no one will know necessarily how much I love my family and how very much I love my God.  As has been established I am not a public speaker.  I’m not one to witness to the masses on a stage or even to a classroom, but I will type my thoughts and express myself with words on a page.

If you are expecting a Bible study you won’t find it on the pages of my book.  If you are expecting a work of great fiction or for me to not talk about God you will be severely disappointed in my book.  My book is not even something I wanted to share with the public at large.  It was an idea, a dream, a little something that maybe I might attempt someday.  That someday happened and while I am thankful for the opportunities that God has presented me with, I am at a loss as to handle people who don’t get it.  Maybe because I don’t get it, I don’t get the plan, I haven’t been filled in as it were to what God has planned with all of this and why on earth He would choose me to carry this out.  I only know that I am trying very hard to be obedient whether I “get it” or not. 

The thing is although this book is about me, the project really isn't.  This isn't about me, it’s about God.  It’s about His plan, His timing, His work, His will for me.  Whatever that looks like, that’s it.  There is no clear end in the book because it’s ongoing.  This work He is doing is ongoing.  My life as it were continues and has continued even in times when I thought for sure that it wouldn't and couldn't and shouldn't.  It has and it will until God deems it differently.  Until then I will continue to write what He gives me to put on a page.  I will type out the stories of our family and I will watch as it all unfolds as words on a page.

You don’t have to read it.  You don’t even have to like it.  But if you cannot type out the name of God I can only hope that maybe something will speak to you in the message He has given me to convey.  If not then I am sorry you chose a book with the first word of the title being God.  I don’t understand your thinking.  But I am a believer and I will never apologize to anyone for whom or what I am.  Take it or leave it, I am who I am and I won’t apologize to anyone for that either.  Why should I?  I am the daughter of a King and He doesn't make mistakes.