5 Minute Fridays: Ordinary Chips

It's fifteen minutes until Saturday morning which means I can still do....

FIVE MINUTE FRIDAY

Where, for five unedited minutes, I write my heart out on a specified word suggested by the gypsy mama over here. 

Today's word is:

ORDINARY.

Go.

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Saturdays aren't days we think of as ordinary. Usually, people do special things on Saturdays. For me, as a kid, I woke up at my dad's house on Saturdays. Cocoa Krispies and chocolate milk. Mom would never had let me have such a morning feast of chocolaty goodness. But Dad would. We'd pig out on pizza and popcorn Friday nights, watch "Full House," "Perfect Strangers," and I'd wake up to cartoons on Saturday mornings with the breakfast of champions. Saturdays were not ordinary for me - not only because of my meal, but because Dad and I always did fun things, such as going to the zoo or to Kiddieland or over to Lyn, my future stepmom's house, or ... well, I seem to remember a lot of TV-watching. But that was special, too: I'd lie on my dad's side, the two of us like a stack of chips, and I the smaller one as he propped his head up with his elbow. It's just how we watched TV.

My daddy's tomorrow, Saturday, will not be ordinary. He will be getting his kidneys hydrated in preparation for some tests so that he can get some more tests and then a procedure and then perhaps he will be health....ier. So I pray these five minutes - and many more - I pray to my Heavenly Father, my Abba, I pray that my earthly father, my Dadoo, would find health and rest and peace and wholeness. I pray that we would have many more ordinary and non-ordinary, unique days together. So I guess, after these five minutes, I wrote about what was not ordinary, rather than what is ordinary...but that's just where my mind wanted to go this night.

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linking up with Lisa Jo 

What You Find When You Peel Back the Tree

Copyright (c) <a href='http://www.123rf.com'>123RF Stock Photos</a>

The past two Christmases I've written excitably about the season, feeling inspired and touched by the meaning, the reality of it all.

The past two Christmases are the first two that I've truly known Christ.

This Christmas? There are more unexplained tears and more family-tension. More little problems and more big crises. There is more nagging and more needing-to-go-for-a-walk to get away from it all.

My blog has been quiet, waiting patiently for my return and I begin to think: who is the author - is it me? What is this blog? Who reads it?

The normal writer-doubts fill my head and tell me that I'm not good enough, that I don't write well enough. I hear the lie that I should just return to angst-ridden poetry instead of faith-filled personal writing because that, at least, got me ....

say it. Say it.

Attention. Accolades.

Shiny ornaments on my tree of success.

Oh, but I think about what I've learned in the past 2 years about God's upside-down Kingdom and I re-read what I just wrote.

The angst-ridden poetry may have gotten published widely and a few awards here and there...but the truly fulfilling writing did not come until I started this blog, until I started writing for my church newsletter, writing more intimately in my prayer journal and my regular journal, when I began my gratitude journal.

When I began the dialogue with God I became the writer I wanted to be.

Maybe not the writer that would get me accolades and awards. But the writer I know I was meant to be.

The angsty poetry had its place back then. But I am a new creation and I cannot nor should I discount the transformation within done by God.

So who is the author of this blog?

My dear friend, Michele, says on her blog that "Life's Author is God."

And I want that desperately. I want to surrender so much - all of myself - to God so that He is truly the Author of my everything.

I want God to be the author of this blog and I the mere vehicle.

I look at the metaphorical tree I have set up in front of me. I notice the ornaments are those of ingratitude, complaint, grief, sadness, depression.

I fight all those things on a daily basis, but this season has been especially hard. I read so much inspiration on my favorite blogs and I then play the comparison game. Why can't I do that? Write that? Feel that? Be that?

I don't want to feel this much grief for my mother, six years gone. Why am I feeling it so much more now?

I don't want to get this crabby on a daily morning basis.

I come home after my 40 minute drive and I am ready to go, having put the Armor of God from Ephesians 6 on, prayed in the car, told God I was ready to face the evening. And then to walk through the door to some crisis. It feels like it's every day. It just might be every day.

And in all of it - (I took a weekend break a few weeks back and learned this -) I know to give thanks.

Practice Eucharisteo. Practice giving thanks during the hard times.

So maybe this Christmas, for me, won't have the jolliness past ones have had. It isn't seeped in my mother's apple cider. It doesn't sing with Barbra Streisand's unique rendition of "Jingle Bells." We haven't done a family picture this year and I haven't sent out Christmas cards (how strange) because we've just been trying to survive.

Maybe this Christmas is more about what I learned that weekend I went away to be with God. Maybe it is about giving the hard thanks.

Maybe this Christmas I will peel the leafy evergreen branches back and reveal the bare tree underneath. It isn't about presents for me this year. It's about His Presence.

Not the decorated evergreen tree

but the bare tree that became a cross where Jesus gave His life for me

picture from http://www.dayspring.com/tree_to_cross_3_christmas_ornament/

and through tears (maybe explained, maybe unexplained) and heart-pains I give the hard thanks. I turn my head up and, amidst the frightening teenage choices and the whiny kindergartener and the starting-to-get-moody-tween and the marriage bumps and doctors' shrugs, I give thanks.

I give thanks to You, Lord. I give thanks because You deserve it and so much more. I give thanks because I am thankful that I know how to give thanks. For that is truly what saves me every time, in my deepest and loneliest and scariest times: counting Your gifts. I lived so much of my life feeling lost, Lord. This Christmas, I thank you for leading me, stone by stone, footprint by footprint, year by year, to You. I am choked up when I think about how You have saved me. How You sent Jesus down as a baby born in a dirty, filthy feed trough instead of a regal chamber.  I am amazed at how You, this baby grown into God-Man, have pursued me - me! - all of my life, and still do! How you ask me to sit at Your feet. This girl who looked in the mirror and hated herself. Who saw dirt and filth. You ask me to see what You see, Lord. You are the Savior I always knew I wanted but never could understand until now. And not only do I want you, but I need You, Lord. Jesus, I need You.

It feels odd to be writing so nakedly about myself now - here - at Christmastime when I feel I ought to be writing about Jesus and His birth and the Gospels. I wrote my first year of blogging here about Joseph being a great example of a stepparent and I shared different music videos contemplating the amazing situation Mary found herself in. And an interesting blog entry from December, 2011, about the yoke Jesus asks us to take on and about Christmas expectations.

Is this December, almost-Christmas, blog entry appropriate reading for this season?

I can't answer that right now. Somehow, though, I know God works through my heart and into my fingertips. Somehow, He can write me out of this confusion.

From a bare cross, God folds out my branches until, in Him, I am a beautiful tree, ever-green with glory as I shine with all He will do through me.

I hope to write again before Christmas. I can't promise, but I will try. Until then, may you keep your eyes on Jesus this season.

And does any peeling need to happen in your life? Certainly an interesting notion...

Now, if you'd like, sit back and listen to a beautiful song I just discovered:
"Becoming" by Christine Dente

Blessings be yours...

Not My Saving, but His: What I Know Now Thursday

It's time for What I Know Now Thursdays...

Photo credit: Wallflower83 / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND

and what I know now, this Thursday, is a very difficult thing to know:

that my oldest girl's heart is broken, has been broken, and breaks nearly every day...and I can't do anything to stop or fix it.

Are you a parent who watches the child you love suffer either through growing-up painful circumstances or through circumstances beyond their (or your) control?

I understand.

I may not have given birth to these children, but my heart holds them as if my womb did. And my heart aches when their hearts ache.

And right now my 14-year-old, who isn't able to accept me as a mother-figure in her life right now, is hurting beyond belief, and, like my mother before me, I now share the ache-for-the-daughter.

What I know now and what my own mother had to learn through many hard, hard years...is that we can't do anything to get our daughters out of the train wreck they sometimes [must] go on.

We can't be there to catch them every time they fall.

We can't be there to fix everything.

All that is certainly known in the parenting community, but do we really know it in our heart? I'm not sure because I know that I still try to band-aid and fix it all up, anyway.

When my 8-year-old stepdaughter is angry, she will let me sit with her and hold her and talk it out. And when my 6-year-old stepson is scared of something, he'll climb into my lap and we'll sort it out together.

But there is that age, that fighting-for-independence-age, when your teenager pushes away all attempts to love and support, while, at the same time, secretly yearning to know that you are still there, despite it all.

So, that is what I must do. Be here. Loving her from afar, making myself available should she seek me out.

One thing I didn't know not too long ago was that, while I could not be with her 24 hours a day to rescue and comfort her, there is a God who can. This 14-year-old isn't quite sure how she feels about this God we introduced into her life, full-on, 2 years ago, and so she wanders around pinning God-like hopes on mere mortals. How I wish I could open her eyes to all I have seen in 2 years.

But that is her own path to walk and God has His own will to lay upon her.

What I know now is that God's plan for her is a good one. He wants hope and a good future for her (Jeremiah 29:11) and I need to trust that.

What I know now is that, no matter how much I want to, I can't be her savior.

But God already is.

Linking up with Sarah Mae, even while is on sabbatical:

5 Minute Almost-Friday: SICK

So... I would normally write a blog entry tomorrow and link up to 5 Minute Fridays over at Lisa-Jo Baker's blog, but I am going into the hospital for a procedure tomorrow. Don't worry, it is one that many people have to do. Hopefully it will help doctors find out why I've been in such pain this last year. Anyway, given that tomorrow morning the procedure will be happening and the rest of Friday will be spent in bed sleeping off the sedative, thought I'd do my own 5 Minute Almost-Friday.

And so my word is...

SICK.

http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/mother-and-daugther-high-res-stock-photography/85271995

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GO

I feel quite sick right now and have for a long time. I remember when I was very young I had a phobia of

throwing up. I must have been eight or nine years old and I would make my dear mother sit with me in the

bathroom as I sat on the floor near the toilet, knees on towels for padding, body ready to heave, tears

streaming down my cheeks. Mom would be trying to comfort me, knowing I was probably not going to

vomit since I rarely did. I was mostly-sort-of-a-hypochondriac in that sense. But Mom did not make me feel

bad or stupid; she was supportive and loving. I listened to oldies music back then and I remember a song

that went, "Apple peaces pumpkin pieeeeee" came on the radio while I was crying in the bathroom because I

was yet again afraid of vomiting and we burst into sudden laughter because I said that song was making me

nauseous. Instead of remembering fear and sickness, I remember love and care. I feel so grateful to have had

a mother who took such loving care of me. I know that she would be so happy to know that I have found

my loving Father who is so good at taking care of me. And so He does right now. As I am sick and going to

have this procedure tomorrow to try to find out what is going on, I know Mom is in Heaven, watching me be

sick and...yes vomit...but vomit without fear...(go me!)...and I know Mom is proud of me and glad that I

have my Heavenly Father taking care of me. She knows He can take care of me better than anyone can.

Doctors included. O Great Physician, heal me, Lord.

STOP
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So Mom, this one's for you:

Linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker and I hope she doesn't mind that I made up my own word because I don't know what her word is going to be.
Remember, this 5 Minute Almost-Friday!

http://lisajobaker.com/five-minute-friday/

5 Minute Friday: Roots

My first 5-Minute-Friday. Read about it here or click on the badge on the sidebar. I'm hoping I can be intentional enough to do it every Friday.

This Friday's word is ROOTS

GO
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photo from mike_tn at http://www.flickr.com/photos/21966325@N00/201221336

I think of roots and I think of family trees and the roots that hold the tree together. I'm missing my main root, my mama who will have died 6 years ago this next Tuesday, November 6th, and I have written about her so much these past 6 years, about her death and her life and my mourning and my healing so much these past 6 years, that it is blooming into my first real poetry book in 2013, God willing.

So much written about my Mom and yet I can't reach her. I have lost my grasp. I try and I try but I cannot recall what her voice sounds like and it shatters my heart. It shatters my stepmama-heart because I need my mama so much this year as mother-daugher/mother-son issues have exploded into my life, as I have truly morphed into these kids' other mother. I wrote about this on my stepmother blog that often goes untouched these past years. I wrote about how I wasn't a mother and then I was and now what do I do when the roots these kids began with are not my own? I do not share them, yet I feel these kids are my own. God gave me these kids and these years are the labor pain years.

But it is in these years that my love has blossomed for them. Why does it seem to take strife and pain to grow our love? I feel like their mother though I would never declare myself such a name to them, particularly the oldest who wants to put my name and the word "mother" as far away from each other as possible.

My roots are not theirs. My mother was a gentle, kind woman. She taught me about gratitude and acted very Christ-like even if she never openly professed herself as a Christian. She gave me forgiveness and grace and love. And when she died my life up to that point died along with her. I don't know how I survived. I almost didn't. But look at me now - I am married with three stepchildren who I consider my children (Husband and mine) and yes, I even call them "my kids" when talking about them. So does this increase in love through pain and hardship, this forgiveness and grace, make my roots intertwine with theirs? Maybe I can use that word-picture. Their roots might not be from my tree, directly...but I am certainly influencing them. I am making an impact that they will carry with them forever. So maybe roots aren't strictly blood-related. Maybe roots are love-related. Family trees don't just grow by water; they grow by love. And though we all certainly have our stressful days (years!), I am certain I love them as if they came from my womb.

STOP
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Okay, so that was a tad more than 5 minutes. I remember doing timed writing exercises a la Natalie Goldberg, my great writing teacher and mentor from my high school/college days, and I'd always go over because I couldn't stop the thoughts from pouring out - nor did I want to.

May this 5-ish Minute Friday be the first of many.

Thank you for your eyes that read and thank you for your heart, that I pray is full.

Dear Me, at 16 Years Old

Dear 16 yr old Lisa,
What do I say to possibly prepare you for your future? Let me get one thing out of the way first, something that's been pressing: "J" is not worth it. He is not worth the obsessive phone-and-watching-and-waiting. You've been hurt and you will be hurt by him again.

But honestly, you know you search for your identity in guys, yet you do so anyway. I so wish I could go back in time and put your nose in a Bible. Ask Anne to go into detail of why she loves this God of hers.

God, in fact, opened a door in Anne and you did not take it. But don't worry - sixteen years from where you are the Great Whoosh will happen and, while I wish you came to Him another way, the truth is that you finally meet the only unconditional love you can ever have - and believe it or not, that will be enough.

Right now, nothing seems enough, does it? "J" can't call you enough, hold you tight enough; "A" can't dote on you enough, "Mr. M" doesn't think you're different and talented enough. The theatre folks can't ask you if you are okay enough and you can't seem to cry enough.

The cutting and scratching can't get enough of the pain out and trust me, girlfriend, once you start your first dose of  Prozac, any day now (if you haven't already), no medication will make you feel good enough.

Because if I could somehow get you to stop seeking out your "enough" and realize that just as you are - you are precious, beloved, treasured, and loved. Enough. Not by any man, but by God. Yes, Lisa, the Creator of the Universe thinks you are enough and He will be your Enough. Pain ends with Him. Seeking approval and validation end with Him.

All through your 20s, you will struggle with idolizing men. You will make each man you think you love into a little "god." I am sad and so sorry for the hurt that awaits you. If you thought your feelings for "J" were intense and heartbreaking, just wait.

Maybe this letter isn't as compassionate as I had hoped. I sense some resentment, probably because I'm starting to relive your teenage years in our stepdaughter.

Yes - you get your "daughter," though God gives you two girls and a boy in a very different way than you had originally imagined. But, right now, keep Caryn Eve framed if that keeps hope alive burning at least for a while.

"Girl with Apples," painting by William Adolphe-Bourguereau that, at 16, I used to pin my one-day-mom dreams on in order to get through each day

Anyway, as I was saying, I have not one but two girls. And the eldest carries pain I cannot begin to imagine, yet, at the same time, she reacts to it identically to the way we did. I don't know if this was God's plan in allowing you to endure years of self-injury, but you now have a child who does the same. And guess what? She is as stubborn and self-absorbed as you were. She resists the help you try to offer as much as you resisted the help offered to you. That comes crashing down when you are twenty-two, by the way.

So I'm asking you to keep careful notes so that I may help this fourteen-year-old girl under my roof. Thanks for all those journals. From age eleven, I'm still going strong.

There are two things you will need to let go of. The first will feel of little consequence when I tell you what the second thing is, but I'll tell you anyway.

Right now, theatre is everything to you. You thrive on the accolades, applause, the carnations and compliments.

Don't cling; it does not last.

In college, something traumatic will steal that dream and you won't perform in another play for twelve years and even then, the acting bug will be long-squashed. But don't fret, you continue to perform and share through

 your poetry readings,

 the Alzheimer's Poetry Project

reading and singing to your stepkids, and even in church by singing worship songs with the Praise Team and when you portray Mary in a Lent monologue.

The second thing to let go of - or what you will have no choice to let go of - is...

I've been stalling. I don't want to tell you. She is your best friend and hated enemy at sixteen. And I know if I tell you she will be gone one day, I simply don't know if you can take hearing it. Even now, almost six years after, I mourn fresh and piercing. So no, I can't go into it.

Just love, Lisa. Don't worry so much about being perfect, about how much others approve of and love you because those who matter always have and those who don't never mattered.

Love your mother, but detach a little. For heaven's sake, give John a break. You will anyway in around seven years. Stop being a brat to your future stepfather. I'm now a stepparent whose oldest started treating me that way and worse this past year. Trust me, it hurts more than you ever know.

Sixteen is such a pivotal time for you, Lisa. If I didn't know there was a purpose for it all, I'd beg you to put away the tarot, crystals, the board, all of the New Age stuff that is not good for you. You were always seeking that Higher Power. Well, I found Him. If I didn't believe you needed to be molded and crafted before God flung open the shutters, I'd beg you to ask Dave what a born-again Christian is. Don't listen to others laugh and mock; these lovers of God could save you so much anguish.

I constantly wonder: what if we had been raised loving and knowing God? What if you had been curious enough to let Anne share? What if I wasn't the giant age of thirty-two before my life was so radically saved, much less altered, by God?

And yet....when I feel myself growing angry at you for all your mis-steps and idolizing, I remember Jeremiah 29:11. God has a plan for you, Lisa. A plan not to harm you, but to prosper you with a future too awesome to comprehend. And I have to believe He felt that way even when you were sixteen years old, flailing in a God-less bowl with water so high that you had to drown many times before hearing Jesus say, "Come!" and finally, after so much...you do.

But I know it all comes down to love. It always has. You are loved, Lisa. You must feel it and then love yourself. Listen to those older and wiser than you. Yes, even at thirty-four, we don't have it all together. You have a husband who loves and adores you, but you still look for validation too much. Codependency is still your middle name. Your childhood demons continue to shake your earth and has broken through the ground you carefully laid down as a toddler to keep it hidden and covered. It's coming up now, Lisa. I know you suspect at sixteen. Keep open to the healing and let love reach you.

I understand suffering so much better now. It doesn't make it less painful, but we have a God who comforts us, redeems us, forgives us. That love is eternal, something we never knew.

So don't lose hope at sixteen. "J" will leave one day. Others will take his place. And one man will come and be the one God chose for you. In fact, this man helps bring you to God.

Wow - did you ever imagine your engagement ring? Here it is!

And stop taking the pills. Stop marking up your body. Stop the self-absorbed self-hatred and remain open to the love that knocks every so often. I know He tried to come to you many times in the next sixteen years. Don't let a near-tragedy finally open your eyes.

And one day, Lisa, you will finally rest in the One who will never leave you, who will never be taken away from you.

You have a Forever coming. Be ready, my sweet, sad girl.

God is on the horizon.

I love you. More importantly, God loves you.

Lisa 

Linked up with 

although I waited too long to write this and be included in her link-up, here is the url for other letters to enjoy!

To support Emily P. Freeman's wonderful book, "Graceful: letting go of your try-hard life," people have been  writing letters to their teenage selves. It's quite the undertaking! Write your own and check out her book! You will surely be blessed by it.

Saving the Wretch

Amazing grace
How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch
like me


I once was lost
but now am found
was blind but now
I see

I was listening to today's Live the Promise and, to my delight, Susie had on as her guest Nicole Serrano, my favorite Christian singer as of late. I downloaded her online album a while ago and have loved her songwriting skills and vocal capacity. I loved hearing her sing requests and she did a gorgeous rendition of Amazing Grace.

I thought back to when that song first hit me hard and realized it was way before I ever thought about being a Christian.

I remember my Gramma's funeral - I was 15 years old and completely unraveled at the loss of her - and this song came on...and why did I become so disheveled during this song, in particular? Gramma didn't love it in any special way. I tried to recall why the song touched me to the point of needing to excuse myself from the company of my family in the middle of the service, but I couldn't remember anything.

It was at the age of 15 that the tide of my life took a serious turn for the worse.

I wonder if God did not try to take hold of me right there. Chubby, awkward 15 year old on the bathroom stall floor sobbing her eyes out. What could God have been saying to me?

He knew. He knew what I would do, who I would become. Perhaps He called out to me. But I was too blind, too deaf.

Two years later, He gifted me with a devoted Christian girlfriend, Annie, who colored my world with beautiful faith hues of light blue and pew-wood-brown.

Still, I did not latch on. I chose to continue on my dark path.

I was a wretch over and over again as I turned 18, 20, 22, and on up.

I fouled up time and time again. I hurt people. I was a lost soul, grappling for meaning in this life.

But God is amazing and God is full of grace.

And I received His amazing grace on November 6, 2010, at the bottom of my life where the mire and the muck lived. The place where there isn't even any sludge to scrape up anymore. Below that point.

God lifted me up and showed me how amazing grace could be.

And now, even though I often feel lost these days, I know I am not a lost soul any longer. I have found my Purpose, my Meaning.

No longer blind and no longer deaf, I see the world in multi-color-view with rainbow hues.

When I was 15 and heard Amazing Grace, I felt nothing but grief and shame.

Now I feel nothing but gratitude.

The Anniversary of Giving and Taking Away

I don't know how to start. Some moments I feel overcome with grief for what day it is: the 5th anniversary of my mother's death. The day my world stopped turning and spun out of control for many years. And then last year - on this day - I spun into the Lord's embrace and there have I nestled myself happily and gratefully. And yet some moments I rant and rail against God, asking him why? Why did He have to take my mother, my best friend, away from me? Look at what happened to me two years after her death: I got married and became a stepmother of three. So much happened in my life that she was not a part of.

Last night while sitting in the passenger side of the car, head leaning against the cold window with eyes searching the stars and moon above, I listened to the new Casting Crowns CD,"Come to the Well" and I was in an angry place. I wanted my Mom. I wanted her not just alive, I wanted her right next to me, holding me. I wanted to talk to her, to hear her voice, I wanted to feel her arms around me. And I was angry.

Then I remembered what I had heard in a Beth Moore Bible Study on the Book of Esther. She talked about "reversal of destiny." or peripeteia which is a fancy way of saying reversal of fortune - that is to say, a literary device and concept of a turning point, a change of circumstances. There are plenty of people in the Bible who have had reversals of destiny. Actually, that is what a lot God's Word is: the lowly, the least-deserving or the least-expected people turning out to reach the highest heights, become the greatest people, the wisest, the strongest. In the book of Esther, it was Esther, herself, who started out as the Jew, Hadassah, who rose in status to be the Queen of Persia. Such an "ironic" or upside-down turn of events is an example of "reversal of destiny."

I asked myself: what was my "reversal of destiny?" What became ironic in my life - born from tragedy which turned into something benefiting me or others?

I struggled with figuring this out until last night in the car, looking up at the sky. As I was venting to God how unfair it was that my mother was no longer with me, I began to feel a calm settle over my body. My mind stayed on thoughts of my mother, then drifted to thoughts of my stepchildren. And that's when the pivotal phrase hit me:

A mother mothering without a mother.

How ironic. What a tragedy turned into a blessing. Blessing, you ask? I often don't think so, but my stepchildren are in full-time care of  Husband and I because of an emergency situation that happened in their lives and thank God Husband and I had a stable home and life. It has been nothing short of total chaos trying to manage a life which includes a (fairly) new family of 3 kids plus husband...but I'm doing it.

And I know you probably don't understand this because you didn't know the dynamic between my mother and me, but I think I would not be as effective a stepmother if my own mother, though much loved, was still alive. Oh, of course I long for Mom to know my family, but for some reason, God thought it would be better for me to go at this without her earthly presence.

I don't pretend to know the mind of God, nor do I wish to. But this realization gave me some purpose for Mom's passing. And whether or not I am right about the "reversal of destiny" and my place in it, whether or not it makes sense to you or to me, it brings me a certain sense of calm and peace and on this day of days, the 5th year of her passing, I think that's a fine thing to think.

I'll leave you with this verse from Psalm 30:11:
  
Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness;

I hope to feel that way some of the time. I say some because I know I will grieve, I will hurt. But I know the Lord makes all things new, that He loves and guides...

and in coming to Him, I have been made free (mostly, because hey, I'm human) of this anger at her death. 

I hope the verse comforts and inspires you. 

And I'm curious. What do you think about "reversal of destiny?" Google it. Wiki it. Look up what Beth Moore has to say about it. And get back to me. 

Happy All Saint's Day, as celebrated in my Lutheran Church today. 

God Bless. 
And Mom, I love and miss you.