I’m Awake Again

Don’t get cranky with me, I was asleep now I am awake again, breathing issues. When I fall asleep I slump, when I slump I cease to breath. This writing thing, it is rest for me. I’m drinking my fluids, mowwing down on vitamin C. Chewables, yum they are addictive, to a point.

There is a clam tide this coming weekend. I can’t wait.

Ha I knew that would get you. “Whadda think I am? Dumb or sumpin?” Unless a miracle occurs I will not be going down to clam dig. Which is hugely disappointing because I did not go down to dig at all this fall. Next month is lambing season, won’t get to go then. That would be a pout.

And even though before I got sick Dirt said I could go, it was a reluctant “You can go if you want.” It is a two hour drive, Dirt has a big fat conference he has to speak at. And now? No thanks, I would like to be alive to see if my experiment with my onions is going to work.

Read this book once that portrayed heaven and our being there as a time that we will continue to learn. To this I say hooey. No way. And I happen to be a person who loves to learn, constantly. But even though it was fiction, that idea was so ridiculous that they lost me.


I also do not cotton to the popular silliness that heaven is a time and place for me to do the things I didn’t get to down here on earth. Who gives a Rat Terrier’s posterior about rafting the Colorado or climbing the local mountain when there is eternity with my Lord to finally enjoy. I cannot imagine anything including the death defying acts that I didn’t do here being better than His presence. Uh, death defying, no longer an adrenaline rush ya think?


That said, the pull to see things through, children raised, onion experiments, it is hard to think that I wouldn’t wonder how that all turned out. But really, I’m ready. In a heart beat, ready. I know it, God proved it.

The other day when I was up on the ladder pruning one of the trees I noticed the branch I was about to cut was intertwined with the power line that feeds our garage, barn and wash house. It wasn’t really intertwined, intertwined but this power line has been known for being on a rotting cross piece coming from the pole.

I knew that I didn’t care if I went, I actually asked God that if the power line came down and hit my aluminum ladder that I wouldn’t be in too much pain for too long but then I realized that just about any way we go out is probably painful. I was up the ladder, ready to cut, when I stopped. I knew I was okay and ready to go, if my number was up, my number was up. But then I realized that my husband was out with one daughter with in eye shot and earshot of the area I was in and my other daughter was inside.

I thought about them, got down off my ladder got out my shorter wood ladder approached the cut from a more protected angle. Well I made my cut and see, I am still here. All that for nothing. Well not nothing. I know now, again, that I am okay and ready to go, ready to let go of the plow handle, not go back inside for one more look, one more thing. But that I will never be careless with my life. Especially in front of my girls.

Terry, loaned me a collection of Spurgeon’s sermons. They are all on the Power of Christ’s Prayer Life. Good stuff Maynard, you should pick it up sometime when you’ve got something better to do. (No, I did not leave any words out of that last sentence.) Anywho, Chapter Seven is ‘Our Lord’s Prayer of Glory’.

At the end of the chapter he says, “Dying is but going home; indeed, there is no dying for the saints.” Let me back up a couple of sentences:


“Let us watch the Master’s call. Let us not dread the question – who’s next, and who’s next? Let none of us start back as though we hoped to linger longer than the others. Let us even desire to see our names in the celestial conscription. Let us be willing to be dealt with just as our Lord pleases. Let no doubt intervene, let no gloom encompass us.”


Please, don’t yes, but. Not with your lips, not with your head, not with your heart. Please don’t attempt to cite scripture that give you an out to cling.

We know Spurgeon’s words to be true, we didn’t even really need him to say it, so why do we not try to live it out? Some of us have heard the good news, there is nothing to fear if we believe on Him. Some of us have been blessed with evidence of something greater, so great we cannot imagine. Some of us have had the confirmation we need, we just need to remember.

My mom passed away fourteen years ago last month, December fifteenth. She didn’t have a big huge faith, she had just a tini bit, like Bet’s cat’s name, she had a Scrawny Mustard Seed’s worth. But it was enough, enough to over come heartache in her married life, enough to overcome what most can’t imagine, enough to overcome her children not having the life she wished for them, and I am not talking about wealth and security, I am talking failed marriages and mental illness. Enough to overcome the painful drawn out death of her husband thirteen years earlier.

It was enough to get her through her fear of dying, dying from cancer of the pancreas, she knew she would die with or without treatment, she knew it would be painful. Along with my sisters, I did my mom’s hospice care. the night she died we had tucked her in, did everything we could to make her comfortable and left her room. I had noticed that she kept attempting to rally for particular family members, ones that kept saying, “I’ll see you next week mom.”

Hello? Next week? You get to go home to a busy fulfilled life and you are asking her to wait? Wait on finally seeing her Lord whom she leaned on to get through all those things she had been through when we were all out of smart things to say. You were asking her to wait until you were ready, you’ve had six months, she has had six months of pain. So a few nights prior I had decided that whether it was to be that night or not, we would begin to give her the space to go. A bold forceful move for the baby.

I kissed her cheek and told her I would be in the next room if she needed me. She barely responded, a pleasant look on her face, no bright smile, but also no worried look.

In the wee hours of the next morning I went through the door into her room and there she was, reaching out with a smile on her face.


I knew immediately what had happened. She was never alone, her Savior was with her, he had always been with her and she had finally, truly understood and reached for Him, one last final time, to go with Him. I was glad to have been there, I needed to know that about my mom. My world at that time was filled with people all too happy to give doubt and at that time, I was susceptible to doubt, great doubt. There was no denying what I witnessed over the weeks and what I saw that morning. God’s grace and mercy, my mom’s scrawny mustard seed of faith, and His loving response, His tender care.

My mom had found the desire to see her name in the celestial conscription, willing to be dealt with just as her Lord pleased. No doubt remained, no gloom was in her countenance. The Lord was giving me a huge gift through her, if she could reach out with a smile, so could I. Daily. God, his grace and mercy, his words, were not imagination, not hopeful thinking, not a grand fairytale to get us through the days we covet if we just clung blindly.

I’m not saying that she had a death bed conversion. All her life, the years I knew, she had believed in the salvation that only came from Christ. Was her faith often shaken? No doubt. And there were times she was done believing, angry and upset with the God she trusted. But then hadn’t Peter? She always came back to who He was. What I am saying is, she came to know who she believed in. She came to fully trust. She came to the point that Spurgeon is asking us as saints to come to right now in our lives at this very ordinary moment.

It will make every moment spent here clearer.