Hope

Hello all,

It has been quite some time since I have last wrote on here. For that I apologize. I actually said I was going to do this everyday. Yikes. I think by everyday I meant every 3 months.

First off, I will fill you in on my life. After this Mayterm, I will be 22 credits away from graduating! I plan on taking 2 summer courses at UWM so that when I return to Ashland in September, it will be my last semester of college! If you didn't know this, I am not really one to just throw exclamation points wherever, but this is great new! It has been an incredibly long journey! Who knows what will happen next.

The reason I have to take summer classes has a lot to do with my mother passing. I didn't handle that whole grieving thing very well. This semester I had to withdraw from two classes, cutting my course load in half. Time is feeling more like time to me.  I hope that makes sense. I used to count the days and weeks after she passed. Now, I don't. Don't think for a second that I forgot. She is constantly on my mind. This weekend is Mother's Day and my family will all be lighting sky lanterns and letting them float off in to the night sky. We will all be in different parts of the state, but together at the same time. My mother always liked these things and I think it is a great memorial. In case you have never seen one of these, here is a picture:

Now on to the INSPIRATIONAL part of my post. I put it in all caps so it would catch your eye. I bet it did. OK, I read some writings by Gareth Evans ( A Welsh-Canadian I met in Haiti) and he wrote about "hope".  He says, "Hope is an attribute of the mind and is evidenced in confidence." True hope is given to us by God. The kind of hope that was talked about in the letters Paul wrote, was more than just "I hope it doesn't rain today." It was even more than believing. It is knowing. I have hope that one day I will be in heaven. Why? Because God has revealed this to me. Do feel hopeless? Read 1 John. Obi-wan Kenobi is not our only hope. Jesus is. Look to the cross.

Here is a link to Gareth's little article:   http://www.garethevansministries.org/media/Hopeless.pdf

Let me know what you think of this post. The more feedback I get, the more I am encouraged to write more posts.

Have a wonderful day!!

Sean K.

Letters

The following letters reflect my personal beliefs on faith. I wrote the first letter to my mother while in Haiti weeks before her surgery that never actually happened due to the metastasizing of the tumor. The second letter was her response. For whatever reason, I felt like showing them to you.

Dear Mother,

This is a letter that I have been meaning to write for weeks if not months. I must be honest in this letter. I am tired of people sugarcoating situations such as this. We all know you have a very serious condition. I would love to say, “The surgery will go great!” The truth is I don’t know. Optimism is fine, but I do not believe that thinking happy thoughts can change a situation. Now, prayer, that is different because when one prays to God it involves faith, faith that He can. The thing about faith is, it is received.

When concerning your cancer, God has never given me that faith to say “I know you are going to live.” Believe me, that is what I want, but I learn that what I want and what God has planned can be very different. I know I hear the family and friends telling me “she is going to be ok”, but many of these people are terribly worried inside. I am not going to lie and say I am not worried, but the truth is God has given a peace in me with this situation. I continue to worry, but the more I look to God the more I hear him saying “It is in my hands”, which gives me assurance.

I want to let you know what matters most to me. I think you already know that I am going to talk about God. What matters most to me is your salvation. In the Lutheran church I don’t believe that there is enough talk about what salvation is. I am sure I have talked to you about this topic many times, but I pray that you understand why I talk about it so much. This is not easy to talk about, but whether your physical body lives or dies here on Earth, that is nothing compared to your spiritual body.

I am reading a book that talks about the moral law. This moral law is that thing inside us that tells us what we ought to do. It is more than just our conscience. This is one of the many proofs of God. If there is a child crying for help down the street, you will immediately think two thoughts. “I should go help” or “That is too dangerous”. If you do nothing you will most likely feel the guilt because of the moral law. This cannot be explained through science. Now we cannot possibly obey this moral law on a consistent basis, which means we disobey the power (AKA God) that created this moral law. We need forgiveness. We are saved by grace through faith, which will cause us to repent.

More than anything I want you to be confident that you are safe with God here on Earth or in Heaven. This is not just about believing in a god. This is about believing in God. Trusting in Him. Salvation can be received when God breaks you down and lets us understand that we are a fallen people.

Now, I trust that you are still reading this and maybe you have heard all this before, but if you have never truly asked for forgiveness, it is not too late. He loves you.

The change in my life was and is real. It is all because of Him, but I also feel I had the choice to surrender to him or not. I pray if you haven’t already that you will let God take control. I am not talking about religion junk here, I am talking about an authentic, personal relationship.

This sounds weird to say, but if you have not truly felt the Holy Spirit inside you, I want you to pray this prayer or a variant of it. Of course you do not have to and I don’t want you to if there is a feeling of obligation.

Dear Father,

I love you God. I trust that my life is in your hands.

I know I have lived a far from perfect life thus far.

I ask you for forgiveness of my sins with thanks to your son Jesus who died for me.

I am willing to give up what I have here on Earth to live an eternity with you.

In your Son’s name,

Amen

This letter was not an easy one to write to say the least. You are my closest friend here on this Earth. In the past two years I have always tried to be as honest as possible with you. I am sorry if my honesty here was too much. I am sure there are bits of this letter you would not have wanted to read, but I felt compelled to write this. I wrote this letter because I love you. Not just a little. I love you more.

Sean

Now here is the response:

Sean,

I love you more than you will ever know - that is at least until some
day when I hope you are blessed enough to have children of your own.
Then you will know the kind of intense, unconditional love I feel for
you. Who you are and what you have grown into gives me emotions that
are like explosions - I can't quite explain how grateful I am to God for
finding you and taking you in. I believe I have that connection with
God. I know our words sometimes differ and maybe it's a little
different, but I have given this to God. I am doing what I can - the
things that are in my power, but I I realize those things are very
small, but I'm sure still important. I find peace from reading the book
we bought together and learning how to pray better and more often. It
does give me peace. When you spoke to me about identifying the
connection with God as finding peace - not necessarily knowing if my
request would be the result of the prayers being answered, that really
made a connection for me. Although I'm scared - again something I don't
talk about, but honestly, I don't know how this all will turn out
either. Anyway, the thought that the surgery is getting closer, the
tests next week and the actual process of the surgery are scary, I know
I will have so much support from all those I love and love me, but I do
feel like I'll be held in God's hand and will be given the strength to
deal with what comes next. I don't know how, I just know I"m not
alone. I'm sort of shy to say I ask to be healed, it seems so self
centered, but I do with then thoughts that God knows my world and
understands my desires so it's not being pompous to ask to continue to
live here on earth for a while. I also know there are countless options
on the way my life can go - unimaginable scenarios really, so I trust God.
I heard something else about a week or so ago. Our God is an "in time"
God. We may not always get what we asked for when we asked for it or
the way we think it should have been given. But God will give us what
we need when the time is right. God will give us peace "in time".
Sometimes I want to just scream why can't it be now? or Just tell me!,
but then I usually feel a sort or breeze inside that calms and
re-centers and I wait until it's time.

I have reached a point where I look for the positive, hope and pray for
the positive, but I've also learned that God usually surpasses any of my
wildest dreams in some way so I've also become more comfortable with
trusting that his knowledge is so superior, I just need to ask for help
- he knows whats the best way for that help to be presented.

Thank you for the prayer - It's a very good one and I will keep it with
my book to help me remember it (and to use it more often). My life has
been blessed. I have a personal relationship with God. I love how
deeply your caring for me runs. You are amazing. I know the next
couple of weeks are going to get more intense - I can feel myself
getting a little more stressed, but prayer, talking and being in touch
all help.
I love you

Mom

Uh oh, he tries to write poems too?

Here is a poem that I wrote while I was in Haiti with a few a recent adjustments. If you like thanks. If you think it is weak sauce. It's OK. I know I am not a master poet. I just like to convey my thoughts and emotions trough rhyming words.

I'm at a lack of words for how much this hurts.
Keep trying so hard, but it only gets worse.
No time to think and barely time to blink.
Why's it this way? It's almost unbearable.
Give me some advice or throw it in a parable.
I won't sit back and I can't relax
It's time to face the facts.
Children are sick and dying
It's like we stopped trying.
Life's too short to watch from the outskirts.
Jump in and don't tell me how much it hurts.
You don't know about sleeping on cardboard
You're too busy complaining about junk you can't afford.
Believe me I care, even if I've never been there.
I want to help, but I've only got these two hands
Lord, show me what I can't do, you can.
Work in me then through me
Then, I'll be bearing fruit with big leaves.
This pain, it's not about me.
It's about you and your family.
Pain is pain and I know we'll all feel it, just never give up hope.
He's right here in our midst.

Eh, I don't like this that much, but I think it accurately describes how I feel.

My first blog post of 2012!

So here we go. It has been darn near a a year since I have wrote up on here. I suspect these first few entries will be a bit awkward. Eventually my writing should start to flow. I hope to be able to share a bit of knowledge in each entry, but most of the times it will be raw feelings or things I have recently learned and wanted to tell the world.

As most of you know, my mother passed away about 5 weeks ago. It is absurd for me to think it has actually been that long. What I will share is how I have been dealing with the pain. I am not ever trying to tell you that my pain is worse because you have your pain and I have mine. We all feel differently. My mother was battling cancer (I hate this word still) for about a year and 3 months. Saying she was tough would be an large understatement. She was incredibly courageous.

Now here I am, a 24 year old college student that just lost not only a mother, but an amazing friend. I am still trying to understand this whole grief thing. I mean, it has been 5 weeks? Isn't that long enough? I wish. I still struggle with sleeping, my recurring dreams of her seem to haunt me and frankly there is just a pain inside of me that will not go away.

A Grief Observed

I just finished a book by CS Lewis called A Grief Observed. It is hardly a book. It is his personal journal entries that he wrote shortly after his wife passed away. It is a fantastic read, especially for someone who is dealing with or has dealt with grief. As I was finishing the book today at the local coffee shop, I took down mental notes on two specific ideas. The first of these ideas is "getting over" pain. Lewis used an analogy involving 2 separate people. One of them was recovering from the removal of their appendix due to appendicitis and the other was recovering from an amputated leg. He said, the person who had their appendix removed will feel pain immediately, but that pain will subside and eventually disappear and will hardly affect him. The man who had his leg amputated will now have a stump instead of a leg. It will be incredibly painful initially, but the pain may go away in his stump for a while, but will most likely come back. Also, this man's life will be changed forever. Everything will be different from walking, to putting on his clothes, and even sleeping. If I use this analogy to my life right now, my stump is starting to heal, but it will never be pain-free. I am not even ready for that fake leg yet as much as I want to be, but I am getting close. One thing I know for sure is that I will never have that leg again. It was a vital part of my life gone forever.

The other idea Lewis talked about was how God will end relationships on Earth for a reason. I don't know why, but maybe it is because He has something else planned. He said "OK, that relationship must end, but I have something better for you now." I think this is what Lewis said kind of. I struggle with this idea, but I truly believe God has a master plan.

When one life ends another begins.

I really got to see the circle of life, so to speak moving in these past couple months. My mother passed Dec 29, but my nephew was just born yesterday Feb 2. Life and death. Death and life. It is a reality.

Lately I have really been trying to comprehend how fragile life on Earth is. So, tell your family and friends you love them. Don't let junk get in between a relationship that matters. Tell people you appreciate them and be sincere. Let go of regrets and move forward!

-Sean