Notes From A Broken Heart

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord" (Isaiah 55:8). I am completely and totally aware of God's Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnipresence.  Totally.  Completely.  My forthcoming question emanates from the deep wellspring of my faith, hope, and trust that hearkens back to childhood.  Simply, have Velma, my Mother, and Courtney, my daughter,  met in Heaven yet?   (Granny and Cocoa-Puff).  Two decades after Mother succumbed and a little over two years since Courtney departed earth's dimensions, I can no longer avoid wondering. While it may may be viewed as curious, even macabre by many, finally I can face it.  "When our work here is done and the life crown is won, And our troubles and trials are o'er, All our sorrow will end, and our voices will blend With the loved ones who've gone on before...In a land where we'll never grow old."   Eternal life.  Streets of gold, " I'm gonna

Why do I wait until I'm at the end of my rope or at wit's end, as the case may be,  before I  concede, "I must tell Jesus all of my trials, I cannot bear these burdens alone..."   From which wellspring of arrogance have I drawn the conclusion that I can do any part of "it" myself? When did arrogance hook up with ignorance and produce a burlesque reality that results in this kind of impotence? Obviously, conceit and naivete know no boundaries. "In my distress He kindly will help me, He ever loves and cares for His own."   I go "tiptoeing through the tulips," oblivious of the flowers being trampled.  Until I look around and see what a mess I've made of my garden. Does my sense of honesty swirl like the waters of Lake Michigan?  Is that why it usually takes some time before I recognize the wreckage I've made of a situation? Pride rears its ugly visage, and willfulness prevails with its accompanying angst, while I stew in j

"By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion...How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? Israel had been exiled to Babylon, a strange land where everything was new: customs, cultures, and conditions to put it mildly.  The people yearned for the familiar, much as they had centuries earlier during their forty-year sojourn to the "Promised Land."  Their moorings had been snatched away, violently, with little or no regard for their feelings.  They were captives! Yet they were expected to deal with this cataclysmic upheaval.  You're kidding, right?  Wrong! Israel's captivity represented grievous loss: personal, collective, cultural, religious freedom, and more,  that would last longer than many of them would live.  A new terrain, Babylon. So many adjustments to make!  No wonder they sat down and wept. No wonder the plaintive cry of a freedom-deprived people.  How would they survive? In fact, would, could

"Ask, and  it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.   for everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened" Matthew 7: 7-8 I'm a lifelong learner, I've proudly boasted all my life.  I'm much more reticent, however, about my willingness  to wrestle with dilemmas that are unwieldy. Simply put, I chose not to try  when the gnarly or time-consuming issues inject themselves in my (somewhat) well-ordered life. Like what? Computers or deciphering technical stuff like schematics.  Anything that easily exhausts me. I was not born with a computer chip in my mouth, which didn't help.  Not by a long shot.  Certainly while I was a proficient reader, decoding arcane instructions produced more questions than I had the time, patience, or energy to invest.  So, what caused the problem?  Impatience for the most part reared its cantankerous head and shook it from side-to-

Probably we've never met, which means it may seem presumptuous to identify as your friend. Or maybe we have but interact minimally.  At any rate, no prerequisites determine our relationship as sojourners in the most exclusive, albeit loneliest-and-most-to-be-avoided-club in the world.  We did not seek admission; factually, we'd have done anything  to have avoided it.  Just as earlier we might not have sought inclusion in a fraternity, sorority, or other social club.  Nor do we want this one now. We are clam-mouthed for the most part until we can no longer hold back the outpour.  We don't always reveal the condition of a heart cut from its mooring by loss. We may not have known that we carried similar "genes," because many of us have learned to camouflage pain in bright lipstick, painted on smiles, or a stoicism that covers unfathomable pain.  Mostly, we feel helpless, impotent. Holidays or impending birthdays may be impetus for a sadness that seems to perm

"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want" Long before a teacher had introduced  me to two-syllable words (shepherd, pastures),  some time before I knew what or who a shepherd was, and way before I could define what "want" meant in context, the Twenty-third Psalm had been imprinted in my cerebral cortex where it still lives.  We learned many "Songs" in Sunday School classes, where teachers presented the exploits of David the shepherd boy (among others) on colorful 3X5 cardstock .  The tiny cards also carried a "Memory Verse."  Still, I can't remember if David provided comfort or offered more than an exciting story about long ago.  We  learned later that Warrior-King David wrote two-thirds of the 150 Psalms we read today in the Holy Bible. However, I do not remember when I turned for succor to the Bible.  Certainly not then It comes as no surprise that in the aftermath of years of being buffeted and beat up on like a punch-drun