Dreams (part 2)

Life is...Dreams (part 2)

Waiting for someone to die is hard, emotionally draining. I was miles away struggling: how do I be there for her and my family? Had I done enough? Had I said everything I wanted to say? I had, a million times, but still those doubts come. Gma wanted to go to heaven. I had never seen her stop fighting before. She was ready.

Sometimes I asked God, why don’t you take her? Please don’t make her suffer!

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” Ecclesiastes 3:11

God’s timing is perfect!

Maybe Gma was ready, but her friends and family weren’t. God had something to teach us through that time of waiting.

Dreams

Life is...Dreams

Grandma (Gma) Redenius and I were sitting in a parking lot. I was driving and she was in the passenger seat. She said, “Get a cookie if there are still some in the freezer.” I knew she meant one of hers – cooking and baking were part of who she was & she passed on that gift. I gave her another huge hug and with tears in my eyes I said, “You know I love you very much.” She nodded. She was almost too tired to respond. She looked at me and said, “You have to let me go now. I need to rest.” I agreed. I put her car into drive, held her hand, and said, “I will be right here.” We started driving. She closed her eyes and not long after, she went to heaven. I pulled over, cried, and opened the window (symbolically letting her spirit go).

I woke up.

The clock said 3:44 am. I knew I wouldn’t be sleeping anymore that night. I went to the bathroom & prayed. My daughter cried. I was reminded that life goes on, even if we’re not ready for it to. (Ecclesiastes 3:2) I fed Rachel and then covered up my son and gave him a kiss before I started the long day…

I waited to hear - was Gma still in hospice or was she finally Home.

Home with the Lord she had served her whole life.

Waiting

Life is…Waiting

My grandma told me a beautiful, true story about waiting, perseverance, and entrusting others. Aren’t all stories about waiting beautiful after the fact? We love stories about waiting and perseverance…Abraham and Sarah who waited 25 years for God’s promise of a son. Abraham Lincoln who became President after 11 setbacks, but I don’t want to wait for amazing things to happen in my life.
Right before Christmas my grandma had a children’s book she had written & illustrated over 50 years ago published. It is truly an answer to prayer to see it being sold on Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, in the U.S., India, and the UK. The story of my grandma trying and hoping to get the book published is similar to her book The Lucky Penny. You see a penny goes on a “waiting adventure”: just going through a “normal penny life” until…well, I won’t ruin the end for you, but it has a special mission.
Isn’t that how we feel: just going through life, waiting, trying, failing, trying to do something important, and sometimes after a long time we see “the fruit of our labor”.
So, on to my story. One quiet night Grandma wrote The Lucky Penny. When she showed it to a few people she didn’t get an encouraging response, but she still felt it was good, so she called a publishing company. The man met her, read her book, and liked it, but $300 was needed to publish it, which they didn’t have. Still not wanting to give up she asked her father for a loan. Denied. Feeling frustrated and overwhelmed she put the book on a shelf where it stayed for decades until my cousin saw it and encouraged her to copy it for the family and a few friends. Not receiving a response she felt discouraged again. It went back on the shelf until a few years ago when Chris and I started the publishing process.

This story is so much like the story she wrote years ago, and so much like our lives. We are excited, we fail, we’re encouraged, we try again, we get “put on a shelf”, we fail, we succeed. I think it was worth the wait, but then again, it wasn’t me waiting in this story. Though we never see the whole picture I hope you can see part of the puzzle fit together in your life, even if it’s just one part.
“Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what is still possible for you to do.” ~Pope John XXIII
https://www.amazon.com/Lucky-Penny-Shirley-Redenius/dp/1505284163
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-lucky-penny-shirley-redenius/1125337179