Monday, March 24, 2008

Have You Seen Jesus, My Lord?

Have you ever stood at the ocean,
With the white foam at your feet?

Felt the endless, thundering motion?
Then I say you've seen Jesus, my Lord!


Have you seen Jesus, my Lord?
He's here in plain view.
Take a look. Open your eyes.
He'll show it to you.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Thursday, March 06, 2008

What CF Really Means

This year I turned 50. So I have been taking assessments of life stuff...I have more wrinkles than I want, more weight than I want, more migraines, more aches, less energy, less eyesight, and in the wisdom department I am not as far along as I had hoped. I spent yesterday cleaning my house and having a pity party and all of the above list seemed huge and overwhelming and doomed to get worse. I went to bed with tears in my heart for not having more faith and counting more of my blessings than my problems, but I felt OLD and not to mention useless.

This morning the alarm went off at 5:45. And my OLD self rolled out of bed and dragged itself into clothes, drinking coffee to get the brain working and headed out to take Kaleb and Hannah to school. Their mom is in California for the birth of their new cousin and I agreed to do taxi service while she was away. When I got there I was greeted with the loud noise of Kaleb's vest and his funny wavering voice saying "c-c-co-o-om-m-m-me in-n-n-n-n-n m-m-e-m-m-ma" as the vest literally beat on him to loosen the junk in his lungs so he could cough it up. He was taking the first of 2 morning breathing treatments at the same time. As his dad waved goodbye to me, Kaleb launched into the story line of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles DVD that was showing on TV while he took his treatments. Typical 7 year old boy stuff!

After his second breathing treatment, he headed for the table to eat..."Cinnamon Toast Crunch...it's great Mema! You should try it!" He started taking the pile of pills that his dad had put beside his cereal bowl. One, two, three, four....he looked up at me and said "I sure have a lot of pills to take..." five, six...then he started on his cereal. "I'm an eating machine! I can eat more than Hannah!" "Can NOT!" "Can TOO!" My eyes roll back and I get another cup of coffee. Sibling rivalry at 6:30am is not pretty.

He finishes his breakfast and downs the remaining 3 or 4 pills. "I hate taking all these pills!" he said.

"I don't blame you," I said offhanded. "That's a lot to take."

And suddenly he had tears in his eyes. "I know. It's all my fault."

I realized he misunderstood my comment. "No, no honey, I was just saying that I thought it was a lot to take, I was agreeing that it was hard to do..."

"No! I have CF because of the bad things I have done! I got it when I was born!"

His heart was breaking. He was wishing he had not done wrong things so he wouldn't have CF. He was taking all the responsibility for his sins and then all the sins of mankind on top of it. I held him in my arms and prayed that God give my the right things to say and do.

"We all do bad things K. Their called sins. That is why God provided us with His son, Jesus. Jesus took all our sins on himself and then He died with them still on him so that they would die too. Then Jesus was so strong He came back to life to give us life in place of our sins. Now we get to live knowing that Jesus threw our sins so far away they can never come back. CF just happened. It was part of the genes you got...the littlest parts of Mommy and Daddy that were put together to make you had the CF already in it....like it had your hair color and eye color too. We didn't plan for you to have CF any more than we planned for you to have blue eyes...it just happened that way, but it wasn't your fault! You had nothing to do with getting CF."

"I didn't? ...Then what about the sins? They cause bad things to happen!"

"Yes, doing the wrong things can hurt you or hurt other people. That is called 'consequences'. It is what happens because of what you do...good or bad. If you do good things on purpose, most of the time good things happen. If you do bad things on purpose, well, you know. But that is exactly why Jesus took our bad things. Once they are done you can never change them, but you can apologize and ask forgiveness and Jesus takes them away. Far away. You believe Jesus, don't you? That's the only thing God required for Jesus to take your sins, you know."

"I know. ...I just forgot. ....But I still hate CF!"

"Me too. Maybe we could rename CF to mean Clean Freaks instead of Cystic Fibrosis?"

"I don't like the word Freak."

"How about Cool Fellow?"

Giggles...the 7 year old was back...

"Nah..." (and he lifted up a CF coloring book that had the slogan 'Let's make CF mean Cure Found' on it,) "How about we just let it be Cure Found ...like finding Jesus."

"That's the best one!" I agreed.

And with that profound wisdom, he headed down the hall to get dressed and go to school and do all the stuff 7 year old boys do, never realizing that he had touched his old Mema in such a way as to break her heart with shame for ever having a pity party.

I am so sorry! ....Thank you, Jesus!