What if Heavenly Father wanted to send you a love note that would bring a smile to your face and briefly wipe away your tears that never seem to have an end? What if he desires for you to have a few minutes of peace? What if he wants to give you a Tender Mercy, a small window of hope that shows you that you can heal and become whole again ? Love notes from God can be small simple things that bring a smile to your face during your never ending storm. Those storms where you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel but you just have to put one foot in front of the other and trust in him.. You have to take the next step up the staircase and hope that you will find what you are desperately searching for once you reach the top. Love notes don’t have to be serious.
I believe God has a great sense of humor. Have you ever watched a penguin walk?? He wants us to be happy.
When you are facing a treacherous storm in your life, the last thing you think about is smiling. For some reason the world has led us to believe that we must react to our challenges in a negative way. It’s like there’s a criteria for how you should grieve and if you don’t follow it exactly you are a failure at grieving. You totally stink as a griever!! I have learned throughout this storm I am in that there is no right way to react to adversity. You are unique! I have read a lot of books with all kinds of advice and most of it really didn't help me. There is no stupid book that can tell you when you should cry next or when not to cry! There is no book that should tell you when it is appropriate for you to chuck something across the room or lash out in anger. If you have a book like that I recommend you free yourself and do yourself a favor. Burn the book that tells you how you should grieve. Don’t answer the phone if it’s someone who keeps telling you how to grieve or how much time you have left. You don't need that stress added to your already chaotic life. You have enough to fight through… listen to your own heart and follow it toward healing yourself and your family. You already know what makes you happy when you are fighting through the darkness. Choose one of those things that is not self destructive and don’t feel guilty about being happy while you do it!! I learned this lesson the hard way. I had spent the first few months after Mike passed away in a terrible grief stricken condition. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, and I didn’t want to see anyone. I thought that since Mike had passed away that maybe I needed to stop living too. When you are grieving you do stop living for a while. What I soon found out was that if I didn’t take time to give my mind a rest from the heaviness I could not begin to heal. One sleepless night I couldn’t sleep so I started my normal roaming around the house routine. If I stayed in bed too long it would became a pity party. When I did get up I would run out of energy very quickly. I wasn't sure what to do during those long dark nights. I found myself just trying to make it through one more long night…. Which became one longer week…which became one longer month… and so on... There was one morning when I checked my face book page to see if the world was still moving on without me. I was angry that people around me were still living their lives. Shouldn’t everyone just stop what they’re doing ? Mike had died! How could they just keep living?.. When you are grieving, you are hurting so much that you can’t understand how people who love you can move on in just a few weeks. They still try to help you and mourn with you but they have to move on with their lives. I’ve heard several people tell me they felt the same way when they went through losing a child or a parent. I kept scrolling through the pages looking for something uplifting for the day… Not too far into my scrolling I ran across a post by our 13 yr old daughter. It had a picture of a milk jug and a water bottle sitting on the island in the kitchen.
The milk lid was on top of the water bottle.
It said, “You know your mom is not getting enough sleep when you wake up to this! Lol”
I was mortified for a split second but then I just started to laugh. I couldn’t believe I had done something so silly, but it took the pain away for a few moments. For a few seconds I didn’t obsess about my life without Mike. I was thinking about how lucky I was to have a daughter who could see some humor during the storm we were in. She knew that this would make me smile and my kids were wanting so much to see their mom smile again.About 2 months after Mike passed away I had another smile brought to my face. Both girls were having their birthdays that week and it would be another first without Mike. I didn’t know how I was going to get through singing happy birthday without him there. How was I going to fake being happy and making it a fun and special day for them? I had purchased some miniature water bottles for the party and had left them sitting on the kitchen counter. I proceeded to go outside to do some work in the garage. I needed to try to relieve some stress with some sort of physical labor. I had been working out there for about an hour when I walked back into the kitchen to see if our 7 yr old daughter had completed her homework. There on the bar were the bunch of miniature water bottles all in a straight line.
Where once they had said" Spring Water"… now they had a different logo. Our daughter had crossed out the spring on every bottle and wrote" Fall Water."
I was so amused. I started laughing…really laughing. We would not be drinking Spring Water in October at this birthday party…we would be drinking Fall Water!!Around Christmas time our son’s wisdom teeth started hurting him. We went to the dentist and were told they needed to be removed. He had already been injured a few weeks before in a basketball game and had a separated ac joint in his shoulder. The kid was having a rough year to say the least. Once the wisdom teeth were removed we were sitting in the recovery room waiting for the anesthesia to wear off. Our otherwise quiet son began spilling his guts about some very crazy things he had done in his childhood. Things I had never heard before or been aware of. He talked about jumping into the swamp waters in Florida with his brother and uncle and having to scramble out because the gators were coming after them. With his mouth full of bloody gauze he tried to clap his hands and arms together to make them imitate a gators mouth. He couldn’t get that gator's mouth to line up because he had no coordination. He did this for several minutes. I will never forget how hard my mom and I laughed at that kid that day. He told my mom to look at how beautiful his momma was over and over. It was only a few minutes of relief, but it was what I needed to keep going.
For Christmas he still couldn’t eat so he threw all of his dinner in a blender and drank it… I was so grossed out but that is how important Christmas dinner is to a teenage boyThere are times when you are grieving that you have no idea what you put on to wear that day. You could really care less because just getting your children to school is a major accomplishment. There were days when I would wear my shirt inside out all day and nobody dared tell me because they thought it might push me over the edge. Grieving is scary and intimidating to people. They don't know what to say to you or what not to say to you. They are afraid at any given moment you could go on a rampage and go completely crazy. When you are grieving your mind is in such a blur that you may feel like you are losing it. You leave keys in doors, you put the chips in the fridge, you call people in your family the wrong names, and you can’t remember any of your 100 passwords to all of your accounts. Sometimes these things make you cry in frustration, but sometimes all you can do is laugh. I was 39 years old and couldn’t remember how to spell my name for months. My kids would tell me they were going out and when they got back I would be so upset at them for not telling me where they had been. People around you will be scared for your well being and will start to tell you that you may need to go to the doctor and get help. They start calling to remind you that you are a mother and that you have children that you need to pick up at 3 :00. Your son goes on a high school basketball bus trip and you don’t realize it’s an away game until you get to his empty high school parking lot. It sounds so crazy, but your body reacts to grieving in such a strange way... You have to laugh sometimes. I promise it will get better and your mind will get clearer someday again. I’m going on 8 months today and I just started being able to read a magazine and retain something from it. It’s frustrating and nobody understands so just nod your head and smile at people.
One day I was simply miserable. I was in the kitchen cleaning up after breakfast wondering what I was going to do to get through the day this time. I looked out the window and what did I see? A dirty orange sock hanging in the tree. How can you not smile at that. At least the kid hung it on a tree limb so it wouldn’t get ruined. That was a moment I had to smile.
It’s not every day you see a sock tree!!
2 months after her dad passed away our daughter was preparing to be baptized. My husband had been talking to her about this important day in her life. The day she would choose to follow Jesus Christ. She was so excited for her daddy to baptize her but he left this life a little too early. One night, just out of the blue, she asked our son Colton if he could be her fake dad and baptize her. Kids are so funny the way they handle trials and storms. Her dad could not be there so she was going to improvise and have her brother replace him. It sounded quite brutal, but kids don’t try to be fake…they are very real. We went to the beach a few weeks before her baptism to take some pics for her invitations. Our older daughter loves to do photography so she started taking her different places on the beach and directing her on how to pose for the camera. I was kind of just letting them do whatever and hoping something turned out good. When we got home to preview what she had taken there were some interesting baptism pics on that camera. We hooked it up to the TV so we could see them clearly and the show began. Half way into some beautiful pics the attitude , "I’m done!" started coming across the screen. You could tell that big sister was trying to get little sister to cooperate and it was becoming quite a frustrating ordeal.
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You could see the rebellion in this future follower of Christ…She was done having her big sister tell her what to do. I didn’t laugh in front of her then, but I did consider using one of those pics to black mail her with someday. It made me smile to know that some things were still very normal in our family.
Love notes that bring smiles are everywhere… Your situation may not be humorous in the least bit. It may consume you with a torturous pain that you never knew a person could experience. It may turn you temporarily from the fun loving person you were before to a very solemn soul that is just trying to survive while the waves of your storm keep crashing against you.. People may not think you are being serious enough if you let yourself smile.. They will judge you when you don’t smile and they will judge you when you do. It doesn’t matter. This is your journey…not theirs. You know what it that can bring a smile to your face. You know where to find joy when you have had enough of the pain. It may be watching a sunset by a lake. It may be spending time with a pet that loves you unconditionally. It may be just reading a book with a toddler, or watching a rerun of Seinfeld. Heavenly Father wants you to be happy. He knows that sometimes it takes a lot of time to feel happy again but he never wishes for you to remain miserable for the rest of your life. I am convinced that the person you have lost in your life wants you to be happy too. They know that it may only be very small moments when you feel a sense of joy at first… but someday you will be able to laugh without trying. Someday you will be able to laugh without feeling guilty.
Smiles in the storms are o.k.… God wants you to have those Love notes in your life. You are his child. He loves you.
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