Letter to Mom

There are those times when I think, oh, I need to tell Mom....and then I remember she's not here to tell that too. This is not one of those times. I am ever so painfully aware that she is not here for me to tell her. There's so much I want to tell her. Yeah, yeah, I know, she knows, I can talk to her anyways, blah blah blah, it's not the same and anyone whose lost someone close knows that. I can't see her excitement or hear her laughter. I can't hug her, it's not tangible

Sometimes I'm afraid I look like a hypocrite because until she got sick I didn't have the greatest relationship with her. That 6 months healed a life time of hurts and disappointments. That's the Mom I want to tell things too.

I want to tell her about Costa Rica, I'm not so sure she'd care much about that, but it's kind of a big thing right now in my life and she'd care about that and she'd want to hear about it when I got home.

However, mostly, it's Kellie's wedding. The one thing I remember so clearly the day they told us she wasn't going to get better, the day the doctor said she had cancer and it was incurable, I remember thinking, she'll never see my daughters get married. Now here I am faced with just that. Oh, she would have been so excited! I just know that my phone would have rang often with her wanting to know the plans and share ideas. I'm sure it would have annoyed me at some point, but I'd welcome that now. In talking with my Dad the other day he said she talked about that, how she wished she'd be able to be here for that. This one will be hard because it's the first one, but, I don't imagine the others will be much easier. She loved all her grandkids so much. She would've had joy in this.

I have twinges of frustration with God for taking her so she couldn't be here for this, but I wouldn't want to lose the gifts He gave during her illness and death. We all grew so much in that time. Wounds healed, love was shared, and there was joy in the sorrow. I want to imagine that she's up in heaven watching but the joy of this would pale in comparison to the joy of praising her heavenly Father. I don't want to imagine taking that away from her.

I do so miss her.

My Journey to Costa Rica

As I mentioned in my last post, this missions trip in February to Costa Rica is a bit of a stretch for me. However, God in His awesomeness prevails and I am stepping forward in obedience to His calling.

This trip is taking up a lot of head space I'm finding and we haven't even had our first planning meeting. I don't even have a full team yet. Of course that might be part of the head space problem as I pray through and try to invite and encourage the people that I feel God calling me to ask to come along on this adventure.

Some of the "big picture" stuff is mostly ironed out and since I'm a "big picture" person, I have some peace in that. No longer am I concerned as to where and how the paint for this endeavor is going to come from. God graciously has set people in place for that. I love how when I surrender it and just let Him handle it He sets things in my lap so nicely as if to say "finally Lisa". You would think that with all my experience with trying to control things and how well that doesn't work I'd learn to give it up sooner, but I just can't seem to get that through my head. Also, how silly of me to stress about it in the first place because as my sweet friend Naomi reminded me, God isn't going to call me to go paint murals and then not provide the paint for which to do it with. Thankfully I'm not much of a details person because I've have a sneaking suspicion that none of those are going to go as planned anyways. LOL

As I've been trying to process through all of this I've been really seeking and calling out to God to help me sort through all these emotions. I've been spending a lot of time in my art studio which is a place that I find His presence to be so overwhelming. Often times I just soak in Him while I'm down there and it's beautiful. I've been asking for a heart of desire for this trip, and again my sweet friend Naomi keeps telling me I'm excited for it I just don't want to say it out loud, I'm not so sure about that. I have however, through all this seeking and searching and learning, come to discover that although I may not be excited to go to Costa Rica with all the bugs, I am truly excited to see what God has to show me through this entire process and specifically while I'm there. This is the perspective that I can completely wrap my head around. God's blessings are abundant and lovely and how could you not want what He has in store for you?

I had coffee with another sweet friend (I'm blessed with a lot of those :)) Noelle, who just returned from her trip there. I asked her what she thought of it and she gave the most beautiful description of it and it has been comforting my heart ever since. She told me that it's like "a blanket of God just lays over you". What an amazing word picture that is! I just can't get that idea out of my head, it's such a glorious description and I'm anxious to experience that for myself.

I've kind of decided to blog through this journey here, partly in the hopes to clear out some of that head space, but also to share this journey with those of you that care to join me. I hope you'll read and learn and enjoy right along with me.