Amazing Grace: For The Love Of Gracie

When you miss me just look up to the night sky and remember,

 I’m like a star; sometimes you can’t see me, but I’m always there.

~ Gracie

May 27, 2012

A date I will forever remember as the date I lost my littlest friend.  The short three plus months I walked Gracie's journey with her as she faced a certain death at the hands of brain cancer were the days I learned the most about life, and death.  I had grown closer to Gracie in the short time we spent together then I have to some of the people that have been in my life since I was eight years old.

As hard as it was to say my final goodbye to Gracie before she would begin her journey in heaven, I knew she was confident in her faith in God and comfortable in his reward waiting for her in His Kingdom.  Such a young child of God, finishing her journey on earth with the Grace she let God give her.  Such a strong faith in the afterlife for a little girl who had dreams of one day going to college and marrying the man who would love her forever.  The same eight year old girl playing with Barbie's and tormenting me was the same little girl who lived her short life with more love for God then most adults ever would before their own last breath of life on earth arrived.

Gracie and I had many things in common for two people who grew up in different worlds.  We shared old souls, deep faith, and big hearts.  It wasn't until the day she passed that I realized from the day we met Gracie started to prepare me for the day we would say good-bye.  She was that great of a friend to me.  She cared that deeply for me.  She loved me that much.

There has not been one day in the last year that has gone by without Gracie being on my mind and in my heart.  I continue to work on all the "pinky promises" that we made together.  I continue to sift through all the notes I took during the times we spent together.  I work on the book she wanted me to write in her words, as well as the book I will one day publish in my words, laying out the final three months of her journey, before she took her final breath of life on earth.

I have sat and pondered for many days how to put into words that the world could understand how much I miss Gracie and the long for the days we sat together laying out her short life so that one day I can give the world the story of her journey.  It has been frustrating to not be able to relay in written words how heavy my heart has been with her gone from the physical world.  As an aspiring journalist I find it very sad that I cannot express this pain to those that have chosen to follow my blogs relating to Gracie.

"Jett, look into my eyes and tell me what you see"  are the words that keep coming back through my mind as I try to express my longing for having Gracie back on earth with me.  It reminded me of the many times we played this little game with each other.  Sitting across from each other staring into each others eyes, describing what we see through them, deep into the depths of each others souls.  I laughed when I thought about the day my friends Geo and Tommy rode with me to Gracie's house so she could say good-bye to them properly, knowing she would never see them again.  How as we set around the table she sat in front of each one of us, on the table, reading their eyes for the last time.  How she told Geo she could see he was going to marry Kaylee, his girlfriend, and they were going to have babies.  When she scooted herself around  the table to sit in front of Tommy and he refused to open his eyes because 'I don't want you to see babies in my future'.

Today if Gracie looked into my eyes she would see tears.  Eyes filled with little beads of salted tear drops that came directly from a heart, bleeding drips of sadness.  Sadness for the little eight year old child that taught a nineteen year old young man that life is not about quantity.  Life is about the quality of each breath you take, and each breath you exhale.  The child that taught that young man that friendships  do take a life time to build, and in the short months I knew her, our friendship would last a life time.  It just so happened that it would reach beyond the physical world and extend on into the spiritual world.

The lessons of life Gracie taught me keeps me going strong in my own journey.  It does not come without many hours of grieving for her death, or longing to be with her again  It does not come without tears and sadness.  My security blanket in life is the memories of the good times I shared with all the people I loved who are now angels above me. 

Gracie, my sweet little angel in the heavens above me, I know God placed you in my life for reasons I may never understand, but of this I am certain.  Sharing the final months of your life with you has made me a better person, a better Christian, and a better friend to those still near me.  I love you as big as my eyes can see, and as deep as my soul can reach.  I feel your wings in the wind around me, I hear your giggle in the silence of the night air.  I feel your love where ever I am.  I see you feet hanging over the side of the fluffiest cloud in the sky.  I love you Gracie, and I miss you like crazy. ~ Jett

Family: Mothers Day in Heaven

Dear Lord, relying on your promises to us, I turn to you in trust that my mother is with you and that she is enjoying your loving embrace. You alone know how she loved the best she could and how she faithfully endured the struggles that she faced. You know the graces you gave her and you know the grace she was for me and for so many. For all the ways she truly loved the way you loved her, please reward her, Lord. May she enjoy the communion of all her family and friends who are with you.

Lord, I know my mother still loves us who are still here on earth. I ask you that you might listen to her fervent prayers for us. Help me to grow into a new and deeper relationship with my mother now, as I long for the day when we will both meet in your embrace - freed from all that might have hindered our relationship on earth, knowing and understanding everything we did not know or understand on this earth.

I ask you this with faith in the resurrection, trusting my mother's love, and desiring that she know my love for her. Amen.

Mother's Day:  A day we set aside each year to honor our mothers.  The woman who sacrificed her wants to make sure she met our needs.  The woman who held us as babies, walked next to us as toddlers, pushed us through our teens, and stood behind us as we entered into adulthood. The woman who offered encouragement when we succeeded and comfort when we faltered.  The woman who always knew what to say, when to say it and how to relay it.

What makes a mom a mom?  There are many women in today's world that have never given birth, yet they  are some of the best mothers in the world.  The women we sometimes forget to honor each year that have made a positive impact in our lives as we took steps in our journeys.  The women that have taken on the role of mother when birth mothers are no longer in our lives.  The women that have helped birth mothers care for and love their children.  The women that have chosen to be substitute mothers in the absence of birth mothers.

Mother's Day is the one day a year, no matter what age we become, we embrace the love of our mother, and try to show her we love her just as equally, or more, in return.  We love our moms every day of the year, but on this one day each year we honor her in a bigger way then we have since the last Mother's Day.   We give her the little gifts of life, that last a lifetime in her heart.  We spend the weekend doing yard work for her, mowing, weeding, planting flowers in her flower beds.  Spending extra time and care, smiling big as we remember the reason behind the gift.  We grill her favorite foods or take her to her favorite restaurant, with a good feeling in our hearts, knowing we are doing this to honor all she has feed us through our years.  We gift her with clothing, perfume, jewelry, flowers.  It is her day, and we are going to make sure she knows how much we love her and how much we appreciate who we are due to her love for us.

Death found my mother one and half years ago when with a heavy heart my brother and I made the decision to remove her from life support.  The chances of our mother passing on to a life beyond a breath of life were greater then her surviving the massive stroke she had suffered.  The day before she was removed from life support I honored my mother on earth one last time, as if it were Mother's Day and the next tomorrow would find us back in our walk of life together on earth.  Mom died on a Tuesday and on the Monday before her death I visited the last place my Mother had lived.  An apartment home in an assisted living community that allowed her the freedom of independence and the comfort of on site care.  I left there and took a walk in Frog Pond park, where my mother used to sit on a bench and watch the children play.  I left there and went to IHOP, a restaurant where I used to take her and enjoy sitting with her for a meal, visiting about our days gone by.  Next I would go to the church I attend to sit and reflex on the life we lived together as mother and son on Bushnell in Sioux City Iowa.  I found myself back at the hospital, standing next to her as she laid in that bed, hooked up to life, through tubes and machines.

I remember the sadness that walked with me on that Monday, in my search for where I could feel life.  The life of my mom.  It had been years since I felt any kind of life from my mom that had quality to it.  I was looking for hope, the hope that tomorrow when they took her off the support of life she was on she would gasp a deep breath of air, get back in the walk of life.  I found no peace and comfort at any of these places I went to try to feel the life of my mom.  The last bit of life I ever felt in my mom was the day I left the Bushnell house.  The last bit of life she breathed as I walked out of that door and got into that car with my brother to escape the abuse at the hands of my dad.  I felt then what I was feeling today.  The breath I exhaled the day I left Bushnell, the breath I inhaled as I never looked back ... the next breath of life in ending the Bushnell nightmare would be taken tomorrow, when my mother would exhale her final breath on earth, and would journey to heaven to take her spot in eternity, where each breath thereafter would free her of all the pain and suffering life on earth had inflicted her with.

 “The Prayer of Heaven,”

My God, I adore You and I love You!

Through the hands of the Madonna, with Your grace and help I accept from You, O Lord, at the unexpected hour any kind of death as it will please You to send me, and I ask of You the grace not to have fear of death. Please forgive all of my sins.

I accept my death in union with the Sacrifice that You, O Jesus, High and Eternal Priest, Yourself made on the Cross and that now You renew on many Altars. I intend to offer to You my death in the spirit of the Holy Masses which at that moment will be celebrated and I offer You Your infinite merits to pay for my sins and the penalty of Purgatory.

Saved by Your Blood, through Your merits and those of Your Mother I ask You the same mercy granted to the Good Thief, namely the grace to enter immediately with You into Paradise and to have immediately the perfect Beatific Vision of God. Amen.

I thank You, my Jesus! 

by Monsignor Charles M. Mangan  

I love you mom and I pray everyday for your presence in my life from heaven.  

Happy Mothers Day! 

~ Jett

Faith: It's A Matter Of Faith

Belief and trust in, and loyalty to , God.  That is the definition of faith according to the Webster dictionary.  Wikipedia defines faith as the confidence or trust in a person, thing, deity, or in the doctrines or teachings of a religion.  Faith is the belief and trust in what cannot be seen or backed up with proof.  Faith is what you make it.

Writing and posting spiritual blogs offers up more controversy than any other blogs I write and post.  I am often challenged about my faith and what I believe awaits me when my final breath on earth is taken.  I am OK with any challenge of my faith that comes my way.  It often forces me to do more research regarding what my beliefs are, even though it is intended to make me look into what others beliefs are.  I respect that others practice a different religion, and that respect is extended to those that do not believe in religion at all.  I also feel that they also have faith, even if it is not the faith I speak of.

I often talk about building my faith and increasing my connection with God and all he has provided me.  I have made incredible strides in my religious life and as a practicing Catholic I feel I am strong in the teachings of the Bible.  I do not consider myself the perfect christian but I do work on myself in all aspects to become the christian I would like to be.  When I take that final breath in the end, I am confident I will be proud of all I have done and who I have become. 

Most of us, when speaking of faith, are talking about our religion and our faith in God.  We related the word faith with the religious world and try to incorporate it into our own lives.  We look at our belief in the spiritual world and dissect the faith we carry with us, and unfortunately we tend to blame God when it is weak and glorify ourselves when it is strong.  This is where we go wrong, we tend to use our faith as an excuse, or as a reasoning, for things that do not turn out as expected. What other explanation is there on how our faith can be strong and in one moment and turn weak due to a major disappointment in our lives.

Faith is in all aspects of our lives and it is not built on anything more then how we believe in ourselves.  The more I go through in my life, the stronger my faith becomes.  I have long passed the point of using faith as an excuse for what is good and what is not in my life.  I washed that down the same drain I used to wash away the feeling of responsibility for all the things that has happened to me.  I used to blame my 'dad' for everything that went wrong.  Since he was the one that emotionally, physically, and sexually abused me for seven years I would relate everything dark and dreary in my life back to him.  That led me to countless thoughts about what was so wrong with me that I brought out the worse in him.

Faith is believing in something you cannot see.  In the spiritual sense, I believe in God.  I believe God loves so deep and so unconditionally that He accepts me for who I was, who I am, and who I will become before my final breath on earth is exhaled.  I believe in a life of eternity in His Kingdom, no matter what takes that final breath from me.  I believe God will provide me the opportunity to sit in God's Park (Purgatory) for as long as I need to sit and reflect on all the wrongs I did not right when walking my journey on earth.  This does not  mean that I will not continue to build on my faith and ask God for His Grace in all things I do.  I will forever work on the me I want to be, that good Christian that strives to make a positive difference in the lives of those willing to accept what I have to offer.

I am also learning something else about faith as I continue my walk on earth.  The more time that passes the more I am realizing that my personal faith, that faith I have in myself, gets stronger as my faith in God flourishes.  I now understand that I am not what turned my 'dad' into who he was.  I am not responsible for the death of my little sister, or my two older brothers.  There was nothing that I could have done to prevent their lives from being cut short.  It was not because of anything I had done that caused their deaths.  I was not being punished by God, he was not blaming me.  I was blaming myself and it was holding me back from life.

No matter what religion you practice or what faith you hold, death is the end result of life.  We will all die, and that is the only reason we are born. I can tell you a bit about guilt and the death of loved ones.  I can recall much hate and anger and confusion over the loss of those I loved, and those I did not.  I can recall feeling responsible, convincing myself there must have been something I did, or did not do, that caused others to die.  Countless hours of loss sleep trying to figure out what God expected of me that I failed to meet those expectations in order for him to take my family away from.  I prayed and prayed and cried and cried and asked for forgiveness for things I had no idea if they were the things that took my loved ones away.  I was convinced if my faith was strong this would have never happened.  I lived with guilt in my brain that overshadowed the love in my heart.

The guilt of a brother who failed to watch his little sister close enough to protect her.  To hear her laughing out loud one moment, and in the next would never hear that laughter again.
The guilt of a brother who never mourned the death of his older brother and never remembers even missing him being gone from earth.
The guilt of a brother who could do nothing, as the brother he looked up to laid dying and there was nothing a smile or laugh with him could do to cure him.
The guilt of a son who along with his only living sibling had to make the decision of life or death for their mother and had her removed from life support.
The guilt of a son who gave up on the hopes of a love shown him by a dad who just could not.
The guilt of surviving every hardship thrown his way while others did not.

After the death of my dad a few months back I realized that I never hated him as much as I loved him.  That the space in my heart I set aside for him, hidden beyond his breath of life, would help me define the faith I have for myself.  His death allowed me to take a second look at the guilt I carried for lives I could not save.  I spent so much time in the past six years beating myself up, questioning faith in myself, that I was convinced those deaths were my burden, my cross to carry, in my journey to heaven.

I spent a lot of time after my friend Connor died, from abusing his system so hard and so often with drugs and alcohol, thinking about whether God would except him into his Kingdom.  Would Connor be awarded an eternity in heaven, or punished behind the gates of hell?  Would God understand Connors need to leave the world?  Would God know what demons Connor carried in his heart and soul that left him lifeless on earth?  Would God understand the pain Connor felt each day he woke up and tried to hide behind a bottle of booze, a syringe of drugs, or a joint?

My conclusion is that Connor had very little faith in himself and what he had to offer the world.  Connor may not have meant to take his life from overdosing but that was the end result.  Connor did not know how to be happy on earth, even given a great life, with wonderful parents, two beautiful sisters that loved him completely and many friends.  Musical and athletic skills that came as natural to him as popping a pill.  A sense of humor that was matched by no one in our circle of friends.  He was as loyal and trustworthy as a friend could be.  The only thing Connor lacked was faith in himself.  I believe he found faith in his death and through that death he entered God's Park where he could evaluate the things he could have done differently and find the faith in himself that he lacked on earth.  Yes, I know Connor is now in heaven where he is happy, where he has faith in himself, and where he has found a purpose in life.

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.  I believe God loves us so much he allows us the opportunity to live, and to die, and to be forgiven, and to forgive ourselves.  I believe we live and we die, and we spend an eternity, beyond our breath of life, with God and all the angels that found an eternity before we have.  I believe the only faith greater than our faith in God, is the faith we have in ourselves.  The faith to move forward in our lives, forgive those that left before us, and believe in ourselves.  That there is a purpose for the paths we are on, and that each step we take, each breath we breathe, brings us closer to realizing that ... LIFE .... IS A MATER OF FAITH.