Hands Full

"Wow, you have your hands full!"

If you have at least three young children, close in age, I'm certain you've heard this comment at least once, if not several times.  We certainly heard it numerous times having four young kids.  Today we have a teenager, another soon to be teenager this September, plus a 7 year old, and we can testify to you that by the grace of God, our hands are fuller now than ever before yet we no longer get this comment. As if parenting children who do not wear diapers is somehow less work.   I assure you, if you determined to be a godly parent, this is not the case.  The older your children become, the more they see, hear and understand, and therefore the more full your hands shall be.  Everything you teach today, either by word or by deed, godly or worldly, becomes a lesson your child learns either to do or not do, in the future.  There is not a more serious responsibility nor a more difficult job with eternal consequences in this world.  I find Bible study, the wisdom of godly elders, and the grace, teachings, and forgiveness of the Master more valuable each and every day.

Last fall, I was reading through various works by Martin Luther and bookmarked several for future reference including his "Treatise on Good Works." This one I reread about once every couple months.  Let me preface his writing by reminding you that "good works" and "being a good person" do not get you into Heaven.  There's only one way of salvation and that is through Christ.  However, once you are saved, the evidence of salvation and love of God IS good works and those good works should always begin in your own home.  There are Christians who are zealous for Christ that somehow neglect the ministry He gave them in their own home AKA their marriage and their children.  They sacrifice their own family in order to "save the world."  Conversely, there are "Christians" who try to teach their children about godly living while they live their lives opposite of Christ and all this does is teach the children that Jesus and rules are fine for kids but adults can do whatever they please.  These examples are what Martin Luther is referring to when he speaks of salvation being attained or lost by how we raise our children.  Children have eternal souls and are entrusted to parents by God Himself.  Where they will spend eternity is heavily dependent on how they are raised hence Proverbs 22:6, "train up a child in the Way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it."   As parents, we will be accountable for our part in their eternity.  The Bible does not mince words about that.   See Matthew 18, Luke 9 and 17 just to name a few if you have any doubt.

If you are a Christian parent, and most especially if you have chosen to forgo materiality to put your children first by being a stay at home parent who may also homeschool (an often thankless job the worldly show lowest esteem for), you will find his words both an exhortation and an encouragement to keep living out the will of God.

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Parents, as if they had nothing else to do, could attain salvation by training their own children.  If they rightly train them to God’s service, they will indeed have both hands full of good works to do. For what else are here the hungry, thirsty, naked, imprisoned, sick, strangers, than the souls of your own children with whom God makes of your house a hospital, and sets you over them as chief nurse, to wait on them, to give them good words and works as meat and drink, that they may learn to trust, believe and fear God, and to place their hope on Him, to honor His Name, not to swear nor curse, to mortify themselves by praying, fasting, watching, working, to attend worship and to hear God’s Word, and to keep the Sabbath, that they may learn to despise temporal things, to bear misfortune calmly, and not to fear death nor to love this life.


On the other hand, parents cannot earn eternal punishment in any way more easily than by neglecting their own children in their own home, and not teaching them the things which have been spoken of above. Of what help is it, that they kill themselves with fasting, praying, making pilgrimages, and do all manner of good works? God will, after all, not ask them about these things at their death and in the day of judgment, but will require of them the children whom He entrusted to them. This is shown by that word of Christ, Luke xxiii, “Ye daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but for yourselves and for your children. The days are coming, in which they shall say: Blessed are the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck.” Why shall they lament, except because all their condemnation comes from their own children? If they had not had children, perhaps they might have been saved.


Truly, these words ought to open the eyes of parents, that they may have regard to the souls of their children, so that the poor children be not deceived by their own false, fleshly love. The Commandment that places the parents in a position of honor is for the very purpose that the self-will of the children may be broken, and that the children may become humble and meek.  Honor is higher than mere love and includes a certain fear, which unites with love, and causes a man to fear offending those they honor more than he fears the punishment of the offense.   Honor consists not only in respectful demeanor, but in this: that we obey them, have confidence in them, esteem and heed their words and example, accept what they say, and keep silent and endure their treatment of us, so long as it is not contrary to the Word of God.

This work (of raising godly children) appears easy, but few regard it aright. For where the parents are truly pious and love their children not according to the flesh, but (as they ought) instruct and direct them by words and works to serve God, there the child’s own will is constantly broken, and it finds occasion to despise its parents, to murmur against them, or to do worse things.  This is the first type of dishonor where love and fear depart, unless the children have God’s grace.


There is another dishonoring of parents, much more dangerous and subtle than this first, which adorns itself and passes for a real honor; when it is actually dishonor on both parties account.  That is, when a child has its own way, and the parents through natural worldly love allow it.  This plague is so common that instances of the first form of dishonoring are very seldom seen. This is due to the fact that the parents are blinded, and neither know nor honor God hence also they cannot see what the children lack, and how they ought to teach and train them.  For this reason they train them for worldly honors, pleasure and possessions, that they may by all means please men and reach high positions: this the children like, and they obey very gladly without gainsaying.


Thus God’s Commandment secretly comes to naught while all seems good, and that is fulfilled which is written in the Prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, that the children are destroyed by their own parents, and they do like the king Manasseh, who sacrificed his own son to the idol Moloch and burned him, II. Kings xxi. What else is it but to sacrifice one’s own child to the idol and to burn it, when parents train their children more in the way of the world than in the way of God? Let them go their way, and be burned up in worldly pleasure, love, enjoyment, possessions and honor, but let God’s love and honor and the desire of eternal blessings be quenched in them?  

Now where parents are foolish and train their children after the fashion of the world, the children are in no way to obey them; for God, according to the first three Commandments, is to be more highly regarded than the parents.   To wear decent clothes and to seek an honest living is a necessity, and not sin. Yet the heart of a child must be taught to be sorry that this miserable earthly life cannot well be lived, or even begun, without the striving after more adornment and more possessions than are necessary for the protection of the body against cold and for nourishment. 

What is said and commanded of parents must also be understood of those who, when the parents are dead or absent, take their place, such as relatives, godparents, sponsors, and spiritual parents.

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This is a lot to digest, hence why I read and reread if frequently.  It's worth your time to chew on it too.  Godly parenting is a hard job to do well and there will be multitudes of frustrating days if you are doing it right.  Don't let that frustration allow you to compromise on God's instruction.   We are imperfect people trying to live out God's perfect will for our lives thus mistakes will be made, often.  We are ALL learning to be like Jesus or at least we should be.  We, as parents, need to remind ourselves of how often we have acted as disobedient children dishonoring our Father God when our children dishonor us (sometimes daily on BOTH counts). Then remember how God deals with us and mimic that;  forgiveness when we repent, discipline if we don't repent, mingled with grace, love and patience.  Pray always.  Prayer keeps eternity in view and that is the key to endurance when your hands are full. 

Psalm 128
Blessed is every one who fears the LORD, who walks in His ways.  When you eat the labor of your hands, you shall be happy, and it shall be well with you.  Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the very heart of your house,  Your children like olive plants all around your table. Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the LORD.

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Where I Am At 2010

 This is a sequel to last year's entry with the same title found here.

I recently finished reading "All Quiet on the Western Front" by Erich Maria Remarque, a novel whose main character, Paul, is a German soldier during World War One.  The author writes of the physical and mental stress of the front lines, aka trench warfare as well as the difficulty of integration back into civilian life after the war ends.  I picked this book up because I wanted to know if the metaphor people use when they say they are in the "trenches of life," is accurate.  As I read through the book, (twice)  I found so many of my own thoughts, experiences and anguishes written out by a man who had a different life experience than I, but the horrors and compounding tragedies led him to many similar plateaus.   As I read through, I kept thinking, "finally, somebody gets it."

The book is prefaced with this:


"This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war."

While I read the preface before beginning the book, it wasn't until I had read the entire book once and went back for the reread that this statement hit home.  Each chapter of this book recounts certain pivotal events in a real time synopsis and you the reader are a little fly on the wall as many horrors unfold.  You are privy to the main character's intimate and sometimes gut-wrenching thoughts and feelings throughout the book.   But, if you haven't known such horrors on a first person basis, and because this was published nine years after the war ended, I can understand why the author would fear it would be read as simply a fictitious adventure and readers might miss the entire point he was trying to make.   That point being that life as he knew it was blown to bits with the very first trench experience.  And after "Two years of shells and bombs--a man won't peel that off as easy as a sock.  We're ruined for everything."  (Ch 5)  The author wrote this book about five years after he left the front lines.  While the main character, Paul, was caught up in the war for two years, the author, Erich, was only in the war for a few months before being wounded and removed from the war effort.   Erich writes as if he was truly there for years.  It's amazing and terrifying that just a few months there left such an indelible impact on his life.  Surely he lived several years worth of experiences in a few short months to be able to derive such depth of guttural emotion and be able to articulate it.

My personal preface for this post is "And this I know: all these things that while we are still in the war, sink down in us like a stone, after the war shall waken again, and then shall begin the disentanglement of life and death." (Ch. 7)  This is where I am at, where I have been and where I will be for quite some time perhaps until death.

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Four years of battling for Samuel's life, watching his body being destroyed from within, and taking the yoke of his care fully onto our shoulders  is not just something easily blotted out by time or clicked closed with a mouse.  The fact that he died set aside, there are ongoing battles that rage inside due to the war we waged on his cancer and damage done from chemo.  We've seen too much.   The fact that he could not be healed on Earth only added further insult to the multitude of injuries we accumulated in our hearts during that time.   The entire first year after his death was spent untangling countless horrific experiences he had to endure with much suffering, making peace with the way things ended, forgiving those who intentionally and unintentionally allowed him to suffer or caused him to suffer more, and learning how to live without him and away from the lifestyle that had become our reality.  Life with Samuel in it, became a tangled up web of horrors and immense love.  It took nearly 18 months of untangling to be able to look back and see less horrors and more of the love but it's far from over.  Every time I think I have made good progress going forward, I realize that the knot is still much bigger than I thought.  Even if Samuel had lived and was completely healed, we could never just simply revert back to our old life after that battle.

In the novel, Paul speaks of how the war and being a soldier becomes more real than civilian life.  Paul doesn't know how to integrate or even communicate with his own family when he goes on leave. "What is leave?--A pause that only makes everything after it so much worse." (Ch. 7) The only viable option for him is to go back to the front lines because there, everything makes sense while at home, nothing does.  He no longer fits in. 

"I find I do not belong here any more, it is a foreign world. Some of these people ask questions, some ask no questions, but one can see that the latter are proud of themselves for their silence; they often say with a wise air that these things cannot be talked about. They plume themselves on it. Some talk too much for me. They have worries, aims, desires, that I cannot comprehend. I often sit with one of them in the little beer garden and try to explain to him that this is really the only thing: just to sit quietly, like this. They understand of course, they agree, they may even feel it so too, but only with words, only with words, yes, that is it--they feel it, but always with only half of themselves, the rest of their being is taken up with other things, they are so divided in themselves that none feels it with his whole essence; I cannot even say myself exactly what I mean. " (Ch. 7)


I find myself in this same scenario only with no viable options for "normal."  Heaven will be the place where all of this is fully washed away.  Until then, life is a matter of finding and embracing the peaceful areas while navigating through until God calls me home.  This odd feeling of not fitting in isn't new.  It was this way when Samuel was here too.  I cannot/would not want to go back to the reality of life when Samuel was here suffering and I cannot revert back to the life I lived before he ever got sick either.  The life I lived fighting for his life shaped the person whom I have become.  The life I lived before he got sick and even now after he died seems trivial on so many levels and it's very hard to rectify these things. 

We saw things humans aren't programmed to see and those seemingly unbearable things became normal.  We cannot un-see them.  We cannot un-live that era.  We did things we cannot undo and we entertained thoughts we should have never had to consider.  We made decisions that broke our hearts sometimes daily, sometimes hourly and now they are a part of who we are today, whether we like it or not.  I accepted the fact last year at this time, that people just don't want to hear about Samuel.   They do not want to know the horrors we faced.   So they ignore the subject completely and instead fill up the conversation with subjects and trivial garbage I no longer understand or participate in.  I purposely avoid much of this if at all possible.  My expectations and priorities for this life have been forever altered and I find I have very little in common with people who have never been in the true "trenches of life."

Mark and I have always understood that the priority for us after Samuel went to Heaven was to parent our remaining children; to try to make up for all the lost time with them and help them to know that they were loved just as much.  Samuel just needed us more.  And we find today, that even they do not understand the war we fought for Samuel.   They do not comprehend what it did to us.  They may never.  My prayer is that they never have to go to "war."    We kept them out of the most hideous times, definitely off the "front lines" and much of what they did see, they no longer seem to remember.  That is a blessing for them.  They are the only reasons our feet remain planted on the ground here.  If we had no other children, we would have wanted to get as far away from here as we could.  Perhaps to disappear off the face of the earth.  That was hardly an option with children who needed constant support, a stable environment (for once) and the love of extended family.

Time seems to have warped some of our children's memories while it's sharpened ours.  So many things fail to sink in while you are in the heart of the battle.   You just don't have time to think about them much because your life is always in chaos but "We forget nothing really. But the front-line days, when they are past, sink down in us like a stone; they are too grievous for us to be able to reflect on them at once. If we did that, we should have been destroyed long ago. I soon found out this much:--terror can be endured so long as a man simply ducks;--but it kills, if a man thinks about it."  (Ch. 7)     We found ways to cope with the horror in those times even if that meant we had to invent a separate reality at times, by that I mean lie to ourselves like I used to do when I took Anna from the PICU to the parent apartments every night alone. I would get there and pretend for those eight hours that I was just a single mother with a 9 week old; I worked all day and got home late to sleep. That and various other mental inventions helped me to not go insane during the most hideous of times.   "The terror of the front sinks deep down when we turn our backs upon it; we make grim, coarse jests about it, when a man dies, then we say he has nipped off his turd, and so we speak of everything; that keeps us from going mad; as long as we take it that way we maintain our own resistance. " (Ch. 7)  I look back and know we were in a very bad place emotionally, a total overload of terrors.   We made jokes about things that were not funny and made light of difficult situations just so we could maintain enough composure to navigate them.  All of these coping mechanisms untangle when the "war" is over and things are quiet on the outside. There is no more invented reality and that is when reality begins to hit home. Just as your sin will seek you out, truth will also eventually come to the surface and even if that truth be ugly, it will still need to be reconciled.   You can only push it down so many times before it bursts.

So many times I have just wanted to push pause on what was going on on the outside of myself so that the war that raged inside myself could calm.  I longed for peace, longed for a place of quiet stillness both within and without, but found that when the quiet did come, it was deceptive and even more torturous.  "I am on sentry and stare into the darkness. My strength is exhausted as always after an attack, and so it is hard for me to be alone with my thoughts. They are not properly thoughts; they are memories which in my weakness haunt me and strangely move me." (Ch. 6)  

To this day, I have a love/hate relationship with stillness.  Mostly, the haunting stillness is over.  On the days when the kids leave and Mark is still at work, the stillness of my house is sobering.  I try to make sure I have a plan of things to take up that time.   Stillness out at Bud's however, is a welcome stillness.  I could go out there and stay for hours, do nothing and enjoy myself tremendously.  Mark and I enjoy the stillness in our spirits that hiking brings.  Something about driving away from here and then walking even farther away, soothes my soul.  Being in beautiful calm places makes me think of Heaven and Heaven makes me feel closer to God and Samuel.  I love that feeling and never want to come home.  I believe Mark feels the same way.  We enjoy quiet times, but we are still very careful about where they occur.

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When Samuel was here we had to question everything's, value, impact, and use because time was short.  "We have lost all sense of many considerations, because they are artificial. Only the facts are real and important for us."  (Ch. 2)   When your child is deathly ill and suffering, it's amazing how clear what you really need in life becomes and how easily you can identify what isn't important.  "We learned in fact that some things were necessary, but the rest merely show. Soldiers have a fine nose for such distinctions."  (Ch. 3)   We also learned to be very good at weeding out what wasn't necessary.   We continue to live this way today.   Our list of necessities consists of God, family and a small handful of friends who share similar priorities as we do.  Everything after that is simply fluff and much of it just complicates life.  The pursuit of things, lust for dust, here today, gone tomorrow, so much of it is just for show and I want no part of it.  I have been very slow about adding things back into our lives after Samuel left it.   Everything is met with this question, "How does this fit into eternity?  Is this helping or hurting?  Is this building or breaking?  Is this adding stress or bringing peace?"  That makes it very easy to choose.  It's also made it very easy to clean the old rubble out of our lives.  I am trying to train my children to ask these same questions of their own choices in life, both in little things and in big ones, so that they won't waste their lives on paths that lead nowhere.  It's harder for them to grasp this logic because they don't have enough life experience yet but they are certainly listening and I lead by example.  I know I am always on stage with them; their eyes are always watching, minds are always learning. 

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 Chapter 5 lets you sit in on a conversation between comrades in which they talk about what they will do if peace ever comes and they return home.    None had a long term plan.  Several had life time plans prior to the war, but after being there, none of that even seemed worthwhile anymore.  

"When I hear the word 'peace-time,' it goes to my head: and if it really came, I think I would do some unimaginable thing--something, you know, that it's worth having lain here in the muck for. But I can't even imagine anything. All I do know is that this business about professions and studies and salaries and so on--it makes me sick." (Ch. 5)    

"Memories of former times do not awaken desire so much as sorrow--a vast, inapprehensible melancholy. Once we had such desires--but they return not. They are past, they belong to another world that is gone from us." (Ch 5) 

"And even if these scenes of our youth were given back to us we would hardly know what to do." (Ch 5) 

"To-day we would pass through the scenes of our youth like travellers. We are burnt up by hard facts; like tradesmen we understand distinctions, and like butchers, necessities. We are no longer untroubled--we are indifferent. We might exist there; but should we really live there? I believe we are lost." (Ch 5) 

"I want that quiet rapture again. I want to feel the same powerful, nameless urge that I used to feel when I turned to my books. The breath of desire that then arose from the coloured backs of my books, shall fill me again, melt the heavy, dead lump of lead that lies somewhere in me and waken again the impatience of the future, the quick joy in the world of thought, it shall bring back again the lost eagerness of my youth. I sit and wait."(Ch. 7)

I fully identify with these sentiments.  I've waited over two years to feel some glimmer of enthusiasm for life today from my "old" life or my youth.  It's gone, possibly never to return.   After Samuel died, there was no earthly thing that made all that he endured worth it.  Nothing covers it.   That is why I had my time of "throwing down" with God, if you will.  Reaffirming the faith I held all my life, that those things I believed were really true.  If there was no God, no promise of eternal life, then Samuel's life was rendered meaningless, and I saw no reason to put any further effort into anything.  The only thing that makes what we went through and what Samuel worthwhile is the promise of an eternity with no more death or suffering.  The promise that our sufferings here will never compare to the joys and rewards that God has planned for those who are faithful to Him. 

The Lord made His presence known to me in mighty ways over the last couple years.  Ways I never imagined possible.  Definitely undeniable.  As a result, I try to live a life that reflects that I truly believe what I say I believe.  I do not want Him to be ashamed that I call Him Lord.   I do not want to profane His name with ungodly behavior.  While we are saved by grace and faith, we are to live a life worthy of the Lord and that we may please Him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that we may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.  (Colossians 1:10-13)   I believe His promises, cling to what is good, have no companionship with evil, and pursue in life what He desires such as  2 Timothy 2:22,  Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.   Proverbs 21:21, He who pursues righteousness and love finds life, prosperity and honor.  I recognize that the life, prosperity and honor being spoke of in this Proverb, are in the eternal sense as nothing on Earth is forever.  God is the giver of life, true treasures and riches are stored in Heaven and honor comes from above.  In Heaven, there will be no equality.  Your rewards there will be based on your life and service to Him here.   The scriptures clearly do not say "pursue fame, fortune, or mischief because if you say you are a Christian, you are forgiven.  Have a good time. Live for yourself."  1 John 2:28 says And now, little children, abide in Him, that when He appears, we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming.  I can only imagine those who will stand before Him at His coming and feel ashamed will be the ones who pursued Earthly riches living for their own pleasure and have nothing in His Kingdom but the smell of smoke on their garment.

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"In the trenches," you learn a lot about yourself, about God and about others.  You find out quickly who you real friends are; the ones who are willing to get into the trench with you from start to finish; not just when you are winning the war.  Because our "war" went on so long, many who started out with us were long gone by the end.  I don't know those people anymore.    God, Mark, Samuel and I were the only ones 100% in this battle (meaning we never took a break from the fight), from start to finish; finish being Samuel's end here.    I do not expect anyone to understand the depth of my sorrows for all of this except them.    I do expect people who know something of this battle to understand that we are forever changed because of it.  If they do not, or have unreasonable expectations, I don't waste my time on them.

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"We sit opposite one another, Kat and I, two soldiers in shabby coats, cooking a goose in the middle of the night. We don't talk much, but I believe we have a more complete communion with one another than even lovers have.  Now we sit with a goose between us and feel in unison, are so intimate that we do not even speak." (Ch 5)"

Samuel and I had a relationship that often required no words to communicate. I knew him intimately and he knew me intimately. The love that grew from that experience will likely never be rivaled again and it was certainly beyond the intimacy that lovers have.   He was my son and so much more; he was one of my best friends.  He was amazing, even more amazing every time I look back and remember.  I look forward to the day when we can just live together and enjoy everything with no burdens, sadness or death.   When he died, a part of me died with him. That part will not live again until we are reunited. 

"Do I walk? Have I feet still? I raise my eyes, I let them move round, and turn myself with them, one circle, one circle, and I stand in the midst. All is as usual. Only the Militiaman Stanislaus Katczinsky has died. Then I know nothing more." (Ch 10)

When Samuel took his last breath, when I felt his last heartbeat, Mark and I stood beside him........ everything around us looked the same, and that is all a great illusion because nothing has ever been the same nor will it be again.  Samuel had left us behind.  The smile on his face in death was undeniable.  He was finally relieved.  After years of suffering, all of it was washed away.   Now Mark and I cling to each other; we are the only ones left behind from this battle who understand all that we lost.  I pray every day that God protect him as he leaves for work and also pray that our lives on Earth will end together.  I do not want to lose the last person on Earth who understands my heart.  He will tell you the same.

Four years of war that ended by the death of such a precious, loving, amazing boy; how is it that we were worthy of being his parents? It is that fact that reminds us why we fought so hard. I'd do it all again. Regardless of how it's turned out. I'm glad I don't have to, but I would. Samuel changed our lives. By his life on Earth, we learned what love can do; nothing is impossible to you if your heart's motivation is love. Samuel taught us that. So while I continue to untangle the aspects of life and death, God and eternity and try to live my life according in a manner worthy of His blessings and future promises, I realize that the changes in my life are good ones. Even if the majority of the world does not understand them. I do not want to conform to the world, but to the Lord. These changes are leading me ever closer to God and Samuel. There's nowhere else I would rather be. I know Mark will say the same.

I Have to Share This...

When Samuel went to Heaven, I received numerous books on grieving. I have previously shared some of the insights from several books and while some parts were helpful, I found much of the contents made my grief worse. Mainly because there was no focus on God and eternity in much of what is published today. Without God, without the hope of eternity, I can understand how the loss of a child would be a devastation leading to desolation. There was one book, however that stands out as a gem. It doesn't focus on the grieving process or horrendous tragedies from which people never truly recover. The book is, "Within Heaven's Gates," By Rebecca Ruter Springer.

This is the account of Rebecca's "dream" (vision, visitation) of Heaven originally published in 1898. She was literally on her death bed, possibly comatose, and suddenly escorted to Heaven where she lives for quite some period of time. Since there is no "time" in Heaven, we are not told exactly how long in earth's time but she does eventually return to her earthly body long enough to publish her journey. This book was incredibly uplifting when I read it last summer. I literally devoured it in half a day with many breaks for tears of joy. I didn't know it at the time of reading, but I found a secret to coping with the grief of Samuel's relocation: being spiritually uplifted. This book literally took me to another place. A place I have gone to again and again with every supernatural experience I have had since Samuel's departure.

I eventually gifted it to a man with ALS so I haven't read it in awhile. It is my "book of choice" to give to someone who has recently lost a loved one because it paints a vivid, amazing and unexpected picture of what living in Heaven is like. I wouldn't even bother giving someone a book on grieving after reading this one. It is hard to be overwhelmed by sadness when you read it. It also opens your mind to the spiritual realm of being that we often feel is something only to be experienced by a "chosen few." That is not so and I have learned that more and more in the past year. The supernatural realm and experiences lift our spirits up to a place where earthly cares vanish. It allows us to experience the bigger picture. It has been those experiences that have kept me going more than anything else. Mainly because I never know what might happen with each new day and I love the treasure hunt searching for God behind every corner of my life. In those moments when Samuel shows up, that is just a bonus.

As I said, this book was first published in 1898 and then subsequently has been republished several times since under different titles. As I just gifted this book to a family, I was prompted to reread it. I found it on Google Books under the title, "My Dream of Heaven," and found it has several "lost" chapters in it that weren't part of "Within Heaven's Gates." Once again, I was mesmerized but most especially by the lost chapters. When most people read a book like this, you do so with a hint of skepticism and a ton of hope. When you hear stories of someone's "glimpse" of Heaven, or NDE where they went to Heaven, there is always a mix of intrigue, hope, and disbelief because it hasn't happened to you. My initial read through last year left me full of joy and hope but also a lot of questions. Questions I realized with my read through this last week, have been answerd. Minute details in this book that went over my head in the first read, I found I was nodding my head to in the second read because I had actually experienced them firsthand. This book has become even more real to me now.

I don't want to spoil this book for you if you choose to read it, but there is a lot of detail given to children who die early in life. One of the lost chapters has some detail about a family who lost their little son. They worried that he might not have anyone to "meet" him and care for him in Heaven and the story is told about his grandparents who raise him and teach him all about life in Heaven. They become the "guardians" until the parents join them. That one struck a chord. A young girl speaks of coming to Heaven very early in her life and the author remarks about how radiant she looked. The girl explained that that radiance comes from being with Jesus so much. That one struck a chord. There is a whole chapter devoted to the author meeting Jesus. There was detail about Heavenly residents taking journey's to Earth to "help" their loved ones. One child spoke about going back to the earth to "comfort" her mother but the mother's sorrow was so deep that the child could never get through to the mother. That struck a big chord in that I had to work through quite a bit of sorrow to be "open" enough to feel Samuel's presence and truly believe it was him. I think we fool ourselves in believing things are not possible when they are and we are missing a lot because of this illusion. There was talk of basking in the glory of the Lord in which you can hardly explain it, and don't care about anything else. That especially struck a chord because in the two instances where I have either felt or been with Samuel, the glory on him (which must come from being with Jesus) was so powerful that it envelops you for days. You can hardly explain it and you take hours to savor it all over again and commit it to memory. Mark's experience was similar in the feeling it left behind and he too said Samuel looked so good that he could hardly find the words to describe him. There is a lot of detail of Heavenly homes, things to do, places to go, people to see. Also, hobbies, jobs, earthly visits, etc. Tons about what people know about life down here and what they are not allowed to know. So many of these little details I skimmed over in the first read hoping they were in fact true, have become experience and heart knowledge in the past year. I realized again, how the Lord has opened my spiritual eyes to see more and more of His glory and how that has lifted me up out of the deepest heartache I have ever known. If you have read my accounts of all the supernatural experiences we have had since Samuel relocated, then you will also notice many similarities in this book. Things I read and thought were not possible "for me" actually happened "to me." And yet, this book was penned over a hundred years ago but as the Bible says, the Lord is the same yesterday, today and forever so we should not be surprised.

If that doesn't whet your appetite to check it out, I don't know what else to say. You can read most of it free here...... (Intra Muros) Jo Lynn, thank you for the link!

Amazon has several versions of it as well.

If you know someone who has lost a loved one, but most especially a child, get them a copy of this book. If that person is "not religious," or you are unsure, enclose some good scriptures and let God do the rest. This book is truly annointed. Good scriptures are Acts 2:22 He who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Romans 10:13 echos this. Romans 10:9-10 says that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.