Weight is Lifting

This month I have dreaded is now half over with only the most dreaded days left to come but I am not dreading them. The Lord has been so sweet to me this month and continues to show me things and teach me things about Samuel's life in ways I never saw before. Since my visitation with Samuel, that peace and bliss I had after it hasn't left me. I still feel as if I saw him less than two weeks ago. I dreamed about him the other night and his presence was not the same as the visit. It was just a dream. There was no real presence. I woke up thinking, "Thank God that isn't true." In the dream, somehow he was back in our lives and I was doing my daily assessment of his color and accumulated bruises trying to guess his HCT and PLT. I was unimpressed thinking that now I would have to deal with labs again and being attached at the hip to the hospital. I decided that they could do labs but I wasn't going to regularly talk to them as I had before but rather they could just call when he needed transfusions. Then we could just live in our little "bubble" taking care of things as they surfaced. I don't miss that life. And in that dream, that wasn't Samuel. There was no "life" and no "spirit" in that dream. All that dream did was make the visitation even more real. I was worried that lovely feeling, the recharging of my spirit would leave me soon after being with Samuel, but it hasn't. God knew I needed that "touch" to get through this month and as always His timing is perfect. I would like to plug into that more often of course but that said, Samuel has been faithful to his vow to me before he left. He does check on me every day and most especially if my thoughts even tilt to sadness over his physical body. He is very sensitive to my emotions. Wow, it is amazing actually how plugged into me he is. The person who told me just after Samuel went to Heaven that he was more alive there than he ever was here was right. And it is funny because I believed it was true then, but when I was with Samuel for that brief time which didn't even register on my watch, it was like I had been with him for 24 hours. There was more "life" put back into my spirit in that second and it is unexplainable in the human realm to say the least. What God allows Samuel to do now, is very very powerful.

After Samuel's visitation, I was led to reread the account of Hannah. She gave her Samuel to the Lord for his earthly life trusting Him to take care of him. Her vow to God was that if He gave her a child, she would take care of him until he was weaned and then take him to the priest to be a servant to God. God honored her prayer and Samuel was born. When he was weaned, as a "young child" he was brought to Eli the priest and Hannah explained that Samuel belonged to the Lord because of her vow. There they worshipped together and gave thanks to God. Hannah's prayer and praise is recorded in 1 Samuel 2 where she says that her heart rejoices in the Lord and that her horn is exalted. Who is her horn? Samuel, of course. This was a great honor and a big deal in those days for her little little boy to be there. 1 Samuel 2 goes on to record that Samuel ministered to the Lord, even as a young boy and that he wore a linen ephod. (priestly garments) He was treated and clothed as anointed of God almost from birth. Each year when Hannah's family came back for the Day of Atonement, when all of Israel was to bring an annual sacrifice to the priest, she would bring Samuel a new robe that she had made. So she saw him once a year and that was it. As a mother, I think that would be incredibly hard to give your freshly weaned off the breast first born son to the care of a priest you don't know. Hannah must have KNOWN God as Father and trusted Him beyond measure to be able to do this with so much joy. She did it and considered it an honor. Hannah was blessed with three more sons and two daughters. God always blesses His children. Samuel was taught by the Lord Himself in those days. He clearly heard the voice of God and everyone around him knew it. He became Israel's last judge and was also a prophet. He was very well loved and highly regarded. God used Samuel to get to David, King David, who was a direct descendant of Jesus.

One of the most lovely things about "my" Samuel's visit was that I got to be with him and he didn't have to physically die again. On May 5th of last year when Samuel had his last "good" day giving me everything he had left to give while on earth, I still had to endure his physical death and aftermath. The last memory defiled the good memories for a long time. While I have made peace with Samuel's physical death and what my eyes saw, I would prefer to never live it again. I will say that I am very certain that God takes the spirit out of the body before the body dies so those final minutes of Samuel's life were not minutes he experienced physically. I wish someone had explained that to me BEFORE we went through it but death is such a taboo subject and people just don't want to deal with it. So put that token in the back of your mind and get it out if you ever need it. Death is part of life on earth but knowing that God is never taken by surprise when one of His children dies helps immensely if you are witness to those last moments. Anyway, Samuel's visitation was out of this world (excuse the pun) in that I got all the benefits of being with Samuel again without any of the horror to shatter the joy. He is SO alive! And now that visitation is my last "memory" of Samuel and not his physical death. That has made an amazing difference in encountering this month of April, not to mention May. What struck me most about this visitation was that I realized Samuel is sitting at the Lord's feet learning directly from the Master. Like Hannah's Samuel, he has become a little priest in a way because we do hear from him and he has been allowed to minister to my spirit and Mark's as well. You would be surprised how many people do internet searches on "Samuel hears from God" or "Samuel coloring pages" and stumble upon my Samuel's page. I received a note from a youth pastor who was gathering notes for a study on Samuel (The Biblical one) who said God clearly told him to visit my Samuel's page before going on. Over the last days, my heart has been helped by seeing that MY horn, MY Samuel has been exalted and that God is still using him in mighty ways.. My son was chosen to sit at the Lord's feet early in life before he was ever defiled by the curse of the earth. I imagine it is so easy for little children to enter Heaven because they are still pure in heart. Samuel has been blessed, not cursed. Living on earth is the curse; living with the Lord is the ultimate blessing. I don't know if you can wrap your mind around that given that we generally think of the death of a child as total tragedy often listing all the worldly things they will never get to do. Don't get me wrong, it is tragic for children to die before what we believe is "their time" and yet my visitation has shown me beyond a shadow of a doubt that life here, profit here, and things here are nothing compared to life in the presence of God and what He has in store for us. Samuel is so alive that just a second with him has dramatically changed my spirit and closed wounds I never thought would heal. Every time we have an encounter with Samuel or he makes certain I know he is near me and hears my thoughts, I know he has the wisdom and compassion of the Lord. He had a little bit of that while he was here, but it has exploded in Heaven and very occasionally God allows it to overflow onto us here And,. all I got was a taste so I cannot even imagine what that would be like for eternity. It took me a few hours to stop the flow of tears from the experience here. Imagine what it will be like when it is forever. While tears of sorrow are wiped away by God Himself, I believe tears of joy will still flow freely.

It has nearly been a year that Samuel's physical presence hasn't been with us and I only just NOW feel like I am starting to sort out all that has happened. This month has been pivotal in that. The shock has worn off for the most part and I am starting to feel like I can actually DO something again. I feel as if a gigantic weight has been taken from me this month and I am beginning to trust that it is gone. I know the Lord took it away when I saw Samuel and I know what He has removed, no man can put back. So feeling better, I have again asked the Lord what He wants me to do now. One of the main things He has made abundantly clear in the last eleven months is that I spend time with Him and rest. And I have really felt like "after all that we just went through, I really just want a calm existence."

People often thank me for sharing Samuel's life with them and just as I was about to respond to a person's note a few days back, the Lord showed me something huge. Something I would have never seen or been able to "handle" if I hadn't first been with Samuel and strengthened, and then been shown by Hannah that Samuel being raised by the Lord Himself was an honor, not a curse. In one second's time, I saw Samuel's life flash before my eyes, only it was not what I thought his life was, but rather how God planned his life out. God knew Samuel before I did. God planned his life before I did. God knew what his life would entail and how it would end. None of it surprised Him. We only "think" we plan our lives but God's plans always prevail. Solomon reminds us to not even bother to try to figure out what God is doing with the earth and we are often told that His ways are above our ways. But I have also learned that if you seek Him, if you ask Him, He will reveal things to you. I started out this particular morning asking God just to speak to me about anything He wanted. I had no particular question. I listened for a few seconds, heard nothing, and as my mind wanders through a thousands thoughts a minute, went about the day. I was about to respond to the note I mentioned previously and was stopped by God. In a second's time, I was shown how Samuel was given to me, how I immediately knew he was special and desired to share him with the world. Within three months of his birth, I started a business that revolved around him. Mark's Mom often said I did it so Samuel's baby book could be on the web for the world to see. People came and bought products and often said they bought because "Samuel was cute." One person told me in the very early months of the business that God told her to "pay close attention" to our business. I shrugged that off at the time but notice I haven't forgotten it. Within six months of starting the business, it was thriving and "Samuel's Soakers" became a well known name in the cloth diaper world. People still look for them even now. The pouches were introduced late in 2002 and took off in 2003. Samuel was a willing and happy model for everything I made. By 2004, Mark had come home to help with the business and life was fantastic. So many people knew Samuel through the business. I met both Kristina and Monika in 2003 through the business and they were simply acquaintances right up until Samuel's diagnosis when they became instrumental to me. It was all knitted together by God the whole time. I laugh when I think back to how it began because I didn't know how to sew, was not a designer by any rite, and had people laugh initially who knew I was "half blind" to begin with. Seemed a ridiculous idea. And yet, it all took off. Was it all co-incidence? If so, there sure were a lot of them. Here I thought it was all "my" idea and now I see it was God's divine plan to draw people to Samuel. Even the name, Mom and Me Creations was from Him. I chose it because it seemed broad enough to cover anything we might choose to do. But who is the "Me" in Mom and Me? It is Samuel of course. It was always Samuel. When Samuel was diagnosed, it felt so personal. Suddenly, he couldn't wear the diapers I made him and he could not be worn in a pouch either because he was bedridden. Everything that was made for him was stolen in a day. Everything we made for the business was stolen from the customers as well. So many people felt as if they "knew" Samuel by this point and his life was precious to them. You know the story from there but what God showed me was that He made certain that Samuel was "known" in this world before he even got sick so that as many people as possible could see Him in it and through it. I never saw Samuel's life that way before but as I started to think back to all the co-incidences, and how things just seemingly fell into place, I don't see how I missed it. The hardest part of sharing Samuel's life with people who never knew him is that the whole thing is just so unbelievable that they think we are making parts up. Yet the evidence of his life is all here in black and white. It was fairly shocking to have it laid before my eyes in this light. I mean, we really lived this. And only by the grace of God. That fact is only just NOW starting to sink into my consciousness. When we lived it, there wasn't time to "take it all in." Now, there is and my head is spinning. How did people "know" Samuel? First they fell in love with his face but later they fell in love with him through my writing. In everything there is a written account. Throughout Samuel's life, people found him through the business. It was God's plan all along and here I thought it was mine. Interestingly enough, with the absence of Samuel, Mom and Me has all but died. I have never "closed" since his departure and I suspect the economy has a lot to do with it as well but I do think there is something to the connection being broken. He was the "life" of Mom and Me. Now the business is more like "Mom Creations." See the problem? I see now that the business was "for Samuel." To invite you to get to know him, to invite you to get to know God through him, to take you on the ride of your life if you have been here from the very beginning. If you think about it, the Lord picked the audience as well. Moms. Moms with babies Samuel's age or thereabouts. It was these Moms who then spread the word about Samuel. His life affected so many so personally so I thank you so much if you were one of the many who got the word out to pray. It is still amazing to this day to remember the outpouring of love and support we received throughout Samuel's life so we thank you again for that. With all the calamity that felt so out of control, He provided for that through you. I realize over and over again that Samuel's life was never about cancer and what the chemo did to him. His life was about love. Love shared without boundaries. Love that was meant to be shared. When the Lord showed me this, I was initially shocked and then humbled beyond measure to know that He chose me to share Samuel with you. I mean it really touched my heart deeply especially in this month when it all began. Samuel belongs to God. He always has. Roberta was right. Samuel was lent to me and to you for a short time to get to know, to love, and to learn from. The same can be said for any of God's children. Our days are in God's hands and He has a plan for each of us to fulfill. Funny how we think we are doing our own thing most of the time. The Lord did not have to open my eyes to this, but He did and it blessed me richly because it answered a lot of my innermost questions. Questions I haven't asked the Lord formally but He knew they were there. Now I don't have to ask.

So, at this point, I am not certain the future of Mom and Me or what He wants me to do with it. It was Samuel's, not mine. So things remain in limbo on that front. I feel strongly as if God has some other plans for me but there are still things I need to either know, learn or do before plans are revealed. He knows my heart so I am not worried at all; just a little impatient. I know it will be good if He plans it. Through Samuel's life, I thought it was "me" who planned what we were going to do and now I know that God was always at the wheel. So, with that knowledge, I think I will get in the back seat and just let Him drive awhile. It will probably be easier if I just listen to His direction than try to steal the wheel. What He did show me is that my writing has always been a constant and that THAT is what He wants me to do for the time being. Whether that turns into something bigger than the blog is for Him to decide. I am at peace. My heart is full of praise and thanksgiving. My Samuel lives with the Lord and I felt his joy. For now, that is enough.