When my boys were 5 and 6 years old, after the successive passing of two acquaintances and our family pet-
S2: Why did they die?
Me: When our bodies grow too tired and weak, our bodies die and we go to Heaven.
S1: Does it hurt?
Me: I don’t think so. We arrive whole and healthy again in Heaven-a place where all things are good, nobody is sick, mean, afraid or hurting. In Heaven, we are with those whom we love and who love us.
S2: Will King Simon get his eye back? Me: Yes, he will have both of his eyes.
S1: Do bad guys go to heaven?
Me: They do. Doing bad things is part of their brokenness and in Heaven, they are no longer broken.
S2: Do we still have to take naps?
Me: Only when we feel like it.
S1: Will you will get there before us?
Me: Typically mommies and daddies go first.
S1: How will we find you?
Me: It will be like when I pick you up from school- you are waiting behind the gate and we just find each other. I will be there. They were satisfied with that. So. Am. I.(This makes me cry each time I consider it)
Though a spiritually striving individual, I am un-religious. I do rely on a God of my Understanding, a non-diety, to guide me. Previously guided only by fear of the reactions and perceptions of others. My decades of faithlessness were dreadful, literally -all fear and shame. Reliance on a Higher Power rewards me– faith, self, esteem and God’s Grace. Terms, which before program were elusive and left me feeling forsaken, left behind.
While recovery brought me Faith and God, motherhood called for a belief in Heaven. To think that time with my precious boys is limited to our time on earth is unspeakably painful. I have been saved, first by parenthood and then spirituality. It was I, who was delivered on the day I became a mother and again when I found recovery/the day I filed for divorce. Those are my true birthdays! Without my two little bears looking to me to see how to live, I would have just soldiered on pathetically in my long joyless march to death, trying to twist and erase my self for the ease of others who are incapable of offering the promise of nurturing love.
My boys do not belong TO me, but have been entrusted to me. The gravity of my responsibility is immense.
Motherhood requires the Promise of Love. My Program of Recovery shows me how to fulfill and live the promise.
Keeping the promise is BadAss! 100%
I promise! How will you keep the promise? I hope you will share.
“I’ll see you on the other side of the stars.” Sounds like “The Little Prince” or something. Poetic, wishful, true.
But it’s true right now. I see you on the other side of the stars. The stars are everything, every THING, reaching in all directions everywhere. You are not on the other side of them. You are them and in them AND past them forever. I can love you wherever you are, and I do. I even love you if you are a dog, cat, earthworm, protozoon. I guess. actually I don’t know any protozoa personally.
That is the difference between God and me. God knows everything and everybody, and he loves us all no matter what. Well, what about the stories in the Bible where he tells an Israeli king to kill ALL the members of another nation? Remember, the nations were mostly little small bands of shepherds or cities guarding a pass through the mountains, charging a toll for passage through their pass, and maybe even stealing your cloth, spices, camels, exotic food. AND then killing you.
People are not so good, as a general rule. But they are us. ‘Remember Peanuts? “We have met the enemy and he is us”? Who said that?
What I want to say is, love, like life, which it closely resembles, is all mixed up. The only thing I can say truly from my own experience about love is you can’t force it. You can choose it, and you can choose what kind of person you are – loving and lovable; or indifferent to the welfare of others and selfish. And feeling unloved because you have not practiced love.
Practice love even when you don’t feel it. Give the cup of water to the dirty old foot-traveler. Then, only then, will you begin to love him/her. Start a pen-palship with someone you disagree with in every possible way. Visit an unpleasant neighbor until they tell you to stop.
Then you will begin to feel the love that is always there. You will be a genuine BadAss. Maybe nobody will like you, but you will be a BadAss all right. Other BadAsses will recognize you and wink or touch you on the hand, shoulder, or head. So you will be what you are meant to be, and you will become more and more BadAss as you realize what you are meant to be, accept it, and live it out. Touch other BadAsses when you are sure they are BadAsses, on the hand, the shoulder, the head. Wear a symbol of WBA-ship, whatever that is to you.
I salute Wholesome BadAss no. 1!
JJ
It is the most comforting thought. I, of course, would like to enjoy them more from this side, than I have been able.