THE PATIENCE OF JOAN

THE PATIENCE OF JOAN
T. Wieland Allen

It's a complete marvel to me how God does what He does. I guess I'll never completely understand while I'm in this earth how He does things. My amazement is how He supplies the needs of everyone at the same times that He's providing what I need.
He's just too marvelous for the human mind to understand. I guess we should be glad for that because if we understood everything He does for us, then we would cease to be in awe of Him.
One of the fun parts of my week is mowing my big lawn. In addition to loving to mow and meditate while I'm mowing, I get the pleasure of talking to neighbors who pass by in cars who stop to comment on my yard or I get to talk to neighborhood walkers who are regulars in their healthful activities.
A neighbor told me one time that I must be German because only Germans sweep their streets, even the dirt ones. Sure enough, I told her that my father was German, to which I attribute my math expertise. Now every time I sweep the street in front of my house I think about that neighbor, pray for her, and think about my dad who passed many positive attributes on to me.
One day this week I was sweeping up the leaves from the pavement in front of my house when a lady came strolling up the hill to talk to me. Joan is a wonderful soul who helps lots of neighbors work wonders in their yards. On this occasion she complimented me on my yard and we talked about how great the tree is doing that she planted for us last year in early spring. I had bought the tree for my husband, who had always wanted a Wisteria tree, and Joan had planted it for us since my husband was in the middle of chemotherapy and was too weak to do the job. She had lovingly done the work for us. This spring the tree was aglow with beauty, covered with long purple blossoms. I was able to wheel my husband in a wheelchair to the window where he gazed upon its beauty. I'm so glad he got to see it in all its glory because he died a month later.
While I was sweeping up the leaves and grass clippings this week Joan asked me if I needed anything done since she and her husband were working in the neighborhood. As a matter of fact, I said, I was going to call her to set up some time that they could help me with chores that I'm not physically able to accomplish.
While we were talking, standing in the street close to my house, the stray cat that I feed came to join the confabulation, rubbing against my legs in her normal fashion. Joan asked me if Callie, who is a beautiful calico, is my cat. I told her the story about how I've fed the cat for six years but no one can pet her. We had surmised that she had been abused, because any time a hand comes toward her she ducks and moves quickly away.
Joan told me that she has a cat that was the same way. Then she told me how she won the trust of that cat. It seems that her stray had the same fear of humans. Joan fed the cat outside for a few weeks, then started in her repetitive gestures of showing the cat love until the cat could learn to trust her.
She continued putting food outside for the cat for a few weeks. Then she sat in a chair about ten feet from the food dish, just observing the cat, slowly and quietly adding some kind words as the next few weeks went by. Then she moved her chair closer to the cat's food dish, continuing to occasionally speak quiet, kind words.
The next step in Joan's saga with the cat was to move her chair closer and closer until the cat was comfortable with Joan's presence. That took a few more weeks. When Joan was close enough to touch the cat, she restrained herself, not wanting to cancel out the patient work she had already accomplished. Her next step was to change the presentation of the food. She didn't put the food in the dish but she placed a portion of the cat food in her hand and held it out to the cat. Sure enough, the cat cautiously strolled up to her, took the food and shied away, but the cat continued to come back and eat food from her hand. That happened for two or three days.
After Joan was convinced that the cat trusted her, she began to pet the cat on the head as the cat ate the food, only one or two pats at a time.
After two or three months of this slow engagement, Joan opened her door and put the food dish barely inside of the door. The cat gingerly walked in the door, cautiously gazing at the new surroundings, and ate from the dish. He seemed to keep one eye on Joan in this new adventure.
The next day the feeding dish was moved further into the room, and on and on until a solid trust was established between the cat and the human being.
Soon Joan was able to pet the cat for longer intervals without any trepidation from the animal. Joan became the trusted saviour of the animal. No one else could make contact with the cat because no one else had taken the time to establish the trust that the animal so desperately needed.
What a divine picture this is of God's love and His patience in wooing us, slowly and patiently holding His hand out to us in peace, willingly feeding us with His gentle words and heavenly food until we trust Him completely to be our protector, our peace, our provider, our shepherd, our constant help in time of need, our deliverer from danger, our healer and our loving Father.
What patience Joan had in winning the trust and love of the cat. No one else took the time to prove what love can do for the animal. What Joan did worked.
God sent Joan to me to tell me her cat story so that I can pass it on to you as an allegory of God's love for you and to encourage you to do the same thing for your friends, your relatives and strangers who have been abused by other humans. People are in search of someone they can trust just a little bit at a time. God's children must be willing to patiently and lovingly establish trust and love with others.
When we can all do that, then the family of God is truly demonstrated to be what it was meant to be, a family of love.
You've heard of the patience of Job. I like the patience of Joan just as well. It produced amazing results just like God's instructions to Job did when He told Job to forgive his friends. Everything was restored to Job.
Joan was patient, just like God impressed her to be, and her love and patience produced what it always does, good results. It won the heart of a stray, lost cat who desperately needed love and food.
God is love and love never fails.

FEAR VANISHED

It's hard to lose in death someone that you love, especially hard for a five year old grand daughter.
During the months leading up to PopPop's death we had had many discussions about God, always instituted by Edan. One discussion left me speechless, which is unusual for me in discussing God. Our darling grand daughter had started the conversation about God. I'm sure her parents had prepared her for PopPop's death by telling her that he would be in heaven with God when he died. That really set her mind to reeling about heaven.
First thing she asked during the ensuing discussion was, "Well, MeMe, since we're all God's children, who's the mother? God's the Father and there has to be a mother. So who's God's wife?" I was speechless. As I verbally stumbled around for a few minutes, smart grandson Jesse diverted her attention away from the puzzling question, rescuing me from attempting a long theological answer or merely saying, "I don't know," which would have really puzzled her. Jesse blurted out, completely in defense of me, "Edan, God has a son and His name is Jesus."
"Oh, yeah," the inquisitive little girl said. She went on to ask more questions to which I knew the answer. Later I thanked Jesse for rescuing me just in time before I made a bad mistake in giving a long answer, that the mother is the body of Christ, which would have confused her even more than she was already confused.
A few days after the inevitable death, the always inquisitive little girl asked her dad if we all prayed real hard would PopPop come back alive just like Jesus did. That left her dad speechless at first, too. I'm sure he told her of the possibility but not the probability.
The most wonderful thing that happened in relation to my husband's death is when Edan made a statement rather than asking a question. She proudly and emphatically said, "Meme, I used to be afraid to die. Now I'm not afraid to die because I get to hug PopPop again."
The strong faith of a little child, how emphatic it was. Her statement brought tears to my eyes and it brings tears to the eyes of every adult who has heard her wonderful statement quoted.
The Bible says that perfect love casts out fear. Edan and PopPop's relationship is a wonderful example of that. The love that PopPop showed to Edan while he was alive did truly cast out any fear of death.
God is so smart. He knew Edan would be spared the fear of death by a loving grandfather. That's why God had a writer put that scripture in His Instruction Book, to confirm Edan's statement of faith.
God is smart and He's so, so very good. Just ask Edan, she will tell you.

SURPRISES FROM HEAVEN

My husband and I always called special surprises God's kisses because they would give us the feeling that our Heavenly Father had reached from His home in heaven to create a "God-incident" for us.
Since my husband's death I have had daily surprises to let me know that he is doing great in heaven and to let me know that God wants me to know that He is sending special kisses to catapult me through the grieving period.
The endless paperwork has been a burden with the constant reading and rereading the documents to fully understand the legal language in all of it. I had received a letter soon after my husband's death that said that I owed Social Security ten thousand dollars because I had been overpaid for the past year. That took several hours of reading the long six single spaced pages, pouring over every word until I discovered that it said that since he had died last year they had paid me too much money. The truth is that he died a month ago. It took a long telephone call to the office in our town before I could convince the nice lady on the phone that it was a mistake on their part. She was so kind and she finally found the error and told me to disregard the letter.
I received another letter a few weeks later relating to the one time two hundred plus dollar payment paid to every family whose deceased relative was receiving Social Security. That letter had two consecutive paragraphs which completely contradicted each other. I had to take the death certificate to the SS office anyway, so I went with not only the death certificate but the confusing letter in hand.
When I went into the new SS building I took a ticket from the computer which said that my number was 25 and I would be called and instructed to go to a specific window where an employee would help me. The loud speaker announced that the person holding number 10 should go to window 15 for assistance. I took my seat in the back of the ocean of people waiting for their turn to be helped. I was confident that since there were 15 windows with helpers behind each window that I wouldn't be there all day, maybe just a large portion of the day.
I enjoyed watching the people waiting to be assisted and the ones who went to their appointed windows, which were anywhere from 1 to 15. Windows 7 through 14 were around the corner and down a long hallway.
Finally the announcement came that number 25 should go to window 4. I meandered over to the window, stretching out my legs because I had been sitting in an uncomfortable chair for a while. I sat down in the chair in front of the window and a lady's voice said, "Have you had a face lift? You look younger than you did 25 years ago."
I looked closer at the person behind the window and recognized it as Marla, a lady who had come to us for marriage counseling 25 years ago. She had become a good friend even though I hadn't seen her in 25 years. She had moved to another state but had learned about my writings on my blogs and had started reading them. I also started sending to her daily encouraging messages from God which I publish on the Dear One blog. She occasionally writes an email to me but we hadn't seen each other in 25 years. I thought she still lived in another state.
I was in awe again of God's surprise for me that day. Think of the trouble He went to getting me to the office on the right day, putting Marla behind a certain window, and then getting me in line to draw that particular window to find help relating to the letter. Out of 15 windows I got an old friend, Marla, who immediately rose from her desk, rushed out the door in the partitioned wall, ran up to me and gave me a heart warming bear hug. We hugged for several minutes.
Marla said, "I knew when I saw in the paper that Steve had died that when you came in to bring the death certificate that I would get you at my window."
That put me deeper into complete awe of God, that He had given Marla that prophesy, that she would get to help me, and here she was across the desk from me. We shared some God incidents and then knew we had to get to my problem. After all, she was working and on government time.
I showed her my letter, which she immediately read and remarked that I was right, that the two paragraphs completely contradicted each other. She had to take it to her supervisor to decipher it. She was gone a few minutes, came back and said the supervisor couldn't figure out why the second paragraph was in there, that she had never seen that admonition before.
Well, my imagination went wild for a few minutes thinking about did God cause that strange paragraph to be put in so that I would take it to the SS office and be helped by God's maiden, an old friend who was believing that she was going to see when when I came in the office? Could be.
The miracle of the whole thing is that out of 15 windows being used that day, I got the exact number of Marla's window. Now, that also fills me with awe of the abilities of God.
The problem was solved and I got to be personally hugged and personally loved by someone I hadn't seen in 25 years whom God had told she would get to help me.
God is truly amazing. I'm in awe every day of His goodness. His Instruction Book says that the awe of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. I'm waiting for more of His wisdom relating to the incident. It will thrill me, too.

SOLID FOUNDATIONS

Dear One,

Treasure the good things that people do for you and say to you. They all go toward your foundation of stability, your solidarity, the shoring up of your good ego which is necessary for a happy life. You relish the compliments and welcome them with joy.
Since those actions of kind words and deeds are so important to you, you must see that you give the same kind words which solidify the foundations of others. They are their building blocks to a good and beneficial ego which is necessary for their happy lives.
You should give compliments and other words of love to others willingly and joyfully, knowing that those words are My words, spreading love around the earth. When you willingly spread love, you also spread peace because a solid foundation in the mind of a person also gives peace to the person.
Spreading My love and peace in a tumultuous world is doing exactly what Jesus did. After all, He is the Prince of Peace. You are His ambassador of love and peace now. Spread them willingly and joyfully. Then watch your world change as a result.
Ambassadors are not only representatives of one nation to another, but they exemplify the character of their own nation. Since My character is love and peace, you are called to be ambassadors of My family, showing My love and My peace to everyone. It all starts with kind words and kind actions. Those are your proper witnesses for Me.
The song I gave to one of My children says, "Spread a little love." I say it again to you, determine to spread a little love every day and then you will find that you can spread a lot of love every day.

Love, God
I Corinthians 15:33-34; Ephesians 4:29-32; James 3:1-18. Romans 12:10; II Corinthians 5:20-21.

THE DEATH OF A HERO

It's hard enough to have a stranger who's a hero die, but my granddaughter Lindsey's grandpa, who was her hero, died.
Lindsey came to see her grandpa often when he was sick, mostly after school.
When the time came that he could no longer talk because of a malignant tumor on his vocal cords which joined the other tumors in his body to destroy his life, she would just come and sit with Grandpa, just sit in the infirmary room on the love seat. Hospice had turned the den adjoining our bedroom into an infirmary room with a hospital bed, a trapeze bar for use when He was strong enough to help pull himself higher in the bed, an oxygen machine and all the other wonderful things that Hospice provides to ease the last days of the terminally ill.
A day or two before Grandpa died, after just sitting in the room with him, when she decided to leave she told him she loved him, which was her usual parting words. He waved a slight wave of his hand in goodbye to her.
It was a horrible day when Lindsey's dad had to tell her that Grandpa had died that day. She grieved and grieved, even more than she, her brother Jesse and I had grieved together a week before, after both of them had sat with Grandpa in silence for thirty minutes. He was their athletic hero as well as their adoring Grandpa. When they came out of the room shaking with sobs, I also lost my usual composure and sobbed right along with them. It was a sad, sad time for all of us.
Lindsey didn't come to the house for a couple of days after Grandpa died. It was impossible for her to come to the house where she knew he had drawn his last breath.
A few day after his death I got a phone call. It was Lindsey. She had a lilt in her usually sunshiny voice which I had not heard in a while. She said, "MeMe, can I come over? I have something to tell you."
"Of course," I told her, "you can come over." I needed to have her "always walking on the sunny side of the street," demeanor around me. I was intrigued because I knew how grieved she was at the death of her hero.
I watched for her silver pickup to drive into the driveway. Then I watched to see what her gait was like when she exited her truck. It was light and jolly-like, almost skipping.
She rushed in the door and said, "MeMe, I had a dream about Grandpa last night. In the dream I came to your house and you weren't here but Grandpa was here. He looked just like he did when he was healthy. He said to me, 'I'm fine, Lindsey. I'm so happy.'"
She continued her joyful rendition of her dream by telling me that the dream took all of the grief away from her. She said that she sees him in her mind now as the tall, handsome, athletic gramps that he always was.
I cried tears of joy and she cried tears of joy. Then we rejoiced together that God is so loving to give her that wonderful dream, one that chased away grief and gave her the hope of Grandpa being healthy and happy in heaven. God knew that she needed that vision of her hero being healthy and whole again.
God said he would comfort the broken hearted. He did it for Lindsey like He has done for me.
Thank you, My Heavenly Hero, for giving my granddaughter Lindsey a happy dream about her hero, her Grandpa Steve. It changed her grief into gladness.
That's the promise God gave, that he would turn our mourning into gladness. Lindsey's dream is proof that He keeps His promises and that He cares about a granddaughter who has lost her hero.
My Heavenly Hero is taking care of Lindsey and Jesse's hero who lives with Him now. That's a good Father.

JOY COMES IN THE MOURNING

JOY COMES IN THE MOURNING
T. Wieland Allen
As I lay here in bed minus my partner of 55 years I have a strange feeling that the past two years of cancer consciousness has been just a bad dream and that he will come in the bedroom door at any minute and get ready for bed.
I know that it hasn't been a bad dream but it was real, two years of grueling tests and bad reports and blood transfusions and chemotherapy and radiation and those always present doctors' appointments.
The thought comes that he is finally off of that horrible, never-ending hamster wheel that went no where, only back to the same dreaded scenario again and again.
He was constantly nauseous, weak and sick. I was always emotionally, physically and spiritually exhausted.
Care giving is endless when a person's mate is forever seeking for a cure or just maybe some relief from the hopelessness that comes from a rare form of the dreaded disease.
The empty bed and the empty house speak loudly of loneliness, but even the fleeting thoughts of wishing that he was present with me are rejected because he would surely be back in the hospital bed trying to make himself eat something to please me or drink some small sips of liquid which would cause him to again cough up clods of mucous that constantly plagued him. That horrible memory makes me glad that he has left the prison of his diseased body which was at one time so physically fit, the picture of a healthy, handsome, virile athlete who loved life.
I dry my tears and thank God that the nightmare is over for both of us and he is enjoying the love, rest and comfort of the cocoon that God so graciously showed him in a dream. He is free from the disease and free from misery and free from the feeling of failure because he wasn't healed. He is free and I am also free from watching his misery and then having my own inherited misery that came from the unity that 55 years of togetherness affords.
Like a savior, joy comes and lifts me out of the loneliness and the sense of abandonment that so quickly invaded my mind tonight.
Joy is healing, like the Savior from which it comes, soothing my mind and drying my tears just like God promises. God said he would make treasures out of my tears. Tonight I momentarily contributed some more salty ingredients necessary for Him to fashion those treasures.
Yes, the joy that comes from God is strength and stability. And it always comes just in time, turning mourning into gladness.
Looking forward to God's promised treasures will be exciting, leaving the past behind and reaching forward to the high calling. He said to reach forward and that means to extend our open hands in eager anticipation of the treasures that He has fashioned for us out of the tears of misery because we trusted in Him. Reaching, reaching, reaching -- we can't reach forward if we are looking backward. We might miss a wonderful treasure.
Joy does come in the morning to those who were mourning but mourn no more.
Thanks be to God.

SHOCK TREATMENT

SHOCK TREATMENT
T. WIELAND ALLEN

My husband Steve has being undergoing chemotherapy for a few months. Radiation treatment was recently prescribed for his neck because a tumor popped up on the thyroid gland. We were momentarily devastated to hear about the new tumor. He had not had radiation up to this point, but since he was losing his voice the doctors prescribed radiation of the area in the neck, hoping it will shrink the tumor so that Steve can regain his strong voice.
One of the worse side effects of chemo and radiation of the neck is an excess of thick clods of mucus in his throat that choke him and interfere with swallowing. It results in gut retching coughing for ten to twenty minutes and then sneezing for 15 to 20 times for him, which is a family trait when anything gets caught in their throats. All of that is exhausting to any patient and Steve wilts with loss of energy many times a day when the mucus builds up. Then he has to rest for a long time to regain his strength. Then later the cycle repeats itself.
After researching the internet, I found that the mucus buildup is normal for chemo and radiation patients. There were some suggestions from doctors and also from patients and their caretakers on the researched articles. We had already come up with the most helpful thing which is Mucinex. It helps tremendously but does not completely alleviate the problem. Other suggestions were hot tea with honey and lemon, also lots of water, gargling Ginger Ale, a decongestant, salt water nasal sprays, and cough drops.
Steve has tried all of the suggestions but sometimes we forget to access all of the aids. Last night was a particularly bad night. Before going to bed he had an attack of coughing which caused him to vomit, then more coughing to bring up the mucus, then sneezing for many, many times. He barely made it to bed he was so weak.
In the middle of the night the same thing occurred. He was awake hacking for a long time, then laid awake for a long time weak with the process of getting rid of the mucus.
At 4:00 this morning I was still awake from the middle of the night episode. I had been praying for hours for him, knowing that he was feeling defeat from the constant coughing spell and possibly wavering in his faith. I know that I also was struggling with that battle between holding on in faith and giving up to the disease because of the effects of the chemo and radiation on his body.
I went to the guest bedroom to pray, hoping to get some comforting words from Our Heavenly Father which would bring me back into faith instead of temporarily entertaining defeat.
I merely told Our Father that I was asking for His words in the matter, and asking in faith that He would comfort me, counsel me, encourage me, whatever He knows will catapult me to the top in faith again.
As I laid on the bed, expecting to hear something from Him or anything from Him which would help me in the struggle I was having, determined not to give in to defeat.
God's personal words to me always have shock value. That's the way he talks to me, always saying something that I would never think of saying myself.
So the word of the Lord came to me in this shocking statement, "Are you going to let SNOT defeat you? You need to become the master of the snot instead of letting it be your master."
I bolted out of the bed and threw on my clothes, telling that snot that it has to come under the authority of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and greater is He than is in me than he that is causing that snot.
Now you need to know that that word, snot, is not in my speaking vocabulary. It's one of the words that crawls all over me when other people say it. I prefer the word mucus. In this instance I knew that God needed something that would get my full attention so he used the word "snot" in His admonition to me.
I sang a victory song for several hours.
I could hardly wait to tell Steve what God had told me, hoping it would spur him onto the offensive rather than being on the defensive. I was in for a shock when he came into the kitchen two hours earlier than his normal time. He came walking in with determination and a new command of the situation. He said, "I'm going to get ahead of this thing right now." He began to take all the necessary aids to become the master of the mucus instead of it being his master. He still coughed a little, but not with hacking and retching for fifteen or twenty minutes. By the time he took all the aids we had, he was calm enough to go back to bed for his much needed extra sleep.
God is so precious. I would call His comments to me of, "Are you really going to let snot defeat you," to be a loving chastisement. I had not realized we had let it get the best of us, succumbing to its harassment by letting it dominate our lives.
Steve's resolve to stay ahead of it was God's way of telling Steve the same thing He told me, but in a way that he would muster up courage and strength and become the head again and stop being the tail.
To be honest, after the sleepless night and hearing and seeing my loved one in such misery made me feel like I was the tail and I was barely holding on to the tip of that tail.
God is faithful. He always gets his messages across to us.
He sure knows how to shock me into action. All He had to do was use the word "snot."
There's not a thing wrong with that word. It's just that I was not raised hearing it so it's strange to my hearing.
We've declared a war on snot. See, I can use it, too, and not feel badly for it. But I do know that we need to gain victory over its harassment in our lives. Using all of the aids available at the proper time is the secret.
Steve got his message at the same time I did. His admonition was in the words he could understand and my admonition was in words that would spur me to action.
God knows all of us inside and out and He knows what words will bring us from the tail back up to the head again. I never imagined the word He would use, but Our Dad always knows best.
Whatever is harassing you in your life, don't let it be your master. You need to become its master. Thus saith the Lord.