Larger Than Pocket Faith

Pockets are for car keys,

mints and tissues—the kind my grandmother used to store

Wider pockets for a letter, a wallet, a grocery list

Carrying, containing, safe-keeping



How many times I have looked

Wanting to find God inside my pocket

To fit my plans, my thoughts, my ways, my desires.



Creator of the Magnolia tree, the worker bee,

God of miracles, the Red Sea parting,

God of the stars and moon and depth of valley



Why do I insist that my pocket could contain your magnitude,

harbor your excellence and reduce your glory to fit me?

Weary, I come to you to beg



Living Word, Sovereign, Faithful, Almighty God

Gift me larger than pocket faith

Save me from myself.



~Alice J. Wisler (First published in Foreshadow on 6-16-24)

When Love and Laughter Play the Tune

It's those tapes that want to ruin our lives.

When we've lost a loved one, the tapes of the last moments play in our heads like a broken record that never stops its scratchy noise. The music is the worst we've heard---loud and grating. There is no off-button. The noise is made up of our thoughts that cause us to contemplate the last words spoken by ourselves and by our loved one. We think of how it could have gone differently and how if it had, our loved one would still be alive. Over and over we ask, why did it have to end this way? If only . . . . If only I had taken him to the hospital earlier. If only I had watched him more closely. If only I had known more about the disease or his friends or the event where he was in danger. We scream into the night. We think the constant-playing tapes will kill us. Exhausted, we want to shut off our minds.

As we go over in detail the last moments with our loved one, we want to believe the moments could have been orchestrated differently.

Control is the loud tune that plays in rhythm with If Only. The two work together. We have been led to believe that we have control. We think it is ours. We wore our seat belts and ate our vegetables, were kind to our neighbors (even the nosy ones) and bought toys for our children. We shouldn't have to be going through this confusion, this ache, this despair. Our loved one should still be here with us. Instead, we are now living a life without him or her and wondering how to face each day. For whatever reason, we have bought into the myth of power, control, thinking we could play God in our lives. We ignore the soft voice that asks, "Did you get to choose your place of birth, or height, or color of your eyes?"

To try to make sense of our confusion and illusions, we journal. Page after page, we fill them with questions like: How long does this pain last? When will I get back to the old me? For help, we read the lives of others who have been on the bereavement journey. We marvel at their survival and at the same time wonder how they have done it. Can we do it? Can we journey year after year without our child, our spouse, our parent, our friend?

We put the journals and books aside, and go back to the If Only and Control. Over and over the frantic tunes play as we continue to live the last days. While the re-living the last days seems detrimental, the truth is, it is necessary. It's called process. Our brains need to process what has happened to us in our loss. Eventually----and I don't know how long eventually is---the tapes wear thin. We forgive ourselves, we realize control is a myth, we realize it is not up to us to have control over when someone takes his last breath. We acknowledge we are not God. We may never understand why our loved one died when she did or the way she did. We may never get the answers we want on this earth. But one thing we know, until our last breath, we are going to have to figure out how to make this bereavement journey work.

On a day where the sun pushes past the clouds, we hear the laughter of our loved one. As we drive to work, we recall a road trip with our significant other. In the parking lot, we remember a joke our son told. The laughter feels strange to our ears. A smile expresses the memories we carry in our hearts. The next day we may be back to listening to the If Only tapes, but once again, on another day, a fond memory slips through. She did like to bake oatmeal cookies, he did give the best hugs. And we trod on the journey, clouds and sunlight, dreariness with glimpses of hope. And we are progressing. Day after day, we embark on the rocky path, finding our footing, discovering what we need, learning and growing.

And one morning, we find ourselves thinking: Maybe I will survive. Maybe, perhaps, I might even thrive again. And in the meanwhile, we savor the laughter and the love. They are what fit inside our hearts; their tunes are worth carrying and playing over and over again.

The Memories We Cherish

After my son Daniel died at age four, I asked family and friends to send their memories for a memory album I created. Here's one from my Dad sent from Japan where he and Mom were missionaries for 38 years.

It doesn't take long to write a memory of a loved one. Write one to cherish and don't hesitate to ask others to write memories of their own.

Adversity, Lilies, and Why We Don't Give Up

My son gave me bulbs for Mother's Day. I asked for them; it's nice when kids listen to their mamas.

I'm not sure why a woman with no ability to cultivate growing things other than perhaps, children and pets, would ask for flowers. Of course I love flowers and the way they make me feel alive and joyful. But I have never had the proverbial green thumb like my neighbors do.

In my garden, I wait each spring for the purple irises to bud. Those bulbs were planted by the previous homeowner. I don't have to do a thing and they flourish and look pretty.

Days after I received the Mother's Day bulbs-----Oriental Lilies----I planted them. I read the instructions on the back of the package that the six bulbs came in. For the region I live in, the hot and humid South, planting season was May and since it was May, I was right on target. My husband bought a set of garden tools so I didn't have to dig the holes with my bare hands. I read the instructions again, not wanting to miss something. We non-gardeners have to be careful. Eight inches deep, plant one bulb, plant the next three inches from it, and so on.

I watered. I waited. I got excited when I saw a green shoot come up. It was only a blade of grass.

Each morning I went to check on my bulbs.

And then one day something that was more sturdy than a blade of grass poked out of the mulch. It was green and thick and I was sure it was a lily's stem.

We went away on a vacation and while gone, Durham had heavy rains and even flooding. When we returned a week later, the stem of that one lily was even larger. Days later a new shoot appeared.

According the the package, the Oriental Lilies are to bloom in late summer. So for now, all I'm going to see are green stalks. But each time I water those beginnings-of-what-is-to-come, I have hope that in a few months, they will look just like the picture on the package. 

Currently I am in a position of waiting. Which is nothing new, really, I am one of those who ends up waiting on something often---from the small to the extreme: A check to arrive in the mail, a kid to change his attitude and lifestyle, a friend to be discharged from the hospital, a business to take off and make money for bread and meatloaf. This month as I water the ground where I planted the bulbs, I think about waiting a lot.

And I learn. Like the bulbs, we grow. It takes time to be all we were created to be. But slowly, we do push through and push forward. We have to fight at times not to give up on ourselves and on others.

So whatever you are waiting on today, keep waiting. Use the time to grow---whether it be in patience or some other way. If you are like me, a writer waiting to get a manuscript accepted by a publisher, be strong. Keep improving your craft, write other things (like a blog post). Try not to sink into despair, which by the way, I have done, and will most likely do again in the future. I doubt the big things in life, and the small. I have to trust that the printed instructions about how to plant the bulbs were correct, and that these bulbs are really lilies and that they will look like the beautiful lily on the cover of the pouch one day. And I also have to protect them from bugs and critters that like to feast on their leaves. Otherwise, I am wasting my time watering and waiting.

Like the life of my bulbs, set-backs will happen (flooding), perhaps all you wanted will not happen (I'm not sure the other four bulbs will make a debut), and you will grow older (but hopefully in the process, much stronger and more lovely instead of bitter or eaten by bugs). If I can learn valuable lessons about myself, God, love, and hope along the way, I will become gracious and wise.

The two stems greet me every day and if they could talk, I think they would say: Keep the faith, grow on. And don't forget to smile into the sun when you are able.


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How do you handle the tough challenges of living? What works for you?  Feel free to leave a comment below.