The Book!

Dear Martin

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 11:36:06 -0400

Dear Martin,

It is 2:30 a.m. on a Tuesday, and I know we won’t be going to bed again. Once more, you are having problems breathing. It’s one of the bad ones this time. Your fingers are blue, and so is your tongue, from a lack of oxygen. Your eyes are filled with fear. You’re tensing your muscles so much that air can’t make its way into your lungs to help. You are looking at me, terrified, your eyes saying: Can’t you do something more, I can’t breathe.

We have been through these ”attacks” many times before. Your fever rises, and your breathing doesn’t return to normal until your temperature is up there where it needs to be around 102-106°F.

You’re hyperventilating, and I imagine that you’re in pain. You’re getting oxygen now, and that usually helps.

I can’t allow myself to become frightened or distressed. I put my own emotions aside, so that I can help you as best I can. I need to leave the room; I can feel my own breathing getting more and more superficial and my stomach muscles tightening. I am scared, distraught, frustrated about not being able to do more for you. It occurs to me that this is when I normally head for the refrigerator—but not this time. I can hear you struggling to breathe, even though you are still getting oxygen. I am not going to eat, I say aloud. Dear God, help me through this crisis. I go in to you again and hold your hand. You relax a little. Your nails are now pink again, but that’s because of the oxygen.

I look at as I hold your hand. Is it me who is keeping you alive? Am I holding on to you without knowing it? You are still frightened. I reduce the oxygen a little. It’s senseless to give you too much. Many others in my situation would probably think: Why don’t I call for a doctor or an ambulance. But what can they do that I am not already doing? Give you oxygen and wait it out. They would just offer to hospitalize you, and then I would still be the one monitoring you. I can better do that at home, where you are more at ease.

Your body has reached the boiling point, yet your fingers and feet are ice cold. Typical signs of a fever. That’s good; you are almost there. You have red splotches on your body, because it’s working so hard. You’re still having trouble getting your breathing back to normal. You are still coughing up a lot of mucous. Sometimes it’s as if you are going to drown in all that mucous.

When have you ever been able to breathe without all that mucous? When you were in my womb. Such a long time ago. You’ll soon be 14. From your very first day on this earth, your lungs have been filled with mucous. Many times—so many that I’ve lost count—that mucous nearly cost you your life. But here you are. Is it your own will, or God’s—or maybe mine? It’s hard for me to let go of you, because you are my entire identity. I’m good at keeping you alive. Am I too much of a caregiver by keeping you alive, or is it my role as a mother, that is keeping you going? Where does one end and the other begin? When do I stop being a mother to just be a caregiver? Or when does my role as a caregiver stop, and my role as a mother take over?

I can hear your breathing is more relaxed now. Your temperature is up; I don’t have to take it. My hands tell me 103.6. You need fluids. I have the advantage of knowing precisely how much fluid you get. I don’t have to force you like ”normal” mothers do to get their children to drink enough. You are tube-fed; I know exactly what you get. I also know how much you need every hour, so your body can keep up. Is it the caregiver or the well-informed mother in me that knows this?

I think a lot about my mission in life. I know that you came to me for a reason. Not so long ago, I had words to describe that mission. I am here on earth to serve God. We all are, and we all have our way of doing so. Not everyone thinks of it in that way, but you and I do. I just didn’t know how I was to serve. Big or small. Then it suddenly occurred to me that you, too, are here to serve God. I have always known that you had a mission here in life, I just haven’t been able to describe it until now: it's what you have taught me. We have been through so much together so that I could gain this insight. You have watched me through the years, and you knew that I just didn’t get it. I didn’t understand how. I think you had a talk with God so He could guide me to better understanding. Now I know my mission. You have served well, and you deserve to be free.

I know that you’ve been the key to my love. Had I never had you, I would never have discovered that profound love inside me. Perhaps that love has been too destructive at times. I have held back things that I really should have set free. I can’t hold water or cage a wild bird, but that’s exactly what I have done. I know that we don’t die but just change form—still… My love has been too stifling. Is it possible to be loved too much? Yes, if that love is destructive. Unfortunately, I wasn’t aware that my strong love for you has often been ”too much.” It’s not something I do consciously. I do the best I can.

It’s through my role as a mother that I gain all my wisdom, but I quickly revert to my role as caregiver. Perhaps I see myself as a caregiver because it’s too painful, for me as a mother, to subject you, my child, to all that I do. I have never thought of it that way before. I know that much of my wisdom comes to me at night, when it is still.

We’ve been through a lot, you and I. Mostly you, but it has often been difficult for me just to stand on the sideline with my hands tied and watch you endure it all. If I could, I would take the pain myself. But I can’t. That has often made me feel helpless and frustrated. Why can’t I make you better? Isn’t that what a mother is supposed to do? I guess everything about us is backwards. A mother’s job is to prepare her child for an independent life, but in our case, it is you who teach me. I know that I have often been slow to learn, and that has frustrated you.

It has been difficult for me to witness all those times you have struggled with something that the rest of us take for granted. Breathing. All those times I have seen fear in your eyes. It has hurt me so deeply. Why couldn’t I take the fear away from you.

You have taught me what love is. You brought an end to my family’s ”bad” habits: offering money and material things instead of love. But the only thing I could give you is me. When you were a baby, just sitting with you, holding you was a wonderful feeling. I took to it quickly, for I had plenty of time. No child comes with a manual, so I had to learn as I went along.

I was good at giving, but I forgot myself in the process, for I had never learned to give to myself. You taught me that, too.

I hope you think I have been a good mother. Know that I did my best.

For Martin’s Sake

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:51:41 -0400

“The Bible says in the first letter to the Corinthians chapter 13,7: love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. “

Is that really true? Does love really endure everything? Can it? What is love? Is it when we are in love and listen to pop songs dealing with love? Or is it maybe when we go for long walks in the moonlight, eating a romantic dinner and we feel that we are the only two people in the world and everything is good? Or maybe when we speak for hours on the phone with our beloved.
Maybe then is it easier to believe the word in the Bible.

But what if we are not in love, or the love we thought we had is being tested? How easy is it then to believe the Bible’s word, that love endures everything.

If the word of the Bible is true, is it then us, the humans, who give up to easily? Or is there more to it?

To me, the greatest and purest love is the Divine love. It is the pure love and power we are all born with. The power from where we all come. But alas, we forget the fastest. This is the kind of love, which doesn’t demand anything from us. It is unconditional.
It is when we obtain access to that love, that it can be and is a driving force in our lives.

However the human mind has a tendency to defuse the power we all have within us. We are far to busy judging each other and holding others and ourselves down. We often make demands of love, even when we don’t realize it.

Love between two people is strong, but there is probably not a stronger bond of love than that of the love between a mother and a child.

I thought I knew what love was, until my son was born in 1990. He was, due to a doctor’s malpractice, born severely brain damaged. This led me to question everything I have known about myself and love up to that point.
Before I became pregnant I was married, working, believed in God, had friends. I was, what you would call an average Danish woman. I had what I considered to be a satisfactory and adequate life.

While I was pregnant, I would imagine how my life with the new baby would be. Our child had partially my genes and would continue my family to future generations.
But the normal boy with the normal potential was dead at birth. The future was over, even before it began.
All my plans, thoughts, ideas about our family life would have to die, so that I literally could keep my son Martin alive.
The fact that Martin was born the way he was drove me to a deep existential crisis. It was contrary to my ideas about adult life, life as a mother. Out of fear of perishing, I was so busy trying to hold on to myself and control everything that I ended up divorced.
But what was worse, I became filled with an indescribable rage. Anger against the doctor, who was to blame for the fate, my son now faced. I was angry with God. I just couldn’t understand, that if God loved really loved me, how could He allow this to happen?

Before I became a mother, there were several aspects of my personality that I took for granted. Having Martin made me question time and time again who I really was.

It suddenly dawned on me, that I had kept my love a secret. Never really expressed it. There had been times, when I thought I wasn’t capable of loving at all. Martin opened up for all that.

My upbringing had taught me, that love equals money and things. But that had no significance for Martin. In order to have a close and intimate relationship with him, I had to give of myself.

In the 17 years Martin was alive, it happened several times, that I was close to giving up. Not for lack of love for my son, but perhaps because of it. It saddened me to know, that I was causing him discomfort and pain several times a day, just to keep him alive.

There were day’s months years, where I didn’t have a full night sleep and I was physically drained.
But I still refused to give up. The deep heartfelt love I felt for him, made me go one more day. However there were days, when I had to ask God for the strength just to get through the next hour.
I received.

I always felt, that I had to take care of others before I could take care of me. Problem was, I never took care of me. I was so focused and concerned about how others were feeling that I forgot myself in the process.
This is something other mothers recognize. We sacrifice ourselves, but is that love? We have to give to ourselves before we can give to others. That is not selfish but self-love.

If we see our soul as a bank account, then we will have to deposit money, before we can make a withdrawal.

For many years, I withdrew, without making a deposit. I wanted to show the world, how much I was capable of, but I succumbed to it.

We are a product of everything we encounter. Both the good and the bad. Because Martin and I were given the fate we were, gave me the opportunity to examine the rules I grew up by.
I grew up in a home, where children were seen not heard. The children of our time is often spoiled when it come to material things. “ I want my children to have everything I didn’t have” we all say. Or do we give out children all these material things to cover our own guilt of not spending enough time with them?

Because Martin was born the way he was, he had no benefit from cell phones, game boys or expensive designer labels. The only thing I could give him, was me. My love.
Before I could do that, I had to learn. Find that part of me. It was wonderful, but also somewhat frightening to discover how much love I actually contained. There were time, I tried to withhold some of that love, so others wouldn’t see how much love I actually had. However the emotionally deprived pattern, I grew up with was broken.
Martin did that with his mere presence. In a way Martin taught me that love is spelled T I M E .
Nothing is more important that the quality time we spend together.

Because of the profound and at times, overwhelming love I felt for Martin, it was painful for me to witness what he had to go through and I as a mother couldn’t just take his pain and carry it for him.
I was just so full of emotions and feeling, that it was difficult to contain them. However I discovered that by pushing the emotions aside and just act, I avoided feeling the fear, sorrow, despair, anger and devastation, which was just piecing my body.
At that time, I didn’t realize that it was just like holding a beach ball under water. You can only do it for a certain time. I used so much energy to keep the emotions at bay and gradually I had to find other ways to keep them down. The grief, anger, fears and devastation was eating me up. I used absurd quantities of food to stifle the unpleasant feelings and soon after they were buried so deep, that my soul almost died. I violated myself completely and developed an eating disorder. It was the only way I felt I could survive.
Throughout Martin’s life, I have more like a nurse and caregiver, than a mother. There were so many practical things I had to do, just to keep him alive. A part of me felt, that by acting like a nurse and caregiver, I could keep a mental distance to the agony I was feeling.

Shortly before Martin’s death, I finally let go and surrendered completely to the role as a mother and the pain it was to watch my son die. The only thing I could do was to ask God for the strength to let go of Martin and go through the pain it would be to loose him.

I already knew, that I loved him enough to let him go. I can’t explain it with words, but I knew, that by surrendering completely to love and thereby God, I was not alone.
That was the force that would get me through the day. It felt as if I got the strength I needed and the right people at the right time was sent to me. I had to let my ego step aside and fully trust the process. By doing that I got access to the strong Divine love that we all have access to, but maybe are afraid to feel
We can only feel it, when our egos step aside.

I have often asked myself if I was the one who kept Martin alive.
Was my love for him so strong that I kept him from getting the peace, he may have wanted sooner? Did I love him too much or was my love destructive. Did it keep him alive because I couldn’t or would let him go?
Or was it my deep love for him, which gave him more years here on earth than any doctor could have predicted or even thought possible?

Perhaps Death is timed perfectly. Was it the will of God that made Martin as old as he did?

I often think about my mission in life. I know that Martin came to me for a reason. I is not long ago, that I began to understand the mission. I am here to serve God. We all are and we all have different ways of doing it. Martin was also born to serve God. He had a mission. Martin’s mission was to teach me what love is. We went through a lot, so I could gain that wisdom.

He was the key to my love.
Maybe I, out of fear of loosing him, held on to something that should have been set free?
I realized that Martin had become my identity. Who would I be if he died? I couldn’t answer and that was frightening.

To me, love is about surrendering to something greater that yourself. Through the years, I have had so many feelings and emotions in my body, which I had tried to control and keep down, and it wasn’t until I surrendered, I felt I could start to tackle them.

I felt so low and depressed that I in near desperation asked God to take this burden I was carrying. I could cope any longer.

My soul had been dead for far too long and for far too long I had neglected myself and made food my friend.

As children, our parents label us all. One of my labels was I am the strong one.
I never questioned it. Not even when I was at the breaking point. I didn’t allow myself to feel the pain I had inside.

I was convinced, that if I had expressed the emotions I was feeling, then I was weak and being weak was not an option. It wasn’t allowed in my family.

But the strength was only a partial mask. I had to let go of my social mask to find out who I really was. For me, it was not only a way forward but also a way in – in to myself.

I started seeing a psychologist who was able to open up for all the emotions I had tried to suppress. I realized that not only had I been angry at the whole world, I had also been angry with God.

I started reading the Bible again. Once again, as so many times before, it gave me the peace I had been searching for in the wrong places.

I learned to feel love for myself, which I hadn’t done before. I learned that when I felt upset, stressed or other emotions, which would have resulted in over eating, I could now just sit down and do some breathing exercises.
Then the need would disappear and my all to high stress level would diminish.

I also learned to forgive the unforgivable. I forgave the doctor and as soon as I had done that, he no longer had any power over me. Me forgiving him, doesn’t mean that I felt it was ok what he did, it just meant that I no longer was a victim to the anger I used to be consumed with.

The anger put me in an emotional prison, but love set me free.

Martin died peacefully in my arms on a beautiful and warm evening in May 2007.
He went back to the power he came from. Knowing that, gives me peace.

It gives me peace to know that the love I felt for him, made his life here on earth wasn’t wasted. Martin taught me what love really is and he was the key to my heart.

My love for Martin has not abated, just because he is no longer physically here. My grief and pain for having lost him, is at times almost unbearable. However I know one day I will get through it.
By using love as a force and be grateful for the time he was here and really rejoice over how many lives he actually touched, then a part of him will always be here.

Martin’s remains is at a beautiful and peaceful church cemetery north of Copenhagen, but he is buried in my heart.

I promised Martin on his deathbed, that I would live my life fully, to honor him. I will never close my heart but let it be filled by the love which he had opened up and that I know now I at any time have access to.

With my life experience life had taught me that God’s love is a force, which we all have access to. All we have to do is choose. Unconditionally.

So in response to the question that started this article, does love rally endure everything?

Yes. I believe that with all my heart.

Children In Heaven

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:49:39 -0400

Every day Jesus gathered all the children to be with them. They all went to a very beautiful part of the garden, where the loved to be.
All the children looked forward to what was going to happen, because they knew it was wonderful.
They sat down, and Jesus handed then all a candle and said to them: “Light this candle for the family member and friends, you have left behind on Earth, so they can feel that you are well and have peace.

All, except one, did it and they sat there for a long time thinking about their family and friends, hoping they could feel the peace they felt.
When they were done, Jesus blessed them all and took them back.

Every day the same thing happened and every time some one didn’t light their candle.
Jesus sat next to the boy, who hadn’t lit his candle and put his arm around him.

-Martin” , asked Jesus lovingly, “why don’t you light your candle?
-I can’t” , answered Martin.

- Why not? I have shown you how.
- Yes, Martin answered, but every time I try to light my candle, it is extinguished by my family’s tears: I don’t think they know how happy I am here and how peaceful I feel. Please help them to understand that I am at peace now and I am very happy. Will you do that?
- Yes Martin. I will

10 Guidelines From God

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:47:40 -0400

1. QUIT WORRYING: Life has dealt you a blow and all you do is sit and worry. Have you forgotten that I am here to take all your burdens and carry them for you? Or do you just enjoy fretting over every little thing that comes your way?   2. PUT IT ON THE LIST: Something needs done or taken care of. Put it on the list. No, not YOUR list. Put it on MY to-do-list. Let ME be the one to take care of the problem. I can't help you until you turn it over to Me. And although My to-do-list is long, I am after all... God. I can take care of anything you put into My hands. In fact, if the truth were ever really known, I take care of a lot of things for you that you never even realize.  3. TRUST ME: Once you've given your burdens to Me, quit trying to take them back. Trust in Me. Have the faith that I will take care of all your needs, your problems and your trials. Problems with the kids? Put them on My list. Problem with finances? Put it on My list. Problems with your emotional roller coaster? For My sake, put it on My list. I want to help you. All you have to do is ask.   4. L EAVE IT ALONE: Don't wake up one morning and say, "Well, I'm feeling much stronger now, I think I can handle it from here." Why do you think you are feeling stronger now? It's simple. You gave Me your burdens and I'm taking care of them. I also renew your strength and cover you in my peace. Don't you know that if I give you these problems back, you will be right back where you started? Leave them with Me and forget about them. Just let Me do my job.   5. TALK TO ME: I want you to forget a lot of things. Forget what was making you crazy. Forget the worry and the fretting because you know I'm in control. But there's one thing I pray you never forget. Please, don't forget to talk to Me - OFTEN! I love YOU! I want to hear your voice. I want you to include Me in on the things going on in your life. I want to hear you talk about your friends and family. Prayer is simply you having a conversation with Me. I want to be your dearest friend.   6. HAVE FAITH: I see a lot of things from up here that you can't see from where you are. Have faith in Me that I know what I'm doing. Trust Me; you wouldn't want the view from My eyes. I will continue to care for you, watch over you, and meet your needs. You only have to trust Me. Although I have a much bigger task than you do, it seems as if you have so much trouble just doing your simple part. How hard can trust be?   7. SHARE: You were taught to share when you were only two years old. When did you forget? That rule still applies. Share with those who are less fortunate than you. Share your joy with those who need encouragement. Share your laughter with those who haven't heard any in such a long time. Share your tears with those who have forgotten how to cry. Share your faith with those who have none.  8. BE PATIENT: I managed to fix it so in just one lifetime you could have so many diverse experiences. You grow from a child to an adult, have children, change jobs many times, learn many trades, travel to so many places, meet thousands of people, and experience so much. How can you be so impatient then when it takes Me a little longer than you expect to handle something on My to-do-list? Trust in My timing, for My timing is perfect. Just because I created the entire universe in only six days, everyone thinks I should always rush, rush, rush.   9. BE KIND: Be kind to others, for I love them just as much as I love you. They may not dress like you, or talk like you, or live the same way you do, but I still love you all. Please try to get along, for My sake. I created each of you different in some way. It would be too boring if you were all identical. Please, know I love each of your differences.  10. LOVE YOURSELF: As much as I love you, how can you not love yourself? You were created by me for one reason only -- to be loved, and to love in return. I am a God of Love. Love Me. Love your neighbors. But also love yourself. It makes My heart ache when I see you so angry with yourself when things go wrong. You are very precious to me. Don't ever forget......