June 13, 2023

Ode to Dads, Good or Bad

For some of us, Father’s Day is a more difficult day. It’s hard to believe my Dad passed away from colon cancer 19 years ago.

For so many years our relationship was strained, as my parents divorced after 37 years of marriage. My parents divorced in 1997, Dad remarried in 1998, and he was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1999. He fought hard for five years until he lost his battle to cancer in 2004.

Dad and I visiting a few weeks before he passed away with colon cancer in August 2004.

The Lord helped heal our relationship. I know my Dad loved me the best way he knew how. Was he the perfect Dad? Absolutely not. Did I disrespect him sometimes? I’m embarrassed to say I did, and I regret that.

One Sunday I was listening to a sermon on the Ten Commandments. I never before realized that the “Honor your father and mother” commandment is the ONLY one tied to a promise.

–“Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.” –Exodus 20:12 NIV

Notice it doesn’t say “Honor your father and mother” if he is always kind to you, affirms you, is/was the model Dad. My heart was transformed after hearing that sermon.

I’m thankful for those five years the Lord extended Dad’s life for me to forgive him and for us to renew our relationship. I looked at my Dad with a lens of honor, reverence and respect.

I began thanking him for all the blessings he brought to my life, instead of comparing him with my friends’ sweet Dads who took them out on Daddy/Daughter dates growing up. Dads who they wanted to marry men just like. Dads who walked them down the aisle.

Friend, I don’t know what your earthly relationship may be with your Dad. I encourage you to dig down deep and send or give him a card with some of the ways you are thankful for your Dad. If he is in heaven, you can write them in your journal.

If your Dad was abusive to you, or abandoned you, or was a deadbeat Dad, understandable boundaries are there. Or if  you may not know where or who your earthly Dad is, heart also aches with you. I wish I was there to hear your story. Please remember we all have our Heavenly Father, Abba, Daddy, with us. He will NEVER leave us, nor forsake us.

Although Dad’s in heaven, here are just a few of my lessons he taught me for which I am thankful:

  1. Thank you, Dad, for teaching me how to check the oil dipstick in my old car, so that I never messed up my engine or blew my transmission.  I loved that car and am grateful for it.
  2. Thank you, Dad, for providing for my needs and many of my wants. We were blessed with a house, plenty of food to eat, clothes and shoes. You even paid for my out-of-state college education. It was such a gift not to have to pay back college loans.
  3. Thank you, Dad, for teaching me to appreciate the outdoors and fishing. You even taught me to cast a fishing rod and how to bait my own hooks. I wasn’t squeamish about the worms and minnows MOST of the time.
  4. Thank you, Dad, for taking us to church most times the door was open. Your dedication to the Lord and His Word helped mold my faith.
  5. Thank you, Dad, for teaching me how to budget my money and spend wisely. I remember how you paid bills promptly and taught me how to abhor debt. I still to this day try to avoid debt, except for my mortgages.
  6. Thank you, Dad, for teaching me a strong work ethic. You worked hard at Delta Air Lines for 33 years before you retired. You liked to finish tasks you started and showed me follow through and doing what you said you would do.
  7. Thank you, Dad, for showing me to volunteer in the community and help others behind-the-scenes. You used to mow and weed eat the end of our street where no one would mow. You also mowed around the Turkey Creek bridge in Hanahan where you would walk daily. You thought no one knew. We knew and appreciated your quiet good deeds.
  8. Thank you, Dad, for trying to come to many of my basketball and volleyball games. Your presence was such a present.

Dad, I pray you can see from heaven I’m trying to carry on the Jordan legacy. Rest assured that I love my Heavenly Daddy–my Abba–with my whole soul. Thank you for loving me, Dad, the best way you knew how. Happy Father’s Day, Dad.

Dad, me, Mom, and brother Jamie at my college graduation.

Reflect:

–What are some ways you are thankful for your earthly father?  Please comment. I’d love to hear your stories, positive or negative.

Renew:

–“ Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:

Now have come the salvation and the power
and the kingdom of our God,
and the authority of his Messiah.
For the accuser of our brothers and sisters,
who accuses them before our God day and night,
has been hurled down.
They triumphed over him
by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony…” –Revelation 12:10-11

–“Listen to your father, who gave you life…” –Proverbs 23:22a NIV

–“The father of a righteous man has great joy; he who has a wise son delights in him. May your father and mother be glad…” –Proverbs 23:24-25a NIV

Recharge:

–What is something you can do today or this week to honor your Dad?

–If your relationship with your father is strained, please prayerfully consider reaching out and forgiving him WITH boundaries. I reached out years ago. It wasn’t easy. I’m so thankful we reconciled before he passed away. God is faithful.

December 28, 2020

Loving Our Neighbors—Lessons Learned Through Bedbugs, Pawn Shops & Addiction, Part 2

As we wind down and finish 2020 strong, I promised I would write more lessons in the journey with my 67-year-old alcoholic cousin Mark Sellers. Part One was posted on October 27.  Because it is tough and vulnerable to unearth and write about, I procrastinated to write more. Now is the time.

Mark had agreed to go to an inpatient alcohol rehab center. He was admitted to Anuvia, the wonderful Alcohol and Drug Rehabilitation Center in Charlotte, on October 28, 2019.  Our aunt Nancy and I would visit him every Monday night for Family Night.  It was gut-wrenching to hear from parents, siblings, relatives, and friends of other drug and alcohol rehab patients to learn what they have and are enduring.  After our family group counseling session the counselors would bring our rehab’ing loved ones in. Mark was looking better and better and seemed to be feeling stronger also.

I saw the call come in on December 11, 2019, from Mark’s Anuvia counselor and answered it. She said Mark had been admitted to the hospital for the second time with edema, which causes difficulty breathing from extra fluid around his lungs and body. Edema is another result of cirrhosis. The counselor told me they were graduating Mark, asked for me to pick him up from the hospital when he was discharged that night and pick up his belongings from Anuvia. Oh no…

He didn’t qualify to move into a “half-way” house because he needed to have access to medical attention 24 hours a day because of his cirrhosis.  Until I could get him into an assisted living facility, Mark would need to come live with me, which I confess wasn’t quite ready for.I drove to the hospital to pick him up, then picked his belongings up from Anuvia.

Mark knew we were going to my home. I’m thankful he didn’t want to back to the attic of the dilapidated crack house where he had lived before. The crack house where he got bedbugs, where he was isolated and drank way too much alcohol daily, so much more than his body could handle.

Remember the Shop Vac we had gotten out of the Pawn Shop? He told me that the Shop Vac was stolen from his landlord Carol. One Saturday before Christmas we visited Miss Carol in the front of the property where the crackhouse was in the back.

Mark rang the doorbell. Carol answered, and he sheepishly handed her a Christmas card, having written his appreciation of her and confession of stealing her Shop Vac. She looked up after reading the card, and said “I forgive you. You can go put the Shop Vac back in the garage.”

She also said she had sold her property to a church where the crack house sat, and they would be tearing it down in 2020. She asked us to have anything we wanted of Mark’s out of there in January. I made a mental note for us to go with a Haz-mat suit in January to clean out his non-fabric (NO BEDBUGS!) items.

Mark and Aunt Nancy went with me to Charleston to celebrate Christmas last year. Mark and I enjoyed singing Christmas music as he played his awesome Ovation guitar we had gotten out of the Pawn Shop. It was so good to have Mom help with Mark. We attended the first Christmas Eve service he’s been to in over 40 years and his first as a Christian. Mom could discern how I was struggling. She offered to come home with me to help take care of him.

I confess to you that I struggled having Mark live with me, looking for an assisted living place for him to go, him watching Western shows all day, complaining that he could only drink coffee, tea or water. I was also going through a hard time at work, so it was the perfect storm.

While Mom was at my home, I took him to Alcoholics Anonymous AA meetings and took him to his first Bible Study Fellowship Men’s Bible Study with Mr. Don as his Group Leader. I didn’t realize Mark didn’t know how to read a Bible or look up scripture. Mom taught him about the Books of the Bible and what the chapter/verse numbers mean before and after the colon when looking up scripture. Like John 3:16. It was inspiring to watch him learn a whole new world with the Bible.

We made a plan to clean out the crackhouse attic where Mark had lived. The three of us put on haz-mat suits and masks. Mom stayed outside, and Mark and I entered in the smoky house–foggy with crack pipe smoke, marijuana smoke, and cigarette smoke–and up the 18 steps to the attic. I couldn’t believe it.  I had never witnessed anything like it. The ceiling was caved in in four places with mold (see photo). I had never seen so many beer cans, empty wine bottles and empty cardboard cases in one place, all consumed by one person.  I hauled trash bag after trash bag outside and we took the list of items Mark had identified to take to my home. We cleaned the attic as best we could, knowing it would be demolished in a month. Mark was pleased but embarrassed for me where he used to live.  His mail for family reunions would go to our aunt’s home. No one in our family knew he lived here. I would have tried to get him out a lot earlier had I known. Now Mark was truly going from a crackhouse to a palace of an assisted living home.

I applied for DSS Special Assistance for Mark to get into a nice Medicaid Assisted Living Facility.  He eventually passed the physical test and all the paperwork was approved. He finally moved in to East Towne Manor in a lovely brand new room on Fri., January 17, 2020. He was so joyful. I felt like a proud mama taking a child to college, fixing his bed for him and unpacking his clothes into his dresser and closet. I was so excited for him, and he promised he’d abide by the rules and not drink. It was such a happy new year for us both! Then COVID-19 hit…

What lessons did I learn from this part of the journey?

  1. Give grace and give yourself grace. Recovering addicts are doing their best. We are all doing our best.
  2. Remember to have healthy boundaries.
  3. Love first. Love wholeheartedly. God loves us lavishly. We are to love each other just as lavishly.
  4. Laugh at yourself and the situation when you can.
  5. God’s desires His best for all of us.
  6. Each day is a new beginning.

Stay tuned for Part 3 to find out how Mark did with his new independence in a new home and his first Easter as a Christian.

Be encouraged. Reach out to love others and help those who need, especially when it’s out of your comfort zone. Happy New Year! The best is yet to come.

Reflections: 

—“Come to me, all of you who are tired from carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke and put it on you, and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in spirit; and you will find rest.”–Matthew 11:28-29

–“Peace is what I leave with you; it is my own peace that I give you. I do not give it as the world does. Do not be worried and upset; do not be afraid.”–John 14:27

October 27, 2020

Loving Our Neighbors—Lessons Learned Through Bedbugs, Pawn Shops & Addiction, Part 1

It began last October. Actually it began years before that, but I wasn’t made aware of how serious the problem was until last Fall. It’s been too difficult, too sacred, too embarrassing to write about. Now is the time.

Sometimes the best commandments, guidelines and mantras are preached well and not necessarily lived well. One such Great Commandment is to love the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul and strength AND to love our neighbors as ourselves. I have made mistakes and missteps I’ll admit to you and want to learn from and not repeat.

Who is our neighbor, we ask? It’s everyone. Everyone means from the neighbors across the street who we wave to and don’t know their name to the first cousin who we talk to on the phone but haven’t seen in years…until you receive a phone call that changes everything.

My Mom is one of eight children. We have big family reunions and many aunts, uncles and cousins to cherish and keep track of.  We had a family reunion last August and several cousins were unable to come. One of those cousins was Mark. He said on the phone he couldn’t make it and had broken his wrist. We made small talk. I told him it was great to catch up.

He lived in Charlotte, near me. His address for the family reunion invitation went to our aunt’s home, so I never thought to ask where he lived or even go see him. Talking on the phone was enough. I had heard he had not worked in years. His wife had passed away ten years earlier. They had no children together. His mom, my aunt Dolores, had passed away in 2017.

On October 11, 2019,  I received a phone call from our aunt that my 67-year-old cousin Mark had been admitted to a hospital near me. When I visited him I hardly recognized him. I’m embarrassed to admit it had been about 10 years since I had seen him. He had aged and his eyes were jaundiced. I leaned down and hugged him. I gently held his face in my hands and kissed him on the cheek.

He told me cirrhosis of the liver was his diagnosis, which his yellow eyes foreshadowed. When I asked him how much he drank, he said, “Only about 9-12 beers a day.” He didn’t think that was too much. He didn’t think he was an alcoholic.

I had heard he was an atheist, so I had strategically brought a “Jesus Calling” devotional for him. I inscribed it with his name and the October date. I asked If I could read some encouragement for him, and he said yes.  We talked about next steps, about me becoming his healthcare Power of Attorney, and I prayed over him. Tears were in his eyes.

I visited him each day until he was released. I found out he had been living in the attic of a rundown house with two roommates who smoked crack. He had no hot water to take showers. I found out through the hospital that Mark had come in with a live bedbug crawling on him and had been admitted to the hospital through DECON–Decontamination!

May this fact sit on you as it did me: my own family member was living in a crackhouse! It is, for lack of a better word, sobering. It is humbling, and I vowed to try to love him as Jesus would. 

As we worked on getting him into rehabilitation and finding housing, Mark later told me he had four items at the local pawn shop he wanted to get out. I had never been in a pawn shop and don’t plan to go back. We had to pay much more for the two guitars, Shop Vac and drills that they gave him initially. It’s an unwise way to get money fast.

One of my friends told me she wanted to put a tracker on my phone since I had been to pick items up from a crackhouse and pawn shop. These were places I didn’t know I’d find myself.

Since his release Mark surpassed some huge life milestones:

  • On October 20, 2019, he attended his first church service in 40+ years.
  • On October 25, 2019, he attended his first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting;
  • On October 27, 2019, he accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior;
  • On October 28, 2019, he walked into an inpatient alcohol rehabilitation program for the first time.
  • On December 11, 2019, he was released from alcohol rehab.

Since then he had been back in the hospital twice to remove more fluid from his body due to cirrhosis complications.  His skin was jaundiced. His legs and feet were swollen due to edema from the cirrhosis. The doctor told Mark he needed to remain sober for at least six months before a liver transplant was possible.  Mark truly desired to stay sober.

In December he graduated from the rehabilitation program!  He came to live with me until I could get him into an Assisted Living Facility through Medicaid in January.

What lessons can we learn from Part 1 of this raw, tender family testimony?

  1. See your loved ones face-to-face and see where they live.
  2. Love unconditionally. Leave judgment up to the Lord.
  3. Encourage 12-step programs for you and your loved ones like Alcoholics Anonymous, Al Anon, CoDependents Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, etc.

Many more lessons were  revealed as we walked this journey.  More to come in Part 2.

Reflections:

 –“But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” –1 Timothy 5:8

 –“Bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.” –Colossians 3:13

–“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” –2 Corinthians 5:17

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