When Healing is not what we thought.

3/40 LENT

Mid noon. Our son’s birthday. Its a lull right now, after wishes poured in and gifts were opened. We’ve stalled some of his surprises for later. There’s been cooking and cakes, pictures put up, serial lights …he hates balloons but wants them?

The bunch kept falling off from where we pinned them, above the silvered letters that read “Happy Birthday Johann” …

midnight, as we were turning off lights and the cake spread just allowed to remain there, like war carnage😅, NJ shook his head, grinned then hit bed. I had a moment with those silly balloons. Why does he ask anymore for those…a connection with childhood? So I’m there standing by our front door with its small wooden cross on the inside of door, and I hear a Gentle whisper, “Celebrate Me, with Yona.”

This isn’t creative non fiction. I wrapped the silly balloons around the cross and they stood out in contrast, but the Whisper wasn’t leaving. “Do not weep, celebrate Me with Yona.”

I couldn’t sleep, just snacked a bit, oh… buried myself in the moon and dark sky. What a collection of years its been

Blindness in your child isn’t easy, (nor as a growing adult). Not just that people stare, I too stare at all our milestones meddling, muddling.

And I’m thinking on this :

how with Christ, there’s no Milestones, just 7 stations of the Cross. I’m not even all aware of those 7 Stations, but one can guess. Here He was flogged, here He was thirsty. Here He broke, here His face was wiped by a ‘Veronica’, or here He fell under that weight. Here He was met by one who shared carrying that Cross. …there’s one more? Maybe one station was dedicated to looking right in the eyes of you and me, across centuries… .”I wear your burden…”

our lives are meshed with odds, with days and nights to celebrate, or dis- member ourself from needless harmful overthinking, or other trouble.

I’m celebrating Jesus with Yona. Celebrating the absolute love of God, His mercy that’s pulled us thru intense psychiatry visits, eye doc visits, behavior correction consultations…. Oh the compassion of God that’s stood by us during days of social mess, of an aloneness so steep its hard to talk about, an aloneness even from personal wishes, hopes & prayers.

Today Healing wears a new day. And its not my old soul – wardrobe. Here its a new patch, on a new garment, for can you sew on the new on the old, won’t it just rip, tear away? But the new, on new, ah that. New thoughts, from the Sacred Heart so new every morning, and let me say, “So young!” Maybe He knows a thing about our Yona and balloons that I’m yet to understand. Maybe healing arrives in bunches of discardables, like balloons, maybe each time one pops, Yona has a secret laugh about a thing best popped out. I don’t know. Just the sight of that Cross with multi coloured balloons has got me wondering at the way He makes all things new…

His unusual Personality. The way He can get a message across and startle us, leaving us trying to figure out what was just expressed.

I’m celebrating the Old Rugged Cross: may old patterns in me give way to new as I gaze at what His Presence means in our everyday: His Life, so refreshing!