Excuse Me? Do I Know You?

Okay. I have been thinking about this for months...maybe years...but today it really hit me hard so I thought why not blog about it? Put it out there. Maybe I'm the only person who feels this way...maybe I'm just a weirdo, who knows? I was speaking to someone who is extremely intelligent today and we started to talk about the death of my son Matthew and then about God. He told me that people love other people, other things i.e. possessions, money, fame--more than they love God and that as long as they continue to do this they will get their heart broken. He said that women constantly will say to him "I don't understand why my man left me! I loved him more than anything and now he broke my heart!" But, had this woman put God first and her man second, he could not have broken her heart because the natural order is God, family, work and everything else. If your life is aligned in this way then your heart can not be broken. Okay, so it sounds like it makes a WHOLE lotta sense, again, this man is brilliant and he walks the walk, he does not just talk the talk.

But when my son died my heart WAS broken and even though I have healed a lot since his murder in January 2000, I will always hurt because he is not here with me and not knowing what happens to us after we die (but having a pretty good idea I think from speaking to biblical scholars, Irv Yalom, Raymond Moody and many others) I can only surmise that he is with God, with my other relatives that have also died and that he is happy. After all, thinking anything else would make this insomniac an even worse insomniac. I don't want to have to wonder "Where are you my son?" like I did in the first days after his death. I felt that I had abandoned him, like I was a terrible mother. I felt like I should be dead too.

But I have to wonder, in order to love God more than anyone else in your life you have to know him personally. It's like my next door neighbor. I've lived next to this guy for 20 years but we never say hello, never exchange phone numbers, never talk really, I don't even know how old he is, where his kids go to college or what he does for a living or if he still even works...wouldn't it be difficult to say that I love this neighbor, this stranger; more than I love my children, more than my friends, more than my parents or siblings?

I guess for me God is that unknown neighbor...I understand he lives right next door to me, but I don't talk to him and he has never given me his direct number nor have I given him mine. I have no idea what he does each day or how he does it. I do not concern myself with those things because I think they are beyond me.

When my daughter almost died from a fall in 1999, my neighbors daughters did come over and give my little girl a teddy bear, that was sweet. But, it was also almost 11 years ago. Now if my neighbor were killed in a terrible accident, or even died of natural causes, I would be devastated. I would visit his family and give them my condolences and pray for them and for the soul of my deceased neighbor...yet when the man was living I didn't have a thing to say to him. Not in 20 years. Nor did he have anything to say to me.

So many of my friends have given me beautiful scriptures to read from the Bible; Bo, Tyka, Pastor Bob, Joel Osteen, Creflo Dollar. And have I read the Bible? Yes. More than once and I also have listened to it on a device that is very cool called Go Bible...love that thing! (Google it...LOL)

Can I do a search and find a passage to comfort me at times? Sure. But do I understand the Bible completely? No. In truth I will just put it out there and say that I think the Bible is probably the most boring book I have ever read and Jesus doesn't even make an appearance until like 900 pages in! (Okay, maybe sooner but still...he's not in it a whole lot, less than I thought) Things I thought were in the Bible were not, things I thought were not in the Bible were. It is filled with violence, incest and some other stuff that I could really do without, I mean seriously.

I am not being silly or making fun of religion. I am a Christian and I went to an Episcopal school my entire life and then to a Catholic College in Pennsylvania. My dad's family was hardcore Seventh Day Adventist and my mother's father was a Baptist Minister who graduated from Moody Bible Institute in Chicago (now Moody Bible College) and he was a missionary. My mother even lived on an Indian reservation when she was growing up. I attended church for years until I became ill and now I attend church online by watching Joel Osteen's live services and Creflo Dollar's live services. I go to double church. I tithe to both churches. I don't think I have to physically be "in church" to learn or to worship with millions of people who are online with me from all over the world. I think it's pretty awesome.

We are all seekers. But I can tell you that I am not always sure what I am seeking. Do I want a personal relationship with God? YES! But, honestly, I don't really have a personal relationship with my parents and I have have seen and spoken to them 3-4 times a week since I moved out to get married when I was 18 (that was almost 22 years ago!!) and I've known them for 40 years! I have been married to my husband for 21 years and we are on the verge of divorce, we do not speak and we rarely see one another even though we live in the same home! If I can't have a personal relationship with people I can see; with people I can talk to, hold, hug, kiss, commune with--how in the world can I have a personal relationship with someone I have never seen...at least that I can really remember anyway?

I know there is a God...I know it as sure as I know anything; but am I sure of how to love him more than my children, more than my parents, more than my siblings and friends? I want to say YES...but I am not there yet. A thousand people can respond to this post and tell me how to have a personal relationship with God, but you know what? Only I can do that for myself. It is not something anyone else can do for me even if they wanted to. That much I have learned.

Has God been with me during the most awful times of my life...yes, I have felt him in a way that I will never be able to explain with just words because there are no words to explain the love I felt coming from him into my heart when I hurt the most. Do I love God? Yes. Does God love me? I hope so; I think he does...I can be unloveable at times...ask my husband right? But, I have to tell you, that my life has been quite challenging and maybe it is because God is saying "Look idiot! I'm right here! I'm next to you Jackie...all you have to do is take my hand and life will get easier. What is wrong with you woman? I am RIGHT HERE!"

Well, I don't know what is wrong with me. If just believing in God is enough to get me to heaven, I'll get there. I hope God understands that not everyone can grasp these concepts so easily. I have ADHD, In high school I couldn't even open my own locker because I could never remember the combination so I would constantly go to class with no books. In high school I was the world's worst student, in college I had a 3.8 GPA. Why? Because I learned how to work around my disability. When I met with the financial aid officer at my college and she looked at my SAT scores she looked at me like I was an alien. Then she said "If I wasn't speaking with you and heard for myself how bright you are...I would think you were slow." I blinked and said "Ahhh...slow? Really?Why is that?" And she responded, "On your SAT's you got a PERFECT score on the Verbal section...not one mistake, but in math...you received the lowest score I have EVER seen." Needless to say, I am a genealogist, author, publicist and radio talk show host. I steer clear of math unless it's percents...I can do percentages in my head like a human calculator LOL! I am the one who always figures out the tip, knows how much something is if it is 35% off, etc.

But, I digress...back to God. I am in a class right now, a teleclass and we have to come up with a Covenant for ourselves. I don't know all the parts of my Covenant yet, but I know one part will be "To have a personal relationship with God." I want God's home number, cell number, email address and website. And as a backup I'll take Gabriel's info as well, just in case I need to leave a message. I want to be able to reach God 24/7 and I want God to be able to reach me 24/7. I want to be his friend, I want to love him as much as I think he loves me. I want to finish my course with Pastor Bob at Christian Living Ministries not to become a Pastor for others but for MYSELF. I want to understand God, not just in theory but in my life. I want to know what Tyka is talking about when she sings the song Joy. I know the words, I sing them...but I do not know that joy that she is singing about. Clueless over here. I want to know. I really do. But again, it is something I must seek and find for myself and I'd better hurry because from what I understand I may be running out of time and if believing in God is not enough...I won't be seeing a lot of you at the end of days will I? I'll be hanging out with some crazy dude named Lucifer...not cool. I think that would be a bit unfair because I am a good person. But I guess that it takes more than being a good, kind person to get into heaven...at least that is what I was taught in school. Honestly, I just don't know people and I am not ashamed to say it...I just don't have all the answers yet. Maybe I never will. Maybe there are somethings we just are not meant to know? Jackie