My dearest Mummy,
When I started writing my letter to you on this day last year, I did not know where to begin. But today I know exactly where to begin. I guess that itself is a sign of progress, and I know you’ll be happy. You’d never want me to stay trapped in my grief. You’d want me to make the most of this life I still have. I can’t say I’ve made the most of every minute of these last two years, but read on. Continue reading
As long as the Lord lends me life, I will remember 2022 as the year of the forgotten dream. This dream was to write poetry, though I little dreamt I’d write a whole book of it!
As a lifelong lover of English literature, I’d have been content to compose a few good poems. One Christian “Kubla Khan” and some sonnets like “Chapman’s Homer” and “On His Blindness” and “Death, Be Not Proud” and “Sonnet 33” would have sufficed.
My standards were high, but my dreams weren’t big enough. Certainly not as big as God’s dreams for me.
God’s dreams for us are always bigger than our own.
This is not wishful thinking or heresy. It’s biblical. The apostle Paul tells us that God “is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think” (Eph. 3:20). And Jesus Himself said, “Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32).
What could be bigger than the kingdom of heaven? What could outvalue the “pearl of great price,” that inestimable treasure to obtain which the merchant sold everything he had?
Nothing. Not even a whole book of poetry.
Even so, a whole book of anything was the impossible dream a year ago.
When 2022 dawned, I had not published a book since The Blessing of Melchizedek Devotional was released in November 2016. For half a decade, I’d only produced a handful of blog posts, a couple screenplays, a few worship songs, and the odd limerick. I enjoyed writing it all, but my career as an author seemed to be over.
Whether the world had written me off or whether it was awaiting my next bestseller with bated breath, I cannot say. All I know is that I myself had no energy or inspiration for a new book—and I’m the kind of writer who needs both to get started. Once I begin, I rely more on grit and grace.
As I mention in the introduction to There Once Was a Man Who Suffered, I was very ill when I got the idea for the book. My grief over my mother’s death eight months previously had found its way to my physical person. For a whole week in January I lay in bed drifting in and out of sleep, at times wondering if the illness was going to be my last.
In this feeble, febrile state, God gave me the biggest surprise of my life! This surprise—the idea to tell Job’s story in limericks—is all the more special because it showed up on my younger nephew’s birthday.
Three days before, my friend Theresa stopped by after church to check up on me. Revived by her concern and the appetizing soup she’d cooked, I began telling her the story behind my first screenplay. She listened with interest and without interrupting (God bless her), then suggested I consider writing a new book.
I winced internally. Although I told Theresa I’d pray about it once I recovered (a promise I meant to keep), I winced because I realized that my dearest reader would not be reading my new book.
The Lord has since shown me that I wrote the book precisely because Mummy would not be reading it. The book emerged out of my grief for her.
The story behind my new book reminds me to trust the Lord with other dreams I have forgotten or given up for dead. Which reminds me of Abraham, who believed that God “gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did” (Rom. 4:17).
“He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform. And therefore ‘it was accounted to him for righteousness’” (Rom. 4:20-22).
(c) 2022 Sharon Arpana Edwards. All Rights Reserved.
When the proof copy of my new book arrived last week, one of the first people I texted was Rabi Maharaj, author of one of my all-time favorite books, Death of a Guru. His response to the cover image I’d sent was heartwarming.
Apart from warming my heart, Rabi’s text reminded me of the process of obtaining God’s promises. And it is a process. The Bible makes it clear that God’s promises Continue reading
Friends, I am happy to say
A new book is heading your way!
I’ve set it in verse
If you’re not averse
To limericks, you won’t turn away.
My theme is the problem of pain,
Which is rife in this earthly domain.
On the soul’s darkest night
I decided to write.
May my labor have not been in vain!
A few minutes after noon today, I picked up my phone to see a message from a friend that began, “The sad day has finally come. Queen Elizabeth II has died.”
As I was coming to terms with the news, I remembered that one of my first thoughts this morning was of England. Some hours before the queen took her final breath, all the way across the pond I was thinking of the land over which she had reigned so long and so well. Continue reading
My dearest Mummy,
Unbelievably, today marks one year since you left. There’s so much to say, I hardly know where to begin. Maybe I’ll start by telling you I am fine.
I mean, I am fine today. I have not been fine every day since May 5, 2021. My grief has literally made me sick.
The doctors ordered a bunch of tests to rule out heart trouble, but I could have told them I had heart trouble without the tests.
Broken-heart trouble.
I thought I knew what it’s like to lose a parent, but my grief for you has been unlike anything I’ve experienced before. For one thing, when I lost Papa I still had you.
I’ve never felt as alone as I did in the weeks after you left. But after my Father’s Day blog post the Holy Spirit spoke clearly to me from one of Jesus’ sayings in the Gospels. You’ll be glad to know I’ve held on to that word by faith all these months.
I just realized something about the verse the Holy Spirit had given me a few hours after your funeral. I didn’t know why I was being prompted to use Psalm 139:18 for my most heartbreaking Facebook announcement, but it resonated somewhere deep inside. Today, on this first anniversary of yours, I’ve finally made the connection.
It was also about not being alone!
Last year we had a memorial service on your birthday. As I was putting together a montage of your life for a video that week, I came across a picture of your wedding ceremony. You both are standing and the veil still covers your face, so perhaps it is just before your vows.
Your head is bent and I can’t read your emotions behind that veil. Maybe you’re nervous and happy and sad all at once. But my goodness, you look beautiful! You’re wearing that white Benares silk sari I loved, holding a wispy bouquet that almost reaches to the ground.
I can’t remember the bouquet, though. Did you give it to one of your sisters, hoping they’d be next? Or maybe you threw it away? You never liked fake flowers, so that wouldn’t surprise me.
My friends sent me some gorgeous fresh flowers in the days after you left. There were pale blue hydrangea, multicolored tulips, and red and white roses, three of each. You would have loved them all. I dried the roses and tulips, and saved the ribbons around the hydrangea.
I don’t need dried flowers to remind me of you. They’re to remind me of the kindness of friends in the saddest days of my life.
As for how our heavenly Father has been looking after me, I can’t even begin to count the ways. But you already knew He would. You had an unshakeable faith in Him, thanks to your loving earthly father. Life gave me a very different dad, but that story ended well as you know.
And because of the Lord’s mercy, this story ends well too. The story of this year since you left.
I still cry.
I still call your name at night.
I still reach for my phone to talk to you.
There’s still so much to say.
I still have a ways to go, but I’m getting better. The love of our Father, the wounds of our Savior, and the presence of our Comforter are steadily healing me.
And now the story of the new year begins. As a sign, today is the National Day of Prayer.
You know how much I’ve loved prayer since childhood. But I’m sorry to tell you, in this last year I’ve often regretted spending those precious moments of our last earthly conversation praying for you instead of thanking you for the gift of life and faith and your sacrificial love.
But on this National Day of Prayer, I am putting that behind me. Today I am choosing to be thankful that in those final hours of your earthly life we were together in our Father’s presence, as we’d been so often in the past. It was His gift to us.
Someday we’ll once again be together in our Father’s presence. There’s so much to say, and we’ll have all the time to say it.
Until then, as Little Fellow used to say, I love you beyond Pluto!
Sharon
PS – Last year on this day, I found this while going through your Facebook photos. Seeing the date made me weep last year. Maybe next year, if the Lord lends me life, it will make me smile.
(c)2022 Sharon Arpana Edwards. All rights reserved.
Papa stepped into eternity on this day twelve years ago. Although I still miss him, what I missed most today was being on the phone with Mummy.
Mummy and I would make it a point to call each other every year on December 8. These were the most predictable of our many phone calls. Continue reading
That’s probably not the best pun ever, but wordplay must be put on the back burner today. I have bigger fish to fry (on the front burner).
Today is the day when California decides whether good looks and pretty teeth are enough, or whether enough is enough. It is a truth universally acknowledged that good looks and pretty teeth go a long way in the Golden State, but I hope my fellow Californians will remember how they were treated in 2020. May they recall, and then recall. (Pardon the pun, but I’m remembering Othello’s most chilling line: “Put out the light, and then put out the light.”)
I realize the outcome does not depend solely on how the average Californian votes. The governor is backed by the state’s powerful unions and special interest groups, not to mention his friends and relatives in high places. And as I sadly discovered in June 2018, there is such a thing as voter fraud. Still, I believe in doing my part.
When an event as cataclysmic as 9/11 occurs, you never forget where you were and what you were doing when you heard the news.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was having my devotions in a sunlit spot in the Redondo Beach condo where I was renting a room. Unfortunately I cannot recall which passage I was reading, but I can still see the beige-covered NIV Study Bible lying open on my lap, and feel the sunshine streaming upon my shoulders through the window behind me. And I can still hear the silence in the moments before I found out that the world had changed forever.
SHARON ARPANA EDWARDS 