Heaven has greeted Her

God shares with me to ‘not make fun of your brothers’. But I don’t always listen to God.

As a teen I often didn’t like my mother’s advice or actions and ways when I brought up a problem to her. It wasn’t long before I just shared my stories and moments with my mother. I took my problems and difficulties to God the Father for intervention and answer. I couldn’t trust my mother’s direction. She was still my mum and I loved her very much but that doesn’t make her all wise if she is not listening to God. She cooked, cleaned, made good desserts and always mashed my potato. No matter how many times I told her I hate mashed potato, can’t you take some out for me before you start? Her other habit was to burn the potatoes; she kept doing this right into her eighties.

When my eldest brother would stop in home whilst he lived away at University. I was always instructed I had to tidy the house up before his arrival or at times on his arrival. I used to say, “What for, he is my brother he knows how we live.” It was not as if the family home was really untidy. And the other thing was I was always told to greet your brother with a kiss, another thing I argued about. “What for he is my brother he comes and goes all the time. “Always the same reply “Just do as your told.”

Knowing the Holy Spirit giftings I have now; I suspect my mother knew of them and how much these greetings benefited her other children. I am guessing I was always topped up with God’s light and my touch quenched some of the world’s darkness and oppression on them.

God the Heavenly Father uses us in ways we cannot imagine or even know until one starts to open their eyes to the kingdom moving around and amongst us.

My little brother was supposedly a tumour or a large cyst in my mother’s forever growing belly. Turns out it was him, despite doctors advising her to not have any more children as her health is at risk. When I was fourteen years of age my little brother was born no bigger than a coke can. Surprisingly I was the only one who wasn’t allowed to visit him when he was in a special care nursery in a humidicrib. Though I was the one who got him whilst a teenager on school holidays and weekends. Mum went off to work with dad. But these are stories in themselves. Seemed to be the way with Mum’s youngest kids. My eldest sister also took care of me and my little sister whilst growing up. I guess looking after Ding Dong Bell was to my benefit. I was often housebound then and could not go roaming with the other neighbourhood kids.

WEEDS and Dandelions. I have always loved the yellowness of the dandelion flower. I used to pick these for mum on the way home sometimes from school or an errand. I believe she used to tell me they were weeds and once I sensed she wasn’t really fussed on the bunches I brought home. To me there was still beauty in them even if they were a weed.

Mum would ask me to help her pull the weeds from the garden. I think she got sick of me helping her in this task as I was certainly no gardener. I recall Mum saying, “Lee-Ann you’re pulling out the seedlings.”  I spent more time pulling up the new seedlings and interrupting her weeding to ask if these were the weeds. That’s my mother for you, ask you to do something without really explaining the how or the why. Another time she sent me out to get a broom for outdoors. I was unaware a soft brush broom would not do well with leaves and other debris on an outdoor pathway. No oomph for brushing.

Another time I looked on in amazement whilst my eldest brother and my mother were having a discussion about something. When the words came out of my brother’s mouth, “what’s the truth Mum?”  I thought wow is that all I had to say to get her to speak it. God won’t be saying what’s the truth … He will already know it. I can’t wait to hear about the first question Dad asked Mum when they met at Heaven’s gates.

I often used to wonder whether Mum married for love or to escape the difficulties of her immediate problems, perhaps to minimize the chance of separation of her brothers and sisters, a way to keep everyone together as a family unit when her Mum passed on. (Mum always said she didn’t believe in God, yet she quite often shared about the enormous big angel hovering over her family home as she trundled home after school as she treaded her routine path; this was the day her mother passed on back home to heaven. Children can see the unseen realms that move amongst us.) Was there the possibility Mum experienced some form of sexual abuse from a family member? (I thought this when one backyard party with school friends, Mum says to me, “That young girl is being molested by a family member.” I thought how can she know this; I looked to see who she was referring to, I said, “I don’t think so Mum, look at her she is happy and showing no signs of such an affect,” & left it at that. Perhaps if she had pointed to another, I would have said possibly. Years later I thought perhaps she made such a statement because she was familiar with it herself or was it because my schoolfriend just shared so as she passed me on my way to the back steps of the house.

Sometimes I have even wondered if Mum married Dad because of his history. He worked and filmed many of the old famous movie stars. He even had a bet with his producer over Laurence Oliver & Vivien Leigh (or was it Olivia de Havilland?) These contacts with a rich and colourful life perhaps would place her in a whirlwind lifestyle of fame and beauty so to speak and out of backyard vegetable gardening, reflecting the wealthy family lifestyle that she was initially born into. I can hear Mum sharing with neighbours, “My husband is a friend of James Masons and they often correspond with letters to each other. Dad was offered a position with Walt Disney Studios in the USA, though Mum shares declined the job due to at the time being guardian to Mum’s siblings. Something I am thankful for that I grew up in the land down under. Mum and Dad met through her vegetable garden that Dad’s pigs all too often came and raided. All too often she was furious at Dad for the devouring of her edible garden and was forever chasing him up to get his pigs out. I believe this may have been the suburb of Gumdale.

Mum and Dad had their arguments yet there obviously was a lot of ‘kiss and make-up’ for all of us to be born plus the few that got to heaven long before we did. The miscarriages that occurred are stories of sorrow. One can only imagine the loneliness and grief in the isolation of being in a farming area not that close to the public hospitals.

One particular argument I missed but I saw the remnants of the aftermath when I got home from school or visiting a friend, I cannot remember which. There was something about the house, the kitchen comes to mind as I type this and the white cabinet on the wall with glass sliding doors where the crockery was kept. I entered my parent’s bedroom, I heard her quiet sobs and saw Mum full of sorrow, forlorn and withdrawn laying on her side facing the window upon their bed, with hand or hands drawn towards the face, catching the tears or running nose as I approached her. I stroked her hair and gave her the message I had just received a moment earlier, adding “Mum, don’t be sad and cry Dad will be back,” and continued with the full message. From memory I believe I received these words on seeing the state of the kitchen, “Go in and comfort your mother and tell her your Dad will be back in a few days after he has cooled down. He was just very angry at what you did.” Dad didn’t come home for three or four nights. To this day I still do not know what took place to make Dad so angry and I can only assume it was God the Father informing me.

Mum and Dad so often shared chocolate after we went to bed. I know this because strangely I often woke when they were unwrapping a block. Mum and Dad had much pleasure in each other’s company especially on drives to various leisurely destinations. One can hear Dad saying, “Carleen are you reading the map wrong again.”

Come and meet me in the middle of the air, I will meet you in the middle of the air… in my house you shall dwell for ever you shall not want for care

Meet Me In The Middle Of The Air

Lyrics Charlie Owen and Paul Kelly

Yes Mum the day will come when I meet you in the middle of the air. It was a very troubling and grieving time for me in the lead up to Mum’s passing. I knew she had been suffering and I know this dark world had been coming at her and causing her much pain and oppression.

As I walked away from her hospital bed for the last time, I gaze out the window towards the green fields of the park and I receive the words, “For God so loved the world that He gave us His one and only Son.” I knew Jesus and the Father had gotten her home despite her years of denying my talk of God. I also hear the words sometime later as the Heavenly Father speaks, “Satan why could you not let her go peacefully?”

This is a second take on the eulogy, I cannot locate the original, yet I found a skeleton draft and built from this. I am sure on the original prose I shared of the time a bikie laid a blanket over a big water puddle so Mum could cross-over on the way to the train station, along with if one couldn’t find Mum at the house she more than likely could be found chatting with the neighbours.

I also was very angry and upset when Mum passed, I am sure in the original prose I would have had something to say about that in far greater detail than here.

Not long after her passing I was also was given a vision of Mum running free and merrily through the fields towards something or something with a big welcoming smile on her face.

God bless you all, May the Lord my God keep you safe and may His light shine upon you. Amen.