Friday, February 28, 2014

Marriage built on the Rock - children the cement!

John with Our Lady in Jackson Catholic Church 4 months ago the day I took him and helped him move into his apartment to start his job as 4H extension agent.  Today I am going to help him move out with a lot of emotions!

Just back from town and stopped at a local business - the woman waiting on me asked me about John and I was allowed to look back over the last 4 1/2 years and our journey.  I said to her that it is a funny thing she is asking me about him today as I am just on my way to pick him up and bring him home... asking God what fork his journey will take now.  He resigned his job in Jackson, after his world crashed around him with the news from Mayo that there are some changes in his brain.  That along with unhappiness at work and no one to meet in town added up to a very low birthday and the decision to quit his job and go back to discerning his call to serve the Lord as the new John.  As I was speaking to this interested person this morning - both of us mothers, who understand the needs of our children that keeps us, where we belong, on our knees!   That is my main profession in life - prayer for each of my kids, kids-in-law, and grandchildren, and lately I realized that my marriage would be much helped if I prayed for my husband, My Most Cherished Cross, Pat , each day also!  I do this in a very real way by having a decade of the rosary set aside for each of my 5 kids and adding one for Pat. 
John with a great prolife T-shirt! 
John has one sole desire... to share his cancer story with the hope and prayer that it will help others that are questioning their faith. Here is the page that I devoted to some of John's cancer stories - http://familysoulstory.blogspot.com/p/johns-cancer-stories.html 
It seems that cancer has consumed him, and changed him, and made him into the new John, and now he is struggling with the effects of the chemo, radiation and stem cell transplant it took to rid him of the cancer.  He continues to feel that he was spared for a very powerful reason, and so he is back to discerning a possible call!  As his parents we are worried and prayerful and hopeful and also feel that there was a healing here and that the Lord has a plan for the new John! 
John outside his apartment in November.  It was a miserable place and added to the wrongness of his move there.  We had decided that we needed to find him a better place to live, if he had stayed there.  So it was just a part of the depressing place he found himself, along with the news from Rochester a month ago and poor work situation... it just seemed wrong for him.
It totally seems that the Holy Spirit has been in charge of how Jackson just was hard and not really right!   I know that I am being a mother here, and making excuses for John leaving this job and coming back with the question of his future.  One thing I will say without a pause is that John is always asking the Lord to show him where he is to be.  As a parent, who is along for the bumpy ride, that is really the bottom line for me.  As you can see, this has consumed our prayers and conversations for Pat and I and the rest of the family.  When we are parents united in the sacrament of Marriage - as Jesus reminds us today in the Gospel - it is for our lifetime!  We then are open to LIFE/children and to raising them to be LIGHTS!  That never ends and the joys and challenges and life issues of each of our kids keeps us cemented one to the other and in a constant need of sharing prayer to start each day together! 
John back just days after his move to Jackson to meet his new nephew, Luke, born on November 1st.  So many things pulled him back to Marshall, and hindered him meeting people there.  He just realized that home is where his heart is.
"For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.  Therefore what God has joined together, no human being shall separate."  Jesus speaking to us this day in the Gospel  - Mark 10:1-12
Jesus, we are looking to YOU this day to help us along the narrow path as we embrace our Most Cherished Cross and find LIFE/LOVE/LIGHT!  All those lives we have been blessed with - our children here (5) and in heaven (7).  Now the grandchildren reaching 12 in a few months!  All those LIGHTS to bring us ever closer to YOU in prayer each day.  We thank and praise YOU for the healing of John of his brain cancer, and now trust in YOU to show him the path he is to follow carrying his Cross.  We place his brain in your hands and knowing you are in control we ask for continued healing and protection.  May he find the ability to embrace the new John and share without hesitation his story of cancer/healing/looking for direction to love and serve YOU, O Lord.  Jesus, we trust in YOU.  Amen and Hallelujah
Bless-bless, Barbara Luke
Father's Day Sunday 2009 - John discovers in a CT scan in Marshall that there is something in his brain as we are home getting ready to head to Sioux Falls for an MRI we call France to let Susan know what is happening.  We get her on the phone!  "Mom, do you remember this Gospel for today?"  "Yes, it is Jesus calming the storm in Mark."  "Well, this is the storm and Jesus is in control."  Yes!!!!
Casting Crowns - Praise You in the Storm

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