News

This portion of the Hydrated With Love™ (HWL) site features HWL Updates, and a word for the Month (pertaining to the season, the times, or a sample from an upcoming collection).  By using the links below, you can also connect with the following essentials in order to know the full Life Garden experience desired by God for all He created: The First Stepping Stone, Preparing for the Master Gardener, The Ultimate Invitation and Awakening Writers.

 

NEW BEGINNINGS? On February 17, 2008, my husband and I lost the last of our parents when my mother in law passed away after courageously battling the same disease that took all four parents from this world. There is a very real void now in my heart, from each loss, for these special people had so greatly impacted my life, yet I have mourned at times over what I was not for them, and what could have been on both sides in all these relationships. Even so, I am simply not the person now that I was when most of the parents lived and died,  therefore I try to not dwell upon the regrets. In truth, most of  my regrets center about my mother, who passed away long before I had fully experienced motherhood and could therefore appreciate her sacrifices and her agape love for me. She left when I could have so enjoyed her presence, yet we were so far apart spiritually in her last years that I was not listening to her advise for me.  How very frustrated she must have been over my indifference. Did God take her to spare her heart-pain?  Did God leave me without her so I would seek Him out through His leading, not her pushing? Nevertheless, she left this earth before I came to know Jesus as my Savior, her key prayer in her last five years of life.  Were her prayers behind my salvation? I do believe they were.  I used to think I so disappointed her by not being saved before she died, but she knew God does the saving, not man.  And I do believe she now knows I succumbed to His call and is dancing in heaven for joy...no prayers are wasted. I do have regrets regarding  my father, not because of what I was not for him, for I tried much harder than he to bond and stay connected as adults, but I mourn for what he was not for me and my family.  He was simply a man heart-wounded and betrayed when young in life, who buried his hurts. Then, as so often happens, wounded people continue the cycle. Even so, he died a saved man, so we will re-connect in paradise. He taught me so  much in the area of commitment, patriotism, freedom in creativity, and a love for all the arts. This time it was my many prayers that God answered. Sadly, my understanding of my parents came after they died, for my capacity to love them, and desire to accept them as they were increased through my relationship with Jesus. The emptiness from their absence also stirred me to seek more of God to fill the heart-void left by their deaths.  I had so taken my mother for granted in life, consumed by my work, family, friends, and  hobbies, not including her enough, yet she said nothing and appeared to be consumed by her own work, friends, and church. I was wrong; she yearned for more of family. Daddy told  me after she was gone.  Oh God, help people to open up and better communicate with the living... For then came the end of hope with her sudden passing. Only when sometimes complacent attitudes are replaced by reality's sting, do we SEE and HEAR.  And I awoke when she died...Could it be that for many of us, full appreciation and gratitude for our parents reaches soul depth only when we are no longer able to tell them the words they longed to hear more often, to their face?  Could it also be possible that God doesn't want us to be our parents or other people's all in all, for then they will be more likely to turn to Him, not people for fulfillment? But, before sinking deeper into words of self-condemnation which God's Word tells us in Romans 8 not to do, I will say this:  God wants us to be aware of our error, then go to Him and humbly repent, then move ahead, in Him.  He would want us to have learned by our errors and then use His wisdom to help others, as His servants still left behind, telling them to not make our mistakes. The truth of the matter is, most people have regrets when a loved one dies, not necessarily for the things they missed doing in those last years, but for errors in judgment, or things not done or said over many years.  For no one is perfect, not one....Above all, God looks at our hearts and knows our intentions. So I have repented and in Him only can I move on in peace. There has been a peace for me in the midst of each death spoken of here, for God faithfully took me into a new and good season in my walk with Him during their last days, during the funerals, and afterward.  Each death was like a seed of transformation planted in me and others about me, igniting deeply in order for new life to begin. Instead of a sense of ending, I have consistently been awakened to seriously pursue Him with more passion.  Each death seemed to plant knowledge for His children while deepening my understanding of His grace and wondrous faithfulness. I feel led here to share how God used each loss for good, for He promises to do so in His Word in Romans 8:28, my own mother's favorite scripture. In 1975, when my 55 year old mother died of breast cancer moving to her bones then heart, I received the revelation at her funeral that "the Bible was the Word of God, and all she had spoken to me was truth."  That piercing "good" thought came rushing into me as I sat at her funeral on my birthday, one month after delivering her second grandchild.  Until that instant, I had doubted the entire Word could be true. But the timing of her death was when God chose to get me onto His path of understanding (Proverbs 3:5-6).  I never forgot that life-changing moment and because it was a revelation, it turned me around and I began a serious pursuit of God; two years later I was saved, but not until1996, did I fully surrender to the Lord and experience the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.  I believe my mother in heaven was praying for the "fullness" to be known by her needy daughter....Oh God, may everyone pray without ceasing... In 1985, ten years later, my precious father in law died at 65 of leukemia after a two month battle, and the words of my mother "they can hear you when in a coma," suddenly came to me as he lay dying.  I slipped into his Johns Hopkins ICU room and prayed fervently for him to be saved, and went through the steps silently, then told him how much I loved him and that I so wanted to spend eternity with him. Then I begged God to show me if he had heard me, and one of the 14 machines he was connected to, the one with the blood pressure information, bleeped and spiked to the top then down again, drawing my eyes and ears to what I learned ten years later was God speaking, for He told me so, in 1997...He passed away the next morning.  Again, the death of one of our parents took me to a place of deeper faith, for each time I share this story with someone He leads me to share it with, a seed of hope is planted in them and often they say, "I have chills."  The Holy Spirit has done His work again... On November 3, 2001, my birthday, my dad died, but when he was near death, God led me to prepare his legacy to my sister and I.  I knew I was to speak it, no excuses accepted from my Lord, but fear overwhelmed me, for I had a severe phobia of public speaking that had crippled me with fear all my life in many areas. But I knew this had to be done, for reasons I did not fathom until the moment before I went forward.  I was about to take a plastic bag to the podium in case I "lost it," but the Holy Spirit said, "put it back," and like a robot I stuck it back in my purse, only to be rewarded with a manifestation of the peace of God that swept over me from head to toe.  This peace I had learned comes when we obey Him. I then went forward and a strength and new boldness and confidence beyond my comprehension came over me, and the words poured out.  Then as I walked to my seat the Spirit spoke to me, "I break the curse your father spoke over you as a child when he said, ' you can't speak in front of a group like I can; you are like your mother and she can't so you can't either.'"  Ever since the day of his funeral speech, I have been able to speak before a group...Romans 8:28 again proven to be truth.... During the last week of my mother in law's life, I was led to visit her alone in the hospital to tell her Jesus loved her, that He knew she believed, and that she would be with her husband and her mother in heaven.  She was so comforted by that word He had given me to tell her, for she wanted to go to heaven at that point.  Over the years she had told me a number of times that she believed in Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior, and in her last year, God had sent a Godly former Sunday School teacher into her life who told me after she died, "she understood."  More of my prayers answered... I even was able to give him some of my markers and he came to her funeral.  She and I prayed together in her last week just  as she often would ask me to do prior to various times when fearful. We always connected most when we could talk about spiritual things, and over time she had supported my writings and would ask me to read them to her.  She would ask me to give her any Christian devotionals and books and I would save them for her.  She told me she had her sons baptized and confirmed and these things so comforted me.  She had done what she was led to do. When her last day came, I was led to sing to her and read scriptures and pray with her, and I know she heard.  At her Memorial Service, on March 1, I was led to read most of Psalm 16, which clearly and simply put into words what God had done during her 21 years when left a widow.  She would tell me, "I couldn't have done it without the Lord; He protected me (or I know He took care of me.)  This act was one of obedience.  Again, my faith has grown because of this last loss of a parent, though it is too soon to know the full outcome of that final act for the Lord told me a memorial service is to remember the dead but it is for the living.  I only know that I trusted and obeyed.  The rest is up to God who blesses those who seek after Him and His righteousness... I pray now that all who read these words will have a new hope planted in them regarding the outcome of being a doer of God's Word, not a hearer only (James 1:22).  I pray also that each who read this writing will truly realize the importance of sharing their testimonies with others (Rev. 12:11), as He leads, and know that we are on this earth mainly to glorify Him.  The very best way to do so is to simply trust Him and then obey...cwp

The First Stepping Stone

Preparing to Welcome the Master Gardener

I pray now that all who visit this site, and are unsure of their heart condition regarding salvation, will have the "desire" for greater faith planted in them. Then, in God's perfect timing, I pray each will receive the gift of faith that is essential to move on, in Jesus. Our heavenly Father, so loves each of His children, and yearns to be one with them. In fact, He cannot look upon sin, therefore we have to repent or admit that we have done so, for the spiritual "turnaround" to occur in us. Then we need to receive the ultimate of gifts from God, that of His Son (John 3-16-18). Only then can Father accept us, for we have confessed our past sin and stated our belief in His Son. The final result is:  we become one with God as He adopts us into His eternal heavenly family (read Romans 8; Acts 17:24-31).

The Ultimate Invitation

With this sincere profession of your faith, you are saved from spiritual death, and will never experience hell. The enemy may harass you on earth, through people and situations, and even through negative and defeating thoughts and fears, for he has free reign here to do so, but the Word of God, who is Jesus Christ, clearly tells to resist him and he will flee (James 4:7). We are also told how to protect ourselves daily (Ephesians 6:10-20; Psalm 91). May the Living Word, the Holy Bible, become your inseparable companion, and may you seek out a church to regularly attend, one where you are truly fed and where you can grow in your faith. There, you will find others to pray, study, reach out and fellowship with, in safe unity.

A Call to Awaken Writers