40 hours of life

Fr. Denis came to the Hospital about 1 A.M. and performed the baptism

One week ago yesterday our sweet baby boy came into the world at 12:22 am and was baptized not long after that.  The months of waiting, the last couple of months of wondering if the ultrasound would be correct......were.  It all seems so incredibly fast now.  We found out that something was wrong with our precious baby eight and a half weeks ago.  Even the long waiting all of July for him to come, seems like a blink of an eye now.  And then his forty hours of life....did it all really happen?

resting together after his birth

He was not able to nurse, but was comforted by NG tube feedings every couple hours

I really really really thought that he really really really would have a  miracle in his little body.  Even though I prayed for God's will and felt at peace before his birth about his death in my heart, I thought that if God only healed one thing.  If his heart was healed then they could do surgery on the other things.  If God healed his diaphragm then he would be strong enough for the other surgeries.  Every time I went forward to receive Jesus in the Eucharist, I felt like the woman who just knew that if she could just touch the edge of His garment she would be made well.  I knew that if I could just receive Jesus, He could make my baby well. I filled the freezer with easy things for the girls to make meals with so I could be in the hospital with the baby for as many weeks as it took.  We made a schedule so that life at home could have a routine that worked as Mark and I spent time with the baby and his needs.  Whatever it took, I was up to the challenge and as I held my sweet baby boy in the hospital as he was slowly passing away  I told him "I would do anything in the world for you. anything".

What a joy to take care of Mark-Jerzy for the 40 hours

How do I go from missing his presence to being thankful that he is where I should long to be.  My heart aches and my arms are empty, how do I feel thankful for the precious forty hours that I held him, taking in his sweet newborn baby smell, kissing his little deformed hands and feet, telling him how much I love him.

I have been wondering why.  Not "why God did you do this to us?",  But there seems to be so much purpose in his little life.  Purpose in the pregnancy.  Purpose in us being here in KC.  Why God, why did you give us him?  What is it you are teaching us?  His brothers and sisters who have been loving him since they found out that he was coming.  He gave the world Mark-Jerzy for forty hours. Why?  What is it that You are teaching us?

The kids singing with Jon during communion at the funeral mass

This is the song we listened to during labor, afterwards, Jon sang at the funeral mass, and continue to listen to.

      Mark and I have been reading Interior Freedom, by Jacques Philippe. On the day after Mark-Jerzy's Funeral we picked it up and read the following:

       "It is natural and easy to go along with pleasant situations that arise without our choosing them. It becomes a problem, obviously, when things are unpleasant, go against us, or make us suffer. It is precisely then that, in order to become truly free, we are often called to chose to accept what we did not want, and even we would not have wanted at any price. There is a paradoxical law of human life here; one cannot become truly free unless one accepts not always being free!

To achieve true interior freedom we must train ourselves to accept, peacefully and willingly, plenty of things that seem to contradict our freedom. This means consenting to our personal limitations, our weaknesses, our powerlessness, this or that situation that life imposes on us, and so on. We find it difficult to do this, because we feel a natural revulsion for situations we cannot control. But the fact is that the situations that really make us grow are precisely those we do not control."

Mission Trip to Joplin, MO

Mark, Abigail, Gabriella, Mia and Peter left today for Joplin to help with the rebuilding after the tornados ripped through the city a year ago.  Mark and fellow missionary Madi are leading a group of college students from New York.  Madi brought her brother John along to be the chef and they will be working with Project195 during the day and evangelizing in the evenings. 

It is very interesting for us that Joplin is where Mark and I first met in 1993 at Messenger Pentecostal Bible College. 

Sooo what will I and 6 children ages 2 - 11 be doing??  We started today off with breakfast, chores, craft time, snack time, walked around the neighborhood ending at the playground.  All before noon.  It's going to be a long week.  Luckily I have Esther to help and we are staying with my mom. 

Please pray for the people of Joplin, for healing, for a greater abandonment to Divine Providence.  Pray for the College Students that they will not just be doing "good works" but that they will be touched with a desire to embrace the gospel more fully in their lives, Pray for Mark, Sunny, her brother John and the kids for what ever it is that God has in store for them this week.  "Our hearts are ready oh God, our hearts are ready".

Lora

Prayers by St. Francis De Sales




O love eternal,
my soul needs and chooses you eternally!
Ah, come Holy Spirit,
and inflame our hearts with your love!
To love - or to die!
To die - and to love!
To die to all other love
in order to live in Jesus' love,
so that we may not die eternally.
But that we may live in your eternal love,
O Saviour of our souls,
we eternally sing,
"Live, Jesus!
Jesus, I love!
Live, Jesus, whom I love!
Jesus, I love,
Jesus who lives and reigns
forever and ever.

Amen.


 Be at Peace

Do not look forward in fear to the changes of life;

rather look to them with full hope as they arise.

God, whose very own you are,

will deliver you from out of them.

He has kept you hitherto,

and He will lead you safely through all things;

and when you cannot stand it,

God will bury you in his arms.



Do not fear what may happen tomorrow;

the same everlasting Father who cares for you today

will take care of you then and everyday.

He will either shield you from suffering,

or will give you unfailing strength to bear it.

Be at peace,

and put aside all anxious thoughts and imagination.
St. Francis de Sales 1567-1622

An appeal

As we have reflected on this blog post and our appeal we believe this was a poor choice. Part of being a missionary is assuming a level of poverty to be in solidarity with the poor. That can mean forgoing some of the things we want to do, but are not needs. It is hard to admit when you make a mistake. We are not removing the blog post because we don't want to pretend we did not make a mistake, when we did.

     This is Lora making an appeal on behalf of our children.  Every summer the youth division of Family Mission Company reaches out to middle school children with the gospel through a week long camp called “Faith Camp” http://www.bestweekofyourlife.com/Best_Week_Of_Your_Life/Home.html .  There are a lot of fun packed days that draws children every year but more importantly the focus is giving these kids Jesus.  Everyday has a message about faith, evenings of praise and worship, small group discussions, all culminating throughout the week.  We had the opportunity to send three of our girls last year and we can attest that it is a life changing week for them.  Read about Abigail’s experience here http://veritasspelndor.blogspot.com/search/label/Faith%20Camp .  We would love to send our oldest four this year.  We were blessed with a sizable tax return this year that we were originally going to put towards the airfare to send them.  However, due to a couple of reasons we will not be able to use that money for them.  One of them is that we have not kept in contact with our benefactors through thank you’s and newsletters.  So our monthly support has gone down.  We know that it is vitally important for missionaries to let their benefactors know what the Lord is doing and we failed at that.  The second reason is we feel like the funds we do receive from our benefactors are not for us but for doing God’s work.  Therefore, when we see a need, we give.   When Mark sees something in a person’s house that he can fix or we can buy that improves their living we do.  We also give a lot of food away through parcels as well as feeding.  The Lord has always supplied for our needs for the last 17 years of our married life and we know that He will continue to do so. 

  If this camp was just a fun kid camp, we would not even be considering this.  However, I feel like it is important for other reasons.  1^st Abigail and Gabriella would be on the staff side.  This means they are giving their week to serve and make every effort possible to lead others closer to Christ.  I think that this camp will enhance all four of their lives as missionaries and give them training for their futures.  Also, for all four of them, I think it will be  refreshing, encouraging and an opportunity for them to draw closer to Jesus.  The cost of the airfare for the 4 of them is almost $4000.    

If all this was not selfish enough, I also would like to send Abigail and Gabriella to Jamaica to the Missionaries of the Poor for a Retreat.  They would get the chance to work alongside the brothers giving their lives to the abandoned and forgotten.  They have a center with separate quarters for handicapped men, women, children and babies.  Then the girls would also be a part of a retreat given by the MOPs to help in their discernment for what God is calling them too.  Here is their website with more information. http://www.missionariesofthepoor.org/ The airfare would be around $2000

If you would like to sponsor either of these trips you can send a donation  to Family Missions Company earmark it as Eckstine’s Faith Camp or Eckstine’s – MOPs and the funds will be used for those purposes.  On behalf of the children and from me, Thank you and the Lord bless you.

Lora

We pray this will not deter our benefactors from giving to the truly good causes we share in the future.

Eternal Wisdom

March 2 was the feast day of St. Henry Suso who lived in the 1300's. In a book called "Voices of the Saints" which was given to us by our good friend Ranell Curl (who is not a Catholic) I read the following excerpt:

Eternal Wisdom: When I hide myself, only then do you become aware of who I am or who you are. I am eternal Good, and so when I pour myself forth so lovingly, everything I enter becomes good. One can thus detect my presence as one detects the sun by its brightness since one cannot see its essence.

Servant: Lord, I find within myself a great unevenness. When I feel forsaken, my soul is like a sick person to whom everything is repugnant. But when the bright morning star bursts forth in my soul, all gloom disappears. Quickly, however, it is all snatched away and I am again forsaken. But then after intense sadness it returns. What is going on?

Eternal Wisdom: I am causing it, and it is the game of love. As long as love is together with love, love does not know how dear love is. But when love departs from love, then truly love feels how dear love was.

Servant: Dear Lord, teach me how to conduct myself in this game.

Eternal Wisdom: On good days you should consider the bad days, and on the bad days consider the good days. Then neither the exuberance at my presence nor despondency can harm you. To find joy on earth, it is not enough that you give a certain period of the day. You must constantly remain within yourself if you want to find God, hear his familiar words and be sensitive to his secret thoughts.

St. Henry Suso wrote a book on prayer called "The Little Book of Eternal Wisdom" which is where this quote came from. Some think of saints as people who were perfect, but they were not, they loved God passionately and tried to say "Yes" to His will in all things, and they humbled themselves before Him when they failed. We can all be saints, we are all called to be saints. Let us seek to Love God more and more each day.

from Abandonment to Divine Providence, by Fr. Caussade

I believe that if those souls that tend towards sanctity were instructed as to the conduct they ought to follow, they would be spared a good deal of trouble. I speak as much of people in the world as of others. If they could realise the merit concealed in the actions of each moment of the day: I mean in each of the daily duties of their state of life, and if they could be persuaded that sanctity is founded on that to which they give no heed as being altogether irrelevant, they would indeed be happy. If, besides, they understood that to attain the utmost height of perfection, the
safest and surest way is to accept the crosses sent them by Providence at every moment, that the true philosopher’s stone is submission to the will of God which changes into divine gold all their occupations, troubles, and sufferings, what consolation would be theirs! What courage would they not derive from the thought that to acquire the friendship of God, and to arrive at eternal glory, they had but to do what they were doing, but to suffer what they were suffering, and that what they
wasted and counted as nothing would suffice to enable them to arrive at eminent sanctity: far more so than extraordinary states and wonderful works. O my God! how much I long to be the missionary of Your holy will, and to teach all men that there is nothing more easy, more attainable, more within reach, and in the power of everyone, than sanctity. How I wish that I could make them understand
that just as the good and the bad thief had the same things to do and to suffer; so also two persons, one of whom is worldly and the other leading an interior and wholly spiritual life have, neither of them, anything different to do or to suffer; but that one is sanctified and attains eternal happiness by submission to Your holy will in those very things by which the other is damned because he does them to please himself, or endures them with reluctance and rebellion. This proves that it is only
the heart that is different. Oh! all you that read this, it will cost you no more than to do what you are doing, to suffer what you are suffering, only act and suffer in a holy manner. It is the heart that must be changed. When I say heart, I mean will. Sanctity, then, consists in willing all that God wills for us. Yes! sanctity of heart is a simple “fiat,” a conformity of will with the will of God.
What could be more easy, and who could refuse to love a will so kind and so good? Let us love it then, and this love alone will make everything in us divine.