The vast majority of us as humans, think we need to wait to receive a “terminal diagnosis” in order to learn that ... we are dying.  In truth, each and every one of us began dying the moment we began life.  Death is the inevitable culmination of our lifetime experiences suddenly halted.  In reality, only a few of us receive that noted death sentence but instead we are busy about living, triumphing and attaining our next goal.  For me, life was going along just as many others.  I was married 28+ years.  I had raised a wonderful son who at the time was 21 and had just celebrated his first year of marriage.  The majority of Jeremy’s childhood, saw me as a Stay at Home Mom... very much involved in his classroom education from Kindergarten until Third Grade.  Though I was deeply involved with writing my first manuscript as well as other freelance projects and was involved in Lay Ministry from his first birthday; I would not begin my career until Jeremy’s Junior year of High School.  Both my husband and I agreed early on that my primary focus needed to be upon the raising of our child, even though our lifestyle many times lacked the financial opportunities which two incomes afforded most families we knew.  

     My relationship with Jeremy remained very close even though out High School as his Dad and I were extraordinarily involved with birthing and facilitating a Booster organization supporting the Instrumental Music Program at his High School.  We spent nearly every weekend from September until mid-June with events surrounding his music.  BAND CAMP began in the heat of August and so did our year-long Fundraising efforts.  Fall began with football games and Marching Band Field Show Competitions.  Spring saw us traveling for Drum-Line Competitions, Concert & Jazz Band events culminating with the final performance for the Graduating Class each year.  In 2006 we as a family became involved with a local Christian Motorcycle Ministry where we rode together and had many great opportunities to minister together for approximately a year before birthing our own ministry to outlaw clubs called Holy Rollerz Motorcycle Ministry in 2007.  That same year, our son was suddenly and severely struck with Vertigo.  Suddenly, Jeremy could no longer ride his motorcycle, drive a car or even in a car!  He was completely disabled being forced to sleep sitting up in a recliner in our living room.  Though he endured many diagnostic tests, a cause was never found.

     Jeremy had met his future wife in 2006 as they both attended the same High School.  That was also the year he graduated.  Brooke & Jeremy were married two weeks following her graduation from High School from a small Alaskan town called Delta Junction, where her parents had moved she and her sister a year before in order to get her away from Jeremy.  You see, they were Mormons and we as Christians were incompatible.  We were also considered “lower-class” because my husband had joined the military after High School instead of attending college.  However, her parents plan did not stop the love these two carried throughout the many months they were separated and they married  in May of 2008.  My husband had suddenly lost his job of 16-years only days before.  I was diagnosed with Gall Bladder disease that December and underwent that surgery in June 2009.  Little did we know just how critically that event would change our lives.

     Following a long weekend of rest, I returned to my duties as an executive assistant for the world-wide evangelical Christian ministry I’d been working for since 2005.  That same week I was able to return to riding my motorcycle and had accompanied my family for a ride to our favorite restaurant in nearby Seal Beach, California.  However, a day or so later I began having difficulty breathing...which I initially attributed to the impact of General Anesthesia upon my asthmatic lungs.  The next day found me in my office at work shivering from fever.  I left work early to go home to rest and went to see my primary care physician the following day.  After an examination and x-ray, he simply told me that I had “buggers in my lungs!”  That began several weeks of trips to Acute Care and the ER with additional antibiotics being prescribed.  Finally during my last visit to the Acute Care Clinic, I saw a “fill-in” doctor from Las Vegas who suspected that not only did I have pneumonia, but he performed additional tests to see if I was suffering from a specific type of severe strain of that disease.  

     The results indicated what his fears first believed and he sent for an ambulance to immediately transport me to Long Beach Memorial Hospital Emergency Room.  After hours of suffering from breathing difficulties and exhausted, I was admitted for what would be the first of many other stays at that hospital, Los Alamitos Medical Center, ICU Wards and at least two several week stays in Nursing Homes.  While I will relay this story in a future entry, I want to introduce my readers to a theme that had escaped my comprehension since birth.  JoY... had been a word whose meaning I’d long escaped.  My understanding of JoY was that it meant “being-happy!”  During the over four month period in 2009, I would finally be introduced to the manifestation of intrinsic JoY as I entered my own Valley of the Shadow of Death... Psalms 24 

.....To be continued, Shalom 💟✝️💟🕎💟✡️💟