Your Hands

Wanted to give a quick update that while my mom's mood has not been balanced (she has bipolar disorder) she does sound better each time I talk to her.  There is less grossness anyway.  She is going to the new psychiatrist and complying with prescribed medicines.  My father sounds less strung out everytime I talk with him.  There was a cost to him getting the leverage to get her to take her medicine but it is small relative to the damage from her last acute mania episodes.

Your prayers, and the prayers of others, as well as the cooperative efforts of my sister, my Dad, my brother, my Dad's priest, a few of their friends, my Dad's lawyer have been successful.  As I wrote in my first post on this situation, we have all been in God's Hands all along, as always.  It was good we finally got Dad's cooperation to intervene this time.

Last acute mania episode had the following financial damage (the physical and emotional damage can't be measured as easily):  

• approximately $474,000 net loss (sometimes my Dad says "1/2 million", sometimes $650,000) due to unscrupulous people praying on my mother's mental illness . . . only found out recently this could have been criminally prosecuted
• $34,000 truck purchase by HVAC worker that agreed to go into business with my mom---after she paid for his truck with her credit card she didn't hear from him again
• $300,000 across 3 different investment frauds
• $40,000 for bonding newly made "friends" out of jail
• $100,000 for townhome purchased to provide housing for "friends" from AA meetings
• bankruptcy
• second mortgage that took many more years of work past when my Dad should have been retired for age and chronic pain from job injuries to pay off.

This acute Mania episode should be less than $20,000:

• $7000 in legal fees (lawyer, court filings)
• $5000 in medicine
• $2000 in travel
• $? hospital bill after insurance

Much better . . . while the prayers my family has offered over the years haven't always been answered the way we would have liked when we prayed them, there is no question that God hears us, and as I always ask Mary on the 4th Sorrowful Mystery, that she is interceding for us as my parents carry the cross of my mother's mental illness.  I have tremendous confidence in her motherly care and prayers.

Thank you for your prayers.  Thought you might enjoy this beautiful song by JJ Heller.  My other favorites from her are "What Love Really Means" and "My Savior's Love Endures" which is the Magnificat and the Glory Be set to music.

The amazing lyrics are contained in the video and also pasted below, in case you tire that many of the images are repeated many times over the course of the song, especially during the chorus.

Your Hands by JJ Heller

I have unanswered prayers

I have trouble I wish wasn't there

And I have asked a thousand ways

That you would take my pain away

You would take my pain away

I am trying to understand

How to walk this weary land

Make straight the paths that crooked lie

Oh Lord, before these feet of mine

Oh Lord, before these feet of mine

When my world is shaking, heaven stands

When my heart is breaking

I never leave your hands

When you walked upon the earth

You healed the broken, lost and hurt

I know you hate to see me cry

One day you will set all things right

Yeah, one day you will set all things right

When my world is shaking, heaven stands

When my heart is breaking

I never leave your hands

Your hands that shaped the world

Are holding me

They hold me still

Your hands that shaped the world

Are holding me

They hold me still

When my world is shaking, heaven stands

When my heart is breaking

I never leave you

When my world is shaking, heaven stands

When my heart is breaking

I never leave

I never leave your hands

Healing Your Family Tree

My Pastor emailed this prayer to me a few months back, when my husband and I were in a multi-day argument.  Are you familiar with this prayer?

It is recommended to pray this prayer everyday.  It is also recommended that the best time to pray it is immediately after Holy Communion, "when you and Jesus Christ are one; when you are like the Blessed Virgin Mary - a living tabernacle of The Savior.  That is when you are holiest, and when your prayers are most efficacious.  A few minutes of heartfelt prayer after receiving Jesus in the Eucharist while in the state of grace are worth many hours of prayer later on." (Source:  http://www.catholicbible101.com/healingyourfamilytree.htm)

PRAYER FOR HEALING THE FAMILY TREE

REV. JOHN H. HAMPSCH, C.M.F.

Heavenly Father, I come before you as your child, in great need of your help; I have physical health needs, emotional needs, spiritual needs, and interpersonal needs.  Many of my problems have been caused by my own failures, neglect and sinfulness, for which I humbly beg your forgiveness, Lord.  But I also ask you to forgive the sins of my ancestors whose failures have left their effects on me in the form of unwanted tendencies, behavior patterns and defects in body, mind and spirit.  Heal me, Lord, of all these disorders.

With your help I sincerely forgive everyone, especially living or dead members of my family tree, who have directly offended me or my loved ones in any way, or those whose sins have resulted in our present sufferings and disorders.  In the name of your divine Son, Jesus, and in the power of his Holy Spirit, I ask you, Father, to deliver me and my entire family tree from the influence of the evil one.  Free all living and dead members of my family tree, including those in adoptive relationships, and those in extended family relationships, from every contaminating form of bondage.  By your loving concern for us, heavenly Father, and by the shed blood of your precious Son, Jesus, I beg you to extend your blessing to me and to all my living and deceased relatives.  Heal every negative effect transmitted through all past generations, and prevent such negative effects in future generations of my family tree.

I symbolically place the cross of Jesus over the head of each person in my family tree, and between each generation; I ask you to let the cleansing blood of Jesus purify the bloodlines in my family lineage.  Set your protective angels to encamp around us, and permit Archangel Raphael, the patron of healing, to administer your divine healing power to all of us, even in areas of genetic disability.  Give special power to our family members' guardian angels to heal, protect, guide and encourage each of us in all our needs.  Let your healing power be released at this very moment, and let it continue as long as your sovereignty permits.

In our family tree, Lord, replace all bondage with a holy bonding in family love.  And let there be an ever-deeper bonding with you, Lord, by the Holy Spirit, to your Son, Jesus.  Let the family of the Holy Trinity pervade our family with its tender, warm, loving presence, so that our family may recognize and manifest that love in all our relationships.  All of our unknown needs we include with this petition that we pray in Jesus' precious Name.  Amen.

St. Joseph, Patron of family life, pray for us.  Our Lady Queen of Peace, pray for us.

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If you have questions about this prayer please see "Response to Objections about the Healing of the Family Tree".  You'll need to scroll down after you hit the hyperlink.

Beautiful Reasons for Praying the Rosary Even More Often

This morning I put up a post to encourage you to pray the rosary even more often.  Please check it out at Community of Catholic Bloggers.

To Be Born

On Saturday, April 21, I rode with a group of high school teens to the field outside the Planned Parenthood in Aurora, IL.  The school's bus was filled so I rode a few extra kids in my van.  Riding in my passenger seat was a woman that recently talked at the high school chapel because she lives with the memory of having an abortion as a young woman.

I told her that I've become more sensitive to the language I use when I talk about abortion.  I asked her if it makes her sad when people say abortion is murder, that I try to say ending the life of the unborn or something but not "murder".

She said, "It is murder."

At the center, the high school organizer asked that just 5 of the girls at a time stand across from the center.  This was the second biggest turnout for the monthly trip that we've had.  He advised me and the other adult not to yell anything, but instead to stand behind the girls.  He asked the girls to love the women walking in there, and to say things that they thought would touch their hearts.

The girls in sequence yelled:
(together) "Your baby is going to be beautiful!"
(girl 1) "Your baby could have your eyes . . . "
(girl 2) ". . . your laugh"
(girl 3) " . . . your walk."

They would also yell that there were counselors here from a free crisis pregnancy center a couple blocks away that could help them, and that they were not here to judge them, but to love them and help them.

One of our girls asked the woman with me if there is anything that they could say that might have kept her from going through with the abortion.  They didn't ask her directly.  I coached some of these girls in basketball so they asked her through me.

She told me, and I relayed, "'Your baby is going to be beautiful' is perfectly innocent and would have impacted her when she was walking in for her abortion appointment."

Both she and I remained silent and prayed as we were directed.  I was praying the rosary on my rosary ring.

There was one couple that came out, hand-in-hand, smiling, and walked right in front of us by about 15 yards, continuing onto their car in an adjacent parking lot, where they hugged.  We, neither the girls, the counselors, the other woman or I, nor the Knights of Columbus or even the guy from Operation Rescue yelled or said anything to the couple.  What they decided is their business, after all.

One of the Knights did peak through the trees to see them hugging at their car.  One of the wives of the Knights said, "She didn't do it. She was walking too well to have had an abortion."

One of the lies of those supporting Planned Parenthood and slamming people like Santorum (i.e. Ashley Judd) is that there are angry people outside of the centers.  No one out there was angry, or judging the women walking into the center.

There was one woman who rode by in a car and asked the high school girls if they were from Aurora.  Immediately when one of the girls said no, she yelled, "Then go home!"  I yelled after her, "Thanks for stopping by.  Good-bye."

I told the girls, "You don't have to give an answer to someone when they ride by.  She like some adults think they have the right to yell and tell people your age what to do.  They don't."

The girls and I are resident of this state and this country and are children of God owing him our allegiance, and not obedience to a stranger yelling at them rudely from a slowly moving vehicle.

The reason we are out there is in hope that by seeing these girls, about the same age as the girls going in for the abortion, they will think, and we pray, reconsider.  That is it.  We are trying to prevent the extreme violent act of the killing of the unborn child, even though it is legal, and we don't live in the immediate township of the facility.

It is confusing to some of the girls that the pregnant woman is sometimes accompanied by mother, or father, or both.  It doesn't fit with their understanding of the scriptures they have been taught to memorize from preschool:

"Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right."  Ephesians 6:1

We really are not sitting in judgement of the woman.  We are angry that this is legal.  We are angry that a young woman is often pressured into this, and sees it as the chance for a fresh start, rather than the tragedy, and emotional wound that it will be for her that can only be healed by the Divine Mercy of her Savior.

In the car when I was talking to the other adult woman, I said the reason I don't say "murder" is because I think the emotional pain must be touched off again when the woman sees a baby, or child.  She said it was painful until she was saved and Jesus healed her.

The life of the unborn child, and the pain that the woman (mother), and man (father), and grandparents feel after the abortion is exactly why the high school kids and the adults, the majority of whom are Catholic, go out there to be the visible, physical reminder of the God who saves!

In case you need some encouragement to pray the rosary, fast, and offer sacrifices for the intention of changing the hearts and minds of pregnant women, and the electorate in this country you can watch this.

It is one of those pieces of visual art that is both very sad and hopeful at the same time.  I am still trying to resolve my own crying while watching this.  I'll use the tissues right after I hit the Publish button.

It is under 10,000 views at this point.

***Spoiler Alert***

While I would love if all pregnant women considering Abortion would be touched by the grace to have a dream like this before their appointments that end the life of the unborn baby within them, I would hope that at minimum you and I would do whatever the Holy Spirit prompts us to do from praying the rosary to offering a fast, to actually showing up in person at an Abortion Clinic or a Freedom of Religion event. Oh and voting, yes voting.

If there was confusion in anyone's mind in 2008 that Barak Obama is activist for NARAL and Planned Parenthood that confusion should be gone.  His administration has acted to provide public funding for chemical and surgical abortion and to enlarge the number of facilities providing this to the public.  I do not understand how someone could justify voting for him on moral grounds.  I just don't!