From the Heart by B.Demaere

                                                      This must be a Phase. Grieving must be a succession of phases?    Going from one extreme to the other emotionally. My day today was spent seeing my dear wife go through several years worth of clothes that had belonged to my dear mother. She had not only kept every purse but every pair of pantyhose she had owned.   My mind cannot comprehend it, and I want to cry because not only had she kept it but also had moved from the old country with it to Canada.   Can I give a word of advice to parents today?   Get rid of your stuff before your children must.   I am dealing with mental health issues in my own life and that is the last thing I want to face right now. Some of the things my parents had were old expresso makers.   It shows that they liked their coffee, but they did not involve me with their passion for coffee. One other advice I would like to give to parents today.   Share your hobbies with your children and involve them

  Back to Healing This blog has become more personal than I intended it to be but, maybe God ordered it to be that way for your sake.  I wonder how much of what we put out to people as a façade is to hide the hurt in us.  Do we sometimes use a “spiritual façade” of some sort? What about you? What is your face saying? This morning I felt depressed, deeply depressed to the point of staying in bed all day, but I didn’t.   I could never do that.   I am an 8 O’clock riser, not an 11 am riser. The day started very purposelessly which I hate.   Part of the day was spent in the basement of what used to be my parents.   My wife and I looked through it and found “old treasures” of the past.   I finally had to eat something and made it to the kitchen.   My wife came up with an old poem made into a card I had drawn as an adult for her birthday and another poem I had given her on Mother’s Day.   She had kept them.   I noticed that one written in French had a spelling error.   Knowing that my

  Heart Mining It has been about 2 weeks now since we moved into my parents’ old home.   The primary purpose was obvious.   To move there to reorganize the place.   But the secondary or subsequent purposes are not as obvious.   We have been through almost everything in the kitchen, not without a struggle, and almost everything has a memory.   Everything has a discovery of characters attached to it. For example, my Mom’s old deep fryer was left with memories of fresh homemade fries cooked twice and crispy just as only a Belgian Mom could cook them.   I just want to let you know that we, Belgians at heart, are very proud of our French fries.   No one will take this away from us.   So, with a memory is always linked to a relationship.   I related to my mother most through cooking and even I became a baker/cook.   Now I can make fries the way my mother used to.   With memories come possibilities.   You can see that following a primary purpose is a secondary purpose and that purpose dee

  Thought Infestation (Jeremiah 4:14) Are we taking God seriously?   Could there be any bad or evil thoughts in us even though we are saved?   Are we immune?   Are we clean?   We need forgiveness, oh but we are forgiven.   What about confession and repentance?   Could God be looking at us and see maybe even a little bit of fault in us?   Are we too proud to admit that we need his help? When I read this verse out of the Amplified version of the English Bible, it is very close to the French translation that I read. “O Jerusalem, wash your heart From wickedness, That you may be saved. How long will your wicked and Immoral thoughts Lodge within you?   I know some of you like me are saved, but why do we let evil thoughts lodge within us (Ouch!)   In fact, in the first part of the verse in French, it says: “Jerusalem, if you want to be delivered wash or clean your heart of its wickedness. How long will you be indwelled by evil thoughts?” And verse 15, does not leave

  Help Me God! (Psalm 43) As I meditated on this Psalm, I did not realize that today would be Thursday and that the post had to be published today which I am doing right now. The psalmist is experiencing adversity.   Does that ever happen to you?   Life can be chaotic. Most of my chaos happens because of my attitude to situations I find myself in.   They are all reactions filled with a lot of up-and-down emotions. Most of my situations and feelings through them can be dealt with the Light and Truth of God. Verse 3 (French Bible transliteration) “Make me see your Light and Truth, May they guide me to your holy mountain, (Light) May they drive me to your dwelling!” (Truth)   Light guides us Truth leads us.   Verse 4- Don’t you feel his desire to be with God and where he really is? He, then, realizes his mistake and notes that God is indeed his greatest JOY. Folks, there is nothing else that will bring you JOY like God.   Money is futile and does not last and s

  Move On You might be wondering what I have been up to during the last month and a half.   Hello everyone! How have you all been doing? My wife and I have made a huge move of over 1000 km south of where we were.   Over here it is not as cold as up North. A lot of us like our comfort zone maybe a bit too much.   So much so that when its time to move we say: “No way! I like it here”.   We might like our comfort zone so much that we might miss entirely what God has in store for us. Our comfort zone could become our danger zone very quickly. Well, all this to tell you our move was far from being easy.   We had to push through and when we had gone through one obstacle.   Boom! There came up another one unrelated.   That we are exhausted.   We are no longer spring chicken; my wife and I are in our 60s and we feel it. Along with my mental illness, we had many challenges. For my encouragement and yours perhaps! I have Psalms 42 and 43 to share and more precisely verse 5 and 11 in

 Just a note that a new post is coming up on November 7 It will be the story of my « holiday » this past month and what I learned in the process. Thank you for your continued support  Bernard Demaere