leading
up to
my son
Phillip Luke
getting sick
and
6 days later,
dying,
have been
on
my
mind.
The reasons are,
number one,
April
is the anniversary of his illness and death,
which is now,
as I write.
The 21st being the day he walked up and said to me,
"momma, I got a hegg-ache,"
as he put his little hands on his head in pain.
It was about 4 in the afternoon.
It was a beautiful spring day.
Life was good.
And
Number two,
My
Faith
in
God.
My spiritual journey
has been on jet fuel for many years,
the last few
in particular.
1982,
being the year that the spiritual fuel tank ran empty
and
the engine locked down,
and
yes,
my jet
crashed.
As you know,
I ejected in time
to open my parachute
and
survive.
Its been a rough landing,
but I am very thankful for this landing.
A big part of that surviving was due to my pastor,
Dennis.
He killed himself last week.
My heart has another crack in it.
A big one.
My heart aches.
I loved this man.
I always will.
His death
has made me not question
my
Faith,
but redefine it
in
my
heart
and
experience
it
deeper still.
Phillip Luke Ferguson
Several days leading up to Phillip Luke getting sick,
I had been visited numerous times
at my house,
by a woman with a
4 year old little girl.
She
and
Phillip Luke
were almost the same age
and
played and played
together.
My oldest,
and
as I call him,
Number One
and
perfect Son
William James was 5 years old.
I met their father, Phillip at age 16.
We eloped at 17.
I had William James at 18,
and had Phillip Luke at 19.
I was 22 at this moment in time.
Blissfully happy.
I had the world by the tail,
just swinging it
round
and
round.
This woman kept coming back
because
I love to converse
especially about God,
and
I am a yapper.
She,
just happened
to be a
Jehovah's witness.
Ok, so what?
(I heard some people say, "don't even let them in")
Come on in.
Let's talk.
Everything I knew about the Bible,
I learned from Dennis
over the last 15 years.
Everyone will tell you he was
brilliant.
He truly was.
He was amazing.
He baptized me when I was 12.
He came to our church when I was probably about age 7.
He stressed the Gospel to me.
It was the Good News.
The old ways have passed.
The old covenants were gone.
We have Jesus Christ!
The good news!
We really studied each book verse by verse.
He would take words
back to their Hebrew and Greek meanings
which in my brain,
helps me see things so clearly.
Words do that
with
all
the
meanings
they can bestow in languages.
I loved it.
Even as a teenager,
I would drag main street in my 68 Mustang,
ride around with my boyfriends,
smoking cigarettes,
playing drums,
listening to and
loving
loud
rock and roll,
riding horses,
cuss and spit.
Being
a
real
teenage
sinner,
but
I wouldn't miss a Bible class with
Dennis.
It was joy,
even as a kid.
As an adult,
he
taught me so much about human nature.
He was our counselor at a
domestic violence
shelter
that William James and I lived in
when I left his
violent Dad.
We had been married almost 20 years.
By then,
Phillip Luke had been gone 12 years.
I was 38.
William James was 17.
A senior in high school.
Dennis would counsel me
and William James
several days a week,
for several weeks.
Dennis helped me
see that I couldn't do any thing else to help
Phillip find peace.
He couldn't deal with or accept any part of Luke's death.
His violence against me and William James had escalated over the last 12 years.
Along with his alcohol and drug use.
Let him take my life?
Or take his?
no, no, no, no, no!
oh hell no!
In his death,
Dennis
has taught me something I can't quite grasp yet.
Many things.
It's very painful.
This Jehovah's witness woman
was very passionate about her view of the Bible,
her version of the Bible
and the ways you live
as a Christian.
I stress live.
I had been in church,
since I drew a breath.
I was in church camp every summer,
having
a stinking blast.
Good childhood bone.
I learned so much
but
at the time
you think you are just
being a groovy kid.
Dennis
and his wife Donna,
would take us kids from church
up into the Guadalupe Mountains to our
Christian Church Camp.
Its a camp now.
When I was a kid,
it was just a barn
as the dorms,
and
a cafeteria/worship hall.
Our Bible classes
were held in the part of the barn
that would be the stalls.
It was freaking awesome.
The bats
would fly
through the dorms
at night
and we would all
scream.
We were thrilled.
If you could say the books of the Bible you made points for your team.
I,
of course
could do that,
but
if you could say them backwards,
you made even more points.
I never could do that,
at least not very fast.
I loved church camp.
I loved church.
I stopped loving church when Phillip Luke died.
I could see no reason
my
God
would let this happen to
my
beloved boy.
I loved being a wife and mother.
I loved my babies and loved staying home with them.
This is so wrong.
This can't happen.
Please God.
Please.
Please!
I begged him.
Please save him.
Take me instead.
Please God,
Its Me.
Its ME!
Over and over,
day after day,
as Phillip Luke lay in ICU
on life support.
I got so mad.
At many points,
then and
as I got much older,
I really didn't care about
God
and his way of doing things,
I would do things just to
see
if I could make God mad at me.
As mad at me as I was
at
him.
I realized in time,
I only hurt him,
and myself.
I hurt us bad.
He never did get mad at me or leave me.
Thank you Lord.
I love you.
I just hurt
so
bad
to know
that
Phillip Luke
is
brain
dead
and a flip of a switch away
from his life
being
turned off.
There are no words to say it with the intensity I feel,
unless I really, really cuss,
and that doesn't do it all the way.
Nothing does.
I could feel my heart literally break in my chest.
It physically hurt.
An ache so deep and dark.
My heart beat would slow down so slow,
I really thought I would just die as it got slower and slower.
I couldn't hardly breathe.
I couldn't eat.
I couldn't think.
I couldn't do anything about anything.
It was probably about 3 days into
Phillip Luke's
diagnosis of
fatal
spinal meningitis,
when
my
Jehovah's witness woman
showed up at the hospital.
She had been by my house and my neighbors had
told her what had happened to
Phillip Luke
and
he wasn't expected to live.
Spinal meningits
is a virus much like the flu,
and it is
very contagious.
There were
several children to die
from meningitis in Lea County in 1982.
The doctors gave us and William James shots to boost our immune system,
just to help protect us.
No guarantees.
No vaccine.
That would come in 1983,
the year
after
Phillip Luke died.
A big, big bone to chew on for many years.
That's a whole other story.
I was so scared William James would come down with it.
Thank you God for keeping him healthy.
He and Phillip Luke ate together,
slept together,
bathed together.
They were never apart.
Talk about a hard task God ask of me.
Tell your precious, 5 year old boy,
that his brother,
only 17 months apart in age,
his best friend,
the one he protected and loved more than anyone else,
is
dead.
As always, God gave me enough guts to do it,
and
do it as
gently
as I could.
William James
is,
and at age 5
was an
amazing
kid.
He got the big picture.
He understood.
Even his teachers, through the years, would tell me that.
I could never say enough how proud of and how much William James is the love of my life.
He was the best child, and has grown into an amazing man, husband and father.
Yes, he is mine.
Thank you Lord.
Loosing a child is not the natural order of things.
There is no way to console the loss.
For me it has never ended.
It just changes like everything else.
I know I am not the only person to ever have such things happen.
It happens every day over and over to other Mothers somewhere.
It's a club you don't want to be in.
It
comes
with a lifetime membership
for
free.
My Jehovah's witness woman was so afraid that she would become a member too.
Her,
precious girl
had swapped spit,
played and played with
my
terminally ill
Phillip Luke.
Oh hell.
The panic
and
fear
in her eyes
had been
my
breakfast,
lunch
and
dinner.
for the last several days of my life.
I guess she is bringing me dessert.
She was scared.
Really scared
to
loose
her
girl.
Oh yes,
I really get that part.
I really, really do.
This woman had spent the many days we were talking,
bringing up all the old testament stuff
that they dream up to hold on to as Jehovah's witness.
I think it is nonsense, to apply that now.
Doesn't she read the Gospel?
The good news about
Jesus Christ?
He paid it all.
It is finished.
Dennis hammered that in deep.
One point of contention between us
was the use of doctors, vaccines and blood and all such things.
I wouldn't have lived through my birth if it weren't for doctors and modern medicine.
I had point blank ask her:
"You mean to tell me,
that if your gorgeous baby girl
needed a blood transfusion to save her life,
you wouldn't let that happen?"
"No"
was her matter of fact reply.
"God would take care of her."
Oh, for Pete's sake!
I would laugh.
"Yes, that would take care of her, that would be God taking care of her" I said.
"Don't you think God gave us brilliant Doctors to help and save us?" I asked.
She would then go the old testament and quote all the blood stuff,
which as a kid used to scare the crap out of me.
Once again,
Jesus's blood was the last blood to be shed and sacrificed
for us all,
forever.
Nope.
He was not.
She didn't see it that way.
I would cringe.
I'll pray for you,
What else can you do?
I told her with my total conviction,
never thinking
I would really be living these feelings,
choices,
and
circumstances
only a few days later.
"I would let someone shoot me in the face over and over.
There is no number of shots of pain
I would endure to save my children.
I would give my life,
my soul,
my spirit,
my everything,
to keep my babies safe,
and I would find the best doctors I could
to do anything and everything they could"
Oh, that was as few days ago.
Things have changed.
How fast things change.
How fast
Faith
changes.
It did in her.
It did in me.
Hers for the better.
Mine I let go of.
Or tried to.
Actually
I thru it as far as I could,
and
I have a good arm.
"Where is your Faith?" I ask her.
She wanted a shot for her baby,
the same shot that we all got.
"I thought you said you wouldn't do such things. Let God take care of her."
Well,
now
she
would
do such things.
She had changed her mind.
I am glad she changed her mind.
I am not a mean person, and I was too exhausted to do anything,
and
I was nice,
but
I have played over and over in my head what I really wanted to scream at her.
It's pretty violent, ugly, mean, hateful, get out of my face kinda thing,
and best left in my mind.
It's not really towards her, but towards God!
I
wasn't the one who needed the lesson,
I understood and knew God.
Why do I have to loose my boy?
What had I done wrong?
Nothing made sense anymore.
Life as I knew it ceased.
Everything I thought I knew about God changed.
I didn't know anything about God or anything else.
The only thing I could hold tight was
William James
and
making sure
he
had a mother with a mind that still worked.
I couldn't accept in anyway the fact that Luke dying.
No,
I am just not gonna do this.
Funny.
Yes, you are.
Make me.
Ok.
He did.
The only thing that helps is Gods love
and
his time.
His Love translates into
all the wonderful body of believers he surrounded me with,
and
still does.
I always have exactly who and what I need.
Thank you Lord.
My Jehovahs witness woman's baby girl is 38 now.
I hope she has had a good life.
Phillip Luke would be 38 too.
I will always imagine what his life would have been.
My mothers heart will never stop longing for his life.
Now,
those awful feelings towards God are gone.
I see now
my
Faith
was
my life line.
Even when I thought I had no Faith at all,
I did.
Without it, well, I can't even imagine.
I love God more than ever.
I realized, God never left me.
He carried me when I was unconscious and near death itself many times.
He loves and forgives me over and over and over again.
His Grace and Mercy go before me.
Nothing can separate us.
I can thank him now for taking my beloved Phillip Luke.
I can thank him for asking so much of me.
I can thank him for my blessings and joys.
I can thank him for my trials and sorrows.
I can find all in him.
Dennis helped me find it all.
I want to find peace for Dennis in my heart.
I hope his beautiful soul is at peace.
The peace he taught me only comes from Christ Jesus.
I want him to know how much he meant to me and that I loved him.
I know he knew.
I pray God to rest his wonderful and incredible soul.
Somehow, as awful as his death is,
I see the Faith he had that he was going home.
Going to be with the one who made us.
Going to where we came from.
To
Where my beloved Phillip Luke is.
and all the others
I love
and miss
every day.
I see in his death,
his humanity.
His mind caused him great brilliance.
His mind caused him great pain.
His mind, soul, and spirit
gave me
and countless others
the gospel
in a way that truly set my life
on a great and wonderful
spiritual journey,
that without Dennis,
my jet would have crashed with me in it,
I would have
spiritually died,
which is worse than any
physical death.
My perfect boy,
William James
would have lost his best friend,
his brother
and
his mother
in 1982.
Praise be to God he did not.
Thank you Dennis for all you gave me.
I owe my salvation to Jesus Christ,
and to my parents and Dennis, who led me to him.
God so richly blessed me with these people.
They all gave me so much.
They gave me God.
God is love.
They loved.
I love.
ma
