Tsunami Warning

This is the view outside our deck at our beautiful Maui home. Right smack in a tsunami zone.

The Chilean 8.8 earthquake has created a Pacific tsunami that has forced evacuation of the coastal areas in the islands. It is predicted to hit at about 11 am Maui time. All island residents are taking this one seriously and preparing. There is time to get boats out to sea, buy food and water, prepare for power failures, seal things up and move to higher ground.

The view from our Maui living room.

Fortunately we are above water level here, by about 15 feet. Unfortunately we have a basement room that may fill with ocean water!

Hopefully the tsunami, which is predicted to be 9-12 feet tall, will not cause any damage to people or property in the islands. We are tuning in to Hawaiian newscasts and can hear the tsunami sirens blasting all over the state.

My thoughts and prayers are here today.

The following is a report from the Pacific Disaster Center which is monitoring and updating this tsunami's status every hour.

A TSUNAMI HAS BEEN GENERATED THAT COULD CAUSE DAMAGE ALONG
COASTLINES OF ALL ISLANDS IN THE STATE OF HAWAII. URGENT ACTION
SHOULD BE TAKEN TO PROTECT LIVES AND PROPERTY.
A TSUNAMI IS A SERIES OF LONG OCEAN WAVES. EACH INDIVIDUAL WAVE
CREST CAN LAST 5 TO 15 MINUTES OR MORE AND EXTENSIVELY FLOOD
COASTAL AREAS. THE DANGER CAN CONTINUE FOR MANY HOURS AFTER THE
INITIAL WAVE AS SUBSEQUENT WAVES ARRIVE. TSUNAMI WAVE HEIGHTS
CANNOT BE PREDICTED AND THE FIRST WAVE MAY NOT BE THE LARGEST.
TSUNAMI WAVES EFFICIENTLY WRAP AROUND ISLANDS. ALL SHORES ARE AT
RISK NO MATTER WHICH DIRECTION THEY FACE. THE TROUGH OF A TSUNAMI
WAVE MAY TEMPORARILY EXPOSE THE SEAFLOOR BUT THE AREA WILL
QUICKLY FLOOD AGAIN. EXTREMELY STRONG AND UNUSUAL NEARSHORE
CURRENTS CAN ACCOMPANY A TSUNAMI. DEBRIS PICKED UP AND CARRIED
BY A TSUNAMI AMPLIFIES ITS DESTRUCTIVE POWER. SIMULTANEOUS HIGH
TIDES OR HIGH SURF CAN SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASE THE TSUNAMI HAZARD.
THE ESTIMATED ARRIVAL TIME IN HAWAII OF THE FIRST TSUNAMI WAVE IS
1119 AM HST SAT 27 FEB 2010

Shaun White Reprise

Shaun White and Olympic Gold for snowboarding


Some of Joey's marketing materials for Shaun White and Red Bull

The coveted guitar picks!

The other day I posted about the Snowboarding Olympic Gold Medalist, Shaun White, and the fact that our son, Joey, who ran a division of a marketing company called Sauce Design, was proud to have both Shaun and Red Bull as his clients. I wasn't able to post pictures of his work because I misplaced my camera battery and charger. I have since found both, which is a great relief. I found these pictures in Joey's computer, so ( drum roll, please) I am very proud to present some of the marketing materials that Joey, in the last year of his life, created for Shaun White and Red Bull. (He also made a fantastic video which I don't know how to insert here.) Just as a coincidence, you may notice that Joey and Shaun had very similar coloring.

And frankly, this is just one little slice of his genius, and it is especially apropos with the Olympics going on right now. The kid made us proud in so many ways.

Dream

Joe woke up sobbing this morning. He turned to me and told me that he had just had the most vivid dream of a plane that had crash-landed, and everyone was scrambling to get out of the plane, and he was the last on board. All the passengers were jumping into the water, and he was in back, waiting his turn, wrapped only in a towel. As he was leaving the rear of the plane, he noticed it began moving and he saw there was a semi-truck pulling the plane out and along a wharf. There were three men in the cab of the truck who were laughing like they do this all the time. As he was walking away in his towel, the three men greeted him, and one of them had a polaroid instant camera and snapped two pictures of him and handed them to him and said: "You will like these". Joe took them and laughed thinking, " This will be proof for Karen that this really happened".

As he walked into the crowded terminal, packed with people because of the crash, he looked down at the developing pictures. Instead of finding pictures of himself, they were pictures of Joey, all radiant and beautiful. Joe was thinking how happy he was that he had gotten some new pictures of Joey, when suddenly it dawned on him that these had just been taken only minutes before. He fell to his knees sobbing, which woke him up, still sobbing.

His interpretation of the dream: the plane is life, the crash is all that goes wrong in our broken world, God has to tow us out of the crash, the drivers are angels, God's ministering servants, the towel indicates that all material things are gone, and don't matter, the pictures of Joey were a window into eternity, the reality is not this life, but the life beyond.

Good dream--good tears.

Joey is alive and well and in another place, but not so very far away.

Acts 2:17 In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.

Addendum to Previous Post

For those of you who've asked--I haven't posted a picture of said guitar pick due to the unfortunate loss of my camera battery and charger. I think I left them at a hotel last weekend, which is now on hiatus for a month for refurbishment. I have a feeling I will never see those two items again.

Just so you know...

Shaun White and the Olympics

It's been fun watching Shaun White win Olympic gold for his snowboarding acrobatics. He's an amazing guy, extremely talented and likable--with a personality as bright as that red mane of hair. In the last year of my son's life, Shaun White was his client in a marketing alliance with Red Bull. Joey created marketing campaigns for both the man and the product and spent some time in Aspen doing promotions for Shaun during the X-Games. Tonight my husband commented that the dozens of guitar picks with Sean White's logo, designed by our son, might be a hot item on E-bay.

Not that we are selling.

Just another reminder that our son has moved on to bigger and better things.

A Letter from a Friend

Danny Lehmann

(follow link to bio and books)

Dear Karen and Joe,
Aloha from Honolulu. Linda and I sat down yesterday and read aloud your meditations on heaven and were quite moved. It is so incredible to see God's grace in your life in helping you to walk through the pain of losing Joey. The following is in response to what you said in your letter I would not have sent this to you any time sooner until now but was prompted in reading your reponse.

This is because it is factually based, theologically grounded, etc. and it is usually not facts and theology that people need when they are hurting. But I felt to write the following as a confirmation on what God has already been showing you and to encourage that you are on the right track in looking forward to the future.

All of us deal with grief differently. I have never lost a son so I have no way of knowing how to deal with the same degree of grief that you folks have had. However in the last year I have lost my best friend to cancer, a very good friend, Kit to cancer and now am watching my best friend's wife (the one who died) lose her hair in suffering with cancer as well. Also, we have had several of our YWAM leaders who were early pioneers pass away recently as well.

This has caused me to dive into the Scriptures to really get convinced in my own mind about all this stuff about heaven and eternity (and I suppose this is the way I process grief!). This led me on an intense study of the Bible on my own and a consulting of deep theologians like N. T. Wright who has written a 900 page thesis on the "Resurrection of the Body" (called "The Resurrection of the Son of God") and a more popular book called "Surprised by Hope." There is also a 500 page book that I plowed through last year by Randy Alcorn called "Heaven" which is a more readable rendering of what happens after death and kind of a user friendly way of communicating what N.T. Wright has said as well as others.

I recently heard professor Wright in a question and answer session at Calvin College. When speaking of heaven he said "OK for those of you American Evangelicals, yes when we die we go to heaven - but we won't be there for long!" By this he was referring to the clear teaching of Scripture on us inhabiting a "new heaven and a new earth" spoken of many times in Scripture in the writings of Peter and the book of Revelation. Both N.T. Wright and Randy Alcorn stress in their books, " The PHYSICALITY of our eternal life." Both of these authors drill home that we will be in physical and resurrection bodies identical to the one that Jesus appeared in when he met with his disciples (Phil. 3:21, 1John3:1-2). An excellent chapter in Alcorns book entitled "Who Will We be in Heaven" Alcorn points out many Scriptures where we retain the same identity that we had here on earth. With a lot of Scriptural background and a tad bit of conjecture and guesses based upon what is clear in Scripture, Alcorn suggests we will be exactly who we are for all eternity except with a magnifying glass on our good traits and our bad traits taken away.

The conclusion, to me, was a confirmation of what you said in your reflections on heaven, that we will be on paradise earth (the Jehovah witnesses had something right!) The reality will literally be heaven on earth when the New Jerusalem descends out of heaven from God and we all live forever on planet earth. The Scripture is not clear on descriptions of "heaven" so unfortunately our minds listen to Medevial writers who talk about sitting on clouds, and somehow floating around the universe as disembodied spirits. Wright and Alcorn point out that this is not the case. We will not be disembodied spirits, we will be in resurrection bodies able to recognize one another and continuing on for all eternity to love the ones that God gave us to love for our temporal life here on earth.

As you said, you will be reunited with Joey and will have the same wonderful interaction with him except enhanced to the nth degree; I suppose this will be to all the intensity we can handle by our loving Father in heaven. I will hang with my friend Kevin in heaven and continue to bug him about his red hair and he will continue to ridicule me about being short. I will bug Kit about all those times that he fell asleep in the Maui airport parking lot when I was supposed to be picked up to speak at the church! I will see Keith Green and ask him what the heck happened on that day when his plane went down.

One thing for sure. We will all as the scripture says have ETERNAL LIFE - an eternity not only with Jesus but with the ones Jesus has given us to love here on this earth.

Linda and I are finding as we are pushing 60 (I'm pushing harder than she is!) as we hear reports of friends going to be with the Lord (Just yesterday our first European YWAMer passed away) it causes us to think more about finishing well. I'm pouring myself into the next generation so that many more people will be able to experience this wonderful life in the new heaven and the new earth where indwells righteousness (2Peter 3).

I know the pain never goes away but as Paul exhorted the Thessalonians they were not to sorrow as others regarding those who had passed away because we know we will see them again. We sorrow not "as others" this is simply because we have the hope of eternal life. I have always observed the generally accepted wisdom not to talk a lot in the presence of grieving people and certainly not to give them a load of Scriptures to make them feel better. Often times those Scriptures make them feel worse, much like those Hallmark cards that you beat up on the other day, Karen! However, a word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver (Prov 25:11) and I trust these words will be that to you. May the Lord bless you guys and you are continually in our prayers, that God would continue to heal your hearts and help you personally to finish well.

Aloha,
Danny

Valentine for My Family

i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in

my heart) i am never without it (anywhere

i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done

by only me is your doing, my darling)

i fear

no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want

no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)

and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows

higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

ee cummings

Snowy Memories

“In any man who dies there dies with him,

his first snow and kiss and fight.
Not people die but worlds die in them.”

Yevgeny Yevtushenko (Russian Poet, b.1933)

Think Heaven

My view of Heaven has radically changed in the past year and a half. When Joey departed earth, I had a dismally small view of Heaven--not that I knew that. In hindsight, I can see that I viewed it as a blandly mysterious, relatively colorless place, where people wait things out till the end of the world. It took me more than a few days to mentally transfer his spirit there, so abrupt was his departure. And then, I wasn't comforted by my notion of it at all. All I could feel was the deep gaping void of his absence and a shattering sense that we all had been cheated of his life, all of us including Joey. As time has passed, I still conclude that we were cheated, but now I'm not so certain that he was. Now I'm thinking he's the lucky one, he's the leader, and like a kid at Disneyland, he was passed to the front of the line for a still unknown reason, and he's loving every minute of it. He's supremely alive in an incredibly, indescribably wonderful way.

What does it mean to be alive in Heaven? I know the specific verses about Heaven, but they are, in my opinion, very thin on description. I was initially discouraged by this because I had not developed my imagination about Heaven. I couldn't picture what Joey was doing and I secretly felt it must not be much if God didn't bother to describe it.

But bit by bit, new light has dawned. Scripture now reads like a new book to me. Old familiar words that I had taken for granted, have taken on new life and meaning. What I notice in a new way as I read , what pops out at me now, are all the verses on eternal life. Everywhere, everywhere, verses and promises and encouragement based on the idea of eternal life. Few descriptions of Heaven, but many, many promises about eternal life, over and over again. Jesus doesn't explain what it is, but He relentlessly elevates it as the ultimate prize. It occurred to me that eternal life is not some space-agey place out in the stars that needs to be described. But it is this life, only the best of this life, the perfect part originally created by God before sin, continuing on. In a better way, in a better place, with better people, and with our beautiful God in the center of it all. Paradise.

My favorite verse is this one from John 11:25-26:

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"

Those words tell me that death for a believer in Christ, like my son Joey, is merely a matter of geography--alive, but in a different place. Though we are suffering loss, Joey isn't. He simply shed a fragile skin, but he's alive, he never died, he lives in spite of dying--however you say it, it's good news. I think I thought I believed that before Joey departed, but then the unthinkable happened and the reality of the death of our beloved was so much more horrible than I ever imagined, I just wasn't sure of anything anymore.

If God has done anything in me since Joey left, it's been to re-shape my view of Heaven. Over and over again, I see and hear things that rebuild my confidence in its reality. I'm taking it personally. I believe God is on a campaign to convince me of the reality of Heaven. And it's not just from His Word, which is ultimately powerful, but He is corroborating His Word from nature, from history, from music, from movies, from the longings of our hearts for perfection, beauty and love.

It's safe to say it's a conviction now. I don't doubt it anymore. I don't dread it anymore. It's vivid and full of life and creation. It's better to me than earth, this place that I used to love so well that I tried to squeeze every bit of life out of it. I confess I mistook it for heaven and counted on it too much for my happiness. I've had to do quite a bit of reorganizing my life around some new truth. But now I'm certain that the place of my dreams lies in my future. And now, more often than not, I'm restlessly biding my time for my Homecoming day, and instead of longing for Joey to return, I long to go there and be with him.

Sympathy Cards

Had to buy one yesterday.
Found them to be totally and completely insipid, inadequate.
Written by people who have never lost the essential.
Saying stupid meaningless words.
You still have the love...
the memories...
every sunset a reminder...
That doesn't help.
Not at all.
Just makes me angry.
How dare you, Hallmark.

Snowy Friends in the Neighborhood

His sign says: "Will work for ice!"

Pops and Junior

A little tipsy


Caterpillar or caboose?

Shades...

Reflectors

Mee-owww

Honeymoon couple

Goggleman

Fancy scarf

Our humble little guy. Shyly hiding in our backyard.

Bear with us if you live in the snow and are totally sick of shoveling and longing for sunny days again. We've never done this before and are LOVING the snow and the snowmen!