Ode to Cancel Culture

Ode to Cancel Culture

by Rita Vaags

September 20, 2020

Oh, cancel culture hear the sound,

Of snowflakes falling all around.

You claim to be awake and yet,

you live in dreams of goals unmet.

You claim to make all voices heard,

until there’s one whose uttered word,

sounds different than your mantra shouts,

then viciously, you snuff it out!

So in your pursuit to embrace all,

by vilifying both big and small,

a new race is born for all to see

claiming its own supremacy.

What makes us different gets trampled down,

If you say “up,” we can’t say “down.”

and the beauty of what makes you and me,

like the different notes of a symphony,

is slowly silenced like a fading sound,

til nothing “different” can be found.

We all must sing a one-note song,

in the illusion for all to “get along.”

So Cancel Culture, soon you’ll see

in your pursuit that all be “free,”

you’ve chained up souls in prison cells,

to the sound of delusional freedom bells.

In the end you’ll cancel yourself, too,

and hate will consume all of you,

without willingness to reason nor debate, 

you’ll have become the very beast you claim to hate.

Today, my child was born...

Today... the sun is shining brightly and finally with power of warmth.  

The birds are singing and dancing about the sky with new found freedom. The world around me is so vibrant, so alive.. so I close my eyes, take a deep breath and let my soul drink it all into my heavy heart. Today... twenty-one years ago about this time, our darling little Isabel faith gave three little cries (against all odds) after an emergency c-section. She could fit in my hand yet she felt larger than life! I don’t know how the housing of our soul works, but I recall thinking it couldn’t possibly be limited to our physical stature. She filled the room. We didn’t yet know how filled with love she was... but that kind of love, the kind that is stronger than the grave, would infuse every single one of us who’d get to know her.  

Today... there is a wound in my chest, a weeping in my soul... but today, my joy to have known her and the privilege of having been her mother is greater than the pain. Today... I embrace love knowing in some way, I am embracing my darling Isabel Faith. Rest in sweet shalom, my darling girl.

Butterfly Greetings on Shavuot / Pentecost

July 1st as we entered into Palliative Care with our darling Isabel, I quietly spoke with her about how her body is a cocoon and her spirit a fully formed butterfly... that the struggle out of the cocoon is what strengthens the wings. Thirty-five days later, as she breathed her last, a butterfly fluttered away from her window on the third floor.

Isabel’s name in Hebrew is Elisheva which means “my God” and “seven.” Isabel was born during the feast of weeks (seven cycles of seven days) and I heard God speak about His plan of love concerning her at the Jubilee underpass (seven cycles of seven years). Today is Shavuot, the completion of seven cycles of seven weeks, and look at this butterfly landing on us and blessing us with affirmation today!! Never in my life has a butterfly landed on me (and the kids), let alone do it over and over again over the course of two hours!

Gratitude bricks

I've had one of the hardest and most humbling years of my life. I feel like I'm crawling my way out of a wreckage. I am not the same person... and maybe that's a good thing.

But my flame of faith has dwindled to a flickering flame and some days I fear the slightest breeze will extinguish it. So I surrender this tiny pile of embers with nothing but hope that He will still work with what's left. Perhaps whatever fire He can set ablaze with a pathetic flame will be all the more to His glory and His alone.

I have battled in my thoughts and flesh. I have hated what I've loved and loved what I hated. I finally understand Paul's words in Romans when he talks about the battle in his flesh... that he serves the law of God with his mind, but his body/flesh wages an even harder battle. He therefore concludes his frustration that he finds himself doing that which he hates!

Confession and repentance truly are the only spiritual keys out of our own prisons. It takes being willing to lose everything for the sake of finally reconnecting with integrity to leap like a gazelle out of our transgressions.

I so desperately long for the day when this testing is completed and the victory is fully His.

Joy used to be my daily companion but it's been nearly a year since I've felt her presence. But something dawned on me today...

I went for a walk and soaked in the long awaited sunshine. Suddenly, I began to thank God for the ability to walk... and a smile began on my face... so then I thanked Him for clean air and lungs that work to nourish my body with oxygen-rich blood... and a spark ignited in my heart.

Wow!! With each tiny brick of gratitude, it's as though I began laying a foundation amidst the wreckage. Joy can only be built on a foundation of gratitude!

It's not something that you can buy or be given, it truly is a choice to create a brick out of your own willingness to SEEK and FIND what is good around you. A paradigm shift with a power that no one can take from you!

No wonder the Bible says "rejoice in all circumstances for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."

So rather than be lost in my year of discipline from God as an erroneous message of my condemnation, I will rise with the truth that in discipline, He is CALLING us!

So my beloved dear ones, count your blessings like little bricks and watch Joy build up in your life like a lighthouse... a lighthouse where even the tiniest flickering flame can lead a ship safely home.

God bless you all!

Sand, Sin and Living Waters (Word of God)

I just remembered something I'd taught the children about four years ago...

We were on a camping trip to Kakabecca Falls and playing on the beach. The kids hands were coated with wet sand and they couldn't get it off. So I said "kids, come with me." They followed me back to the water and I said "do you see how you're covered in sand that you can't wipe off on your own? This sand is sticking to you like sin does. But God's Word is called living water. When we confess and repent of our sins, look at what happens...". With that, I put my dirty hands in the water and brought them back up completely free of any single grain of sand. The kids' eyes went wide-eyed and they quickly followed suit and marveled as their hands came back up completely clean! "Can you find any grain of sand or sin left on your hands?" They answered "no!" With a big smile on my face, I said "and that is how our God deals with our sins... once washed, they are nowhere to be found."

The LORD is gracious to bring this memory back to me today. And He is gracious to remind me of His tender mercy. He is Mighty to save and worthy of all praise. May my soul magnify His Redemptive Name!

Isabel’s Memorial Service

so many of you have journeyed with us, carrying us through love and prayers.  Here were my thoughts and observations as Isabel’s mother these nineteen years.  I miss my baby so much... but she lives on as I proclaim what I believe her mission has been!

https://youtu.be/EltX5k6PylQ

Nevertheless We've Rebelled Against You

It was during my study on the Holy Spirit that it was revealed to me that He is not a New Testament being!  He has been there from the beginning and He is everywhere in the Old Testament.  I had no idea!  We are told that every prophet was cloaked by the Holy Spirit.

And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place... no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation.  For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.  (2 Peter 1:19-21)

The job of the Holy Spirit includes knowing all Truth, witnessing to the Truth, teaching the Truth, empowering others with obedience to the Truth, sanctifying those in the Truth, etc... His actions and words are proclaimed through the true prophets.

But we are of the flesh and we refuse God's truth, we refuse to submit to it

Losing Isabel Faith

My beloved brothers and sisters, near and far, known and unknown...

It is with a great heaviness that I let you know that our daughter, Isabel Faith, passed away on Saturday August 4th... her daddy's birthday.  We began a very rough 2018 on my birthday (end of January) and after seven months and seven days of hospitalizations, intubations/life support, etc... it is finished.  She is free.

Isabel was surrounded by loved ones, and she gazed at her father who gently played guitar as I hummed to her when she breathed her last.  I lay in bed that night and wept like I have never wept before... my back arched as though heaven itself were trying to pull my spirit out through my chest!  A feeling I pray/hope I don't ever have to experience again.

We will be holding her Celebration of Life on Wednesday, August 15th at 2:00 pm.  Know that all of you who have carried us in your thoughts and prayers will be with us.

There are too many amazing details that the LORD orchestrated these last seven months (including the removal of a grapefruit-sized tumour from my right ovary) and my hope and prayer as I learn what life looks like without her physical presence, is that I will document those details to share with all of you.  She was not just our daughter, she was (and continues to be) God's gift to all of us.

Thank you for loving us, carrying us and for mourning and celebrating with us.  God bless you all.

From Ashes to Ashes

The days are strangely passing by as though the world and its hubbub doesn’t realize an angel in its midst has left to return from her mission on earth back to her Maker. Time stops for nothing and for no one. And maybe that’s a good thing or I’d find it very easy to keep everything on “pause.”

Yesterday, Duane, the kids and I went to Selkirk. We wanted to be “near” where Isabel’s precious little body was being cremated. Walking through this grieving process, I am surprised at what seems to matter to me. For one thing, I didn’t know to anticipate how difficult it would be to leave the precious little cocoon that housed her butterfly spirit. I sat there for nearly two hours on Saturday not knowing how to walk away. How? We’ve spent nineteen years protecting that little body, a little holy temple that housed Izzy’s larger-than-life spirit… And even though I know she’s no longer in there, I couldn’t believe how difficult it was to leave it behind. As I lay in bed that night, I wept like I’ve never wept in all my life… my back arched as though heaven itself was trying to pull my spirit out through my chest! I hope and pray I never have to experience that again.

Today, I got to “see” our precious girl in her beautiful new butterfly urn. Little Bear was playing and as I turned the corner and “saw” her, I wept and wept and wept. I touched the urn delicately, afraid at first. But then I pulled it into my arms and into my chest wishing I could pull it into my heart. I thanked God over and over again for having entrusted her to my care, allowing me the honour and privilege of being her mother. The funeral director came to check on me and she sat on the step as I shared Izzy stories. She laughed with me and cried with me until reluctantly, I placed the urn back and had to walk away again.

Grief is a strangely beautiful process. Perhaps it’s our own struggle out of our cocoon into what a “new” life will look like. But its the struggle that makes our wings strong. So I persevere believing there is a time coming when this struggle will become my victory.

False Apostles Of Christ scripture song