I am always astounded when a renewed sense of the “Realm of Grace.” is gifted to me by the Holy. My dear mentor Dr. Hud McWilliams puts it this way, “Grace erodes all of our human ability to be gods. Grace removes ALL of our ability to PRETEND we are in control.”
I clearly see This Realm of Grace cannot be diminished, Grace cannot be penetrated by darkness, Grace cannot be stopped by disease nor death, and best of all it cannot be bought or earned! The birthing place of Grace is Mercy. The person of Grace is Jesus our Lord who died and gave us his grace because our Heavenly Father is merciful. This refreshing and renewing gift from Grace is that Grace annihilated Shame! And I bear it no more!
Evening has fallen and I find myself sitting in a place of yearning, like being home sick. I am completely at peace. All is safe and warm yet I have a longing. I want to savor this life I have been given.
Every once in a while a moment will cling to me longer than others and it catches my breath because I want to stay there for a while before it becomes a memory. In those moments I might smell fresh cut grass or feel thunder shake the earth or laugh until my stomach muscles ache or taste the sweetness from the honeysuckle vine. Like an old reel to reel movie I see all of them. All of the memories. All of the generations of my family and I want to go home. What joy to know the God who loves us in a place where there’s no death or time. It is wonderful.
A Beach Morning Glory Railroad Vine growing on the Beach
Love will grow over barriers and around obstacles still blooming and still fragrant. Love is having the strength to stay. Love is a wild and furious risk, a pouring out of all that one can from that cup and drink it. Love is rich and poor. Love is sickness and health. Love is a verb, an action word. Nothing about love is passive. Love cannot be manipulated. Love. Risks. Everything. The Holy God is Love’s name…ponder this, ponder Him on this busy Tuesday of your life. Love changes everything!
Today God orchestrated some happenings that I needed. It was an affirming whisper from him…
Such an intimate and sweet “I love you” from my Lord. I say intimate because He and I are the only ones who know. I say sweet because I am his daughter and he understands me.
Snapshot of my dreams, 4… “painting broken pictures with wounded hands.”
It was not eight o’ clock in the morning. It was not two days before Christmas, and my phone did not just ring and awaken me from a fitful dream.
If I do not allow these things to exist then all is well. You are alive, therefore, my world is on its axis and breathing continues…
I did not hear my husband’s footsteps coming down the hall. I did not hear the groan of that spot on the wooden floor that is worn and squeak under his weight. I did not feel someone sit on the end of our bed. He waited…
He could not be sitting there waiting because if he were it means you are dead. It would mean he is going to tell me so. It would mean that a light went out in my heart and all has gone dark…
This tiny act of turning my face toward my waiting husband confirms that he is there and he is going to tell me you didn’t make it. He will remind me they said your heart was too diseased which made repair difficult at best.
If I close my eyes and try with all my might to make things not happen, to never have this wretched day exist I would do it. Yet as the minutes tick relentlessly on I finally turn my head and open my eyes and it has to be said…you are dead. I step into a quicksand. I am dazed, cloudy in my head. I must face immortality with Faith. I had to face that the one who loved me the most in all this world was gone. Now I am painting broken pictures with wounded hands.
I am five years old and it is Christmas. We live in Memphis and it has snowed on Christmas Eve. The snow in the dawn’s twilight looks powder blue blanketing our yard. I have my nose to the window because Santa is coming! You are as excited as I and my brothers. The next morning we were up at the crack of dawn and there in the snow were the biggest boot prints I had ever seen. You said Santa walked around our yard because we don’t have a chimney so he came through our back door. I marveled at this possibility. It was pure magic at Christmas with you. It is quite appropriate that you died in the season you enjoyed the most.
Now I am forty- five and there is no snow, there are no boot prints in my yard. There is no joyous Christmas music. Just the silent weight of grief. I speak to friends but I am on autopilot. I have never lost someone I loved so much. It isn’t a feeling of sadness because I know your Faith in Christ is real. It isn’t a feeling at all. It is an altered state, a new dimension.
The funeral is blurred. I do all the daughter type things for my Mom. I have stayed with her these last two nights as she stares into space or weeps. It is December twenty sixth and I marvel at the amount of people who are here even though it is Christmas and they could be somewhere else having fun. People offer condolences, love, and prayer. They are kind. I do my best to be attentive to their kindness but I fail. I can’t think straight. I cannot imagine a world where you aren’t. There is no one else who will knock on my door every school morning and awaken me with a silly song or stand at my door and do a pretty good impersonation of Elvis, or call me by a nickname you gave me. There will never be another church service where I sit and listen to you teach the Word of God. There will never be another Daddy who came when I got hurt and picked me up and took me home. Never another strong arm as yours will be held up in front of me like a gate as protection when I am standing beside you in the front seat as you drive…(no seatbelts in those days) but the thought never crossed my mind that it wasn’t safe because you were there. I will never have another super hero who catches me when I jump in the deep end of the pool and don’t swim well yet. There is no one left on this earth that will understand the anger I sometimes had with Mom as a teen or the despair I felt when I got sick. I remember you wept when you saw my swollen joints and that I could barely walk. I saw your frustration at not being able to fix it. I always felt you were on my side. I always knew nothing I did could stop your love for me and I was right. Nor mind for you.
The day after the funeral came and went. Then the next day and the next and the next. I am robotic much of the time. The grief beats down my body with a crushing weight. I keep remembering our last conversation, it blesses me still. You said, ” Jesus was always “Center” for you. That following him (Jesus) is the most important issue for a dying world. You said, ” don’t follow politics or religion! Just follow Jesus.” Then you called me the apple of your eye. These words of endearment comfort me and little did I know they would be a greater comfort in the twenty-two years that have come to pass. So much left unsaid in snapshots, don’t you think Dad?
These high school halls are not hallowed halls but they are unsurpassed in the scheme of life lessons….Truth and Fiction …
Remember that boy with the unfortunate eyebrows hurrying down the hall as if afraid or embarrassed? He was.
Remember that girl passing a note to her “steady” guy declaring her undying devotion because he said he “loved” her? He did not.
Remember when you thought a certain friend’s family seemed so perfect? They were not.
The stereo- types still linger in these tales of fiction. Fifty years later and I can name them all by heart.
We all wanted to be (well most of us) to be prettier, cuter, thinner, funnier, taller, shorter, darker, lighter, a better singer, a better dancer, the beauty queen, the sports star, the math genius, or the valedictorian.
I guess it is like the “Breakfast Club” and the “Big Chill” movie all rolled up together. (we did have the best music though). I always felt like the adults in my days of high school tried to minimize the harshness of the unspoken boundaries. There are many people that I admired from afar and would have like to have known better but there was also a nagging burden of exposure.
Ends up that about ninety-nine percent of High School Fiction left some of us hurt and even wounded and that is where reality steps in. No, we had not yet let our tender souls relax in the discovery zone of finding there is no such thing as perfect. How could we know that what lay ahead would require a lot more truth and a little less comparison?
Finding Courage…I sat by my window. It was a trial this summer with many days in distress and concern. I would love to tell you I handled it so spiritually but at times that is not the case. I cried. I prayed. I talked to the whole tribe of medical people but of course the most important thing is that I went to the Lord and God’s Word.
My heart was longing to have courage but I really wasn’t sure what Courage looks like. So, to the Bible I went. Then I went to prayer. I told God I don’t really know what courage means and asked him to help me find some.
In the many weeks I was housebound I began to read about men and women in the Bible who took and had Courage and as I read I realized that none of these people had courage of their own. They had Courage WITH them. Courage is not only a verb but it is also one of the very definitions of God himself. Courage much like grace, mercy, and love are not earned they are GIVEN and who is the giver of all thing? God of course, through Jesus!
People who have Godly Courage have it because the Holy One saw fit to send His Son to be born, live, die, and rise again, and then send His very on Spirit to live in us and give Holy gifts!. Courage is God’s gift to us as His children.
Oh, don’t get the idea that Courage is especially beautiful. This gift might be torn and tattered. It might be beaten and bleeding. It might be weeping until dawn. Courage is the opposite of Fear. Fear is never a gift from God. He does not give fear. Fear tells you God is NOT with you. Fear says you are weak and frail and alone.
I sit by my window. I am gaining my strength as summer is drifting away with a thunder in the heavens.
I sit by my widow. God’s presence abides as faithful and as sweet as ever and I have found his gift of Courage.
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17).
Jill Autrey Dorman 