I have been thinking a lot about Truth. I am compelled by the passion Jesus has regarding true Truth. He told His followers that He is Truth and knowing Him(the truth) will set us free. Truth is controversial and it requires confrontation. The key here is the confrontations are not arguments. The confronting of issues flows readily from what is “life giving” plans, not to bring condemnation. Remember the famous Bible recording of a woman being brought to Jesus in the public meeting place and they told Jesus that she needed to be stoned. You probably know the reply Jesus gave. It is a controversial confrontation in his early ministry but His delivery of Truth was so clarifyingly crystal clear! .He said, ” if anyone here Is without sin why don’t you throw the first stone..” Can you imagine if those men knew they were talking to the only One who was qualified to throw stones! I just love how Jesus teaches! He tells us the Truth and he is speaking of himself.
Do you have people who on life’s journey have for some reason impacted, or influenced you in either a good or a bad way or both? I am not speaking here of influential parents etc…but those who perhaps displayed character and wisdom that remain in your memory bank and you would like to emulate. That person that you may meet suddenly and briefly but their impact quietly journeys on with you long after. For example, I met a girl on the first day of tenth grade who impacted me with her kindness in a profound way but by Christmas she died of Leukemia. We were fifteen years old. She was so kind to others and never complained of her pain. The last time I saw her was in a hospital bed and even though she tried to hide it I could see her pain as she periodically would grab the side rails of her hospital bed until her knuckles were white . I knew this is what “courage and bravery” were about. I did not yet understand fully what I was seeing at the time but she stayed with me. Her beautiful young skin was alabaster white and perfectly smooth. Her smile remained genuine and her eyes sparkled when she smiled. From our meeting to this current day every time I hear John Denver’s song, ” Sunshine on my shoulders .” I stop and remember. No matter how short her physical life seemed, the impact she had on me was a gift. It was a gift to many others too. I have a few people. Their actions or examples of how they handle life are inseparable from my development as a human being. To be a good human, to be creative, to be life giving with actions and words, to speak with wisdom and kindness, to be witty or clever. You see, each one of them have shown me their dance steps of joy and sorrow. These steps come with success or failure. They have taught me how to love and forgive others. They have even shown me even when to walk away.
She is a petite and elegant woman. She is dying. After receiving palliative care for a year and a few days, she is now receiving continuous care until she passes away. In the area of Hospice nursing, continuous care abbreviated to CC marks the twenty- four hour care beginning. I have been on twelve hour shifts with her for three days. The first visit I noticed that she continuously positioned her right hand in a fist with her thumb slightly curvedat the top of the fist. I would straighten the hand out flat thinking this would be more comfortable but within five minutes that hand would return to the position of holding onto a rope. I began to observe that even in her brief waking moments she would do this action with both hands. Eventually during very quiet and brief conversations we talked of her younger life and all the glorious days that love in life have brought her. A loving husband, healthy children, grandchildren and even great grandchildren. She told me that her husband is the best human being she has ever known. She was the first female professor of a big University in Texas and she said her husband supported her all the way! On the last day she was weaker and her voice diminished so we didn’t talk much. I had been straightening her hands off and on for days and within a minute or to she would peacefully dose off and put her hands right back in this unique position. Finally, I asked her about it and she said, “sometimes I become a little afraid of dying and when that fear hits I am reminded of a braided cord. A cord made up of three separate fibers that are entwined as if they were one large rope. Unbreakable bonds, least that is what they say. One day the pain and fear overwhelmed me and I whispered to God and asked for comfort. Then as I prayed my hands seemed to involuntarily fold like a fist holding a rope and it was so comfortable and calming. As I lay there praying the Spirit of God greeted me so gently and told me he loved me and soon he would be taking me home. He told me to hold onto to this rope of The Trinity and not let go. He said that he won’t leave me and to just trust him and hold on to the rope and even as I grow weaker and you straighten my hands they return to the rope and I hold on so hard that I feel no pain nor fear at all. Within the hour this beautiful, faith filled woman died but without a doubt I know Whom she was holding to and that He would never break his promise.
“It is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee. 2Corinthians 1:21,22
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?
I rise early in the morning a few seconds post dawn. The melted butterscotch sky is streaked with baby blue and left over indigo. A nice squall blew up last night and the sand has no footprints in it. The sand dunes are pregnant with sea oats. The oats, my favorite tropical grass, sway charmingly in the breeze and quietly support the island with their roots. The large oats smell like salt and theirs stalks tall and sleek weave into grass.
Just in a snap spot of my dreams I take off running from shore as the rain begins. I dash and grab my laundry on the clothes line.. At that moment your camera just happened to find my face and you say,” your eyes are blue- gray, like seawater.” I close my eyes. When I open them you are gone. Shutter stop.
I have no memory of warmth with others of my kind.
Although fading, my longing drives my soul forward.
A primal memory of Joy beats like a captured bird in my brain.
Yet somehow I know Him and see the full Glory of God.
So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, “You are a God of seeing,” for she said, “Truly here I have seen him who looks after me. Genesis 16:13
Jill Autrey Dorman 