I was in that place on the other side of our land where mountains and sky and sea  come together in one beautiful scape.

 I love it there.  

Everywhere you look there is something else to take your breath away.

 I lived there, years ago.  I was not terribly moved in those days by the beauty around me.  They were years of youthful struggles and searching.  It wasn’t about searching for God or meaning or truth.  No, I knew those things were settled.  God is!  Always has been and always will be.  I knew Him then and I know Him today.  He is good and strong and loving and allows tragedy and sadness and pain to touch us.  Not because He wants to hurt us or make us cry.  He allows thorns to wound us because these show us our need for Him.   In them we can see His greatness.  Pain is bad and it is real and  worse  for some  than for others.  Maybe the ‘pain threshold’ is lower for me than for you.  Perhaps you have been asked to carry a load that is heavier than your neighbor’s.

I read once that death is so difficult for us because God did not create us to die.  He created us to live forever.  Sad that because of sin, there is death.  It isn’t forever but it is hard to die because we were made to live.    Thankful is what I am.  Even though there is sin and death all around, there is hope because God made us to live.  With Him.  This life is such a miniscule drop in a vast eternity.  Keeping all eyes on Him is what’s best.  Saying good bye to people we love is deep and dark and hopeless.  Unless we know we will see them again.  Unless we know they are where they are best.  Where they are whole and happy and peace is all around and Jesus is there and nothing could be better.  If they, before dying recognized their need of Jesus the savior.

Truth is a struggle sometimes.  

He made us to glorify Him.

He made us to worship Him.  

Not because He is some crazed greedy selfish power hungry being.  Because He loves us and knows that it is best for us to worship the one who is living and loving rather than to worship some Thing.  

We will worship.  

We will find an object to focus our devotion on.  Let it be the one living, loving, all knowing creator of everything.  Not some Thing we have formulated in our own minds or that someone else has created for us to think about.

Weeks have rolled by since I knocked on the door of that house.  On all sides there is green and mountains and pastures filled with fences and cows and chickens and blueberry bushes.  Beauty that only a loving and creative God could make.  I worshiped Him as the sun went down and I drove that road to a house that was full of sadness.  I knew there would be tears and hugging and voices filled with longing and pain and stories of “I remember when”.  I wanted to be there.  To hug and console and cry and question and remember.   It would be hard and hard is not fun.  There would be pictures and talk of a life lived and now gone, Home.

I knocked on the door and she opened it quietly.  Her eyes were red and glistening.  Her face told me that although it had been two months the pain was still almost more than she could manage.  I hugged her and she wept in my arms.  Tears rolled down our faces and there were no words.  She welcomed me in.  She showed me an album that had been made.  Pictures taken, knowing they would be the last.  This book would be forever, on this earth, treasured.

She is the mother.  

Her son, the one she carried for nine months and loved and raised and laughed  with and cried over, is gone.  He has left behind  a wife and two sons.  

Oh he isn’t sad.  He is dancing with the angels and worshiping the one who made him.  He is laughing that big laugh and showing those perfect teeth his parents paid a fortune for.  He is in his forever home and those left behind will see him again someday.  His sister who has two  boys of her own and misses her little brother, has a tattoo.  She got it when this brother was still here.  It is on her ankle and she showed it to me and explained what it means.  It is there, to be worn forever, in honor of this brother who is no longer here.  There is a guitar and how appropriate since this loved one who is gone was maker of beautiful music with his guitar.  In fact, at his funeral the platform was decorated with his guitars and guests were given a guitar pic for remembering.  He was a good boy and a good man and good husband and a good father and a good son and a good brother and a good friend.  

He is gone now.

She, his mother,  passed me a piece of paper.  There were words on it and I read them out loud.  She cried and I cried and the words were beautiful.

“Grief is like the sky, covering everything”.  Apparently these  were penned by C.S. Lewis.  He was a wise and thinking man.  He was and is right.  I pictured the sky.  How wide and all encompassing it is.  As far as the eye can see, it is.  I looked at this mother, my friend, my mother’s adopted daughter.  I looked at the paper and  thought of the sky and I understood a bit better, how deep and wide and high and great her sorrow is.

She asked me if I was going to say something about this on my blog and I asked if it would be ok and she said yes and here we are.

She is my friend and I weep with her at her loss.  She will smile again.  one day.  Right now she weeps, often.  She misses this boy.  She wishes he was still here.  She knows where he is and rejoices in the hope of seeing him one day.  But now, here, in that house in the valley, she wants nothing more than to sit at the table with him.  She wants to feel his arms around her and see that smile and listen to that laugh.  Even so, she loves the one who made that boy.  The one who made her and knew His plan and understood from the beginning, that this would be a difficult path for her to walk.  This mother and her husband and many many many others, prayed that their boy would get better.  They asked that God would mercifully heal him and save his life.

God had other plans.  These loved ones do not blame or hate or say nasty things about God.  They gave this boy to God all those years ago when he was a babe in arms.  They told God to have His way and most importantly, to open the eyes of this child so  he could go someday to His forever home.  God answered their prayer in a way they had never expected and they don’t like this answer.  They want it to be different.  It isn’t.  They are sad and they have hope and they still serve this God who is wise and loving and caring even when it looks other than.  

Last night we had people here in this home God gave us.  They are loved by Him and don’t know it.  The talk around our table was of  work and the law and cases and briefs and hearings and there was laughter and eating and I showed them hospitality and I watched and listened and there was a grey spot in my heart.  I was in the kitchen getting the main course on the plates.   I heard one lady laugh and say that in the middle of the night before, their nine year old son had wakened them and wanted to know about ‘the after life’.  I stopped what I was doing and the meat was sliced and the potatoes were ready to dish out and I listened.  There was laughter and a question about how another would answer and then her husband said “well Rob’s kids went to Sunday School so that would not be a question that would trouble their children”.  Laughter and then more talk on the matter and then the mother saying she had reminded him about the lion king and the circle of life and everyone laughed and went on to another topic. 

My heart stopped and then broke and then I dished up the beans and called the guests to the table.   I thought of that boy lying in his bed asking for hope.  Asking for truth about what is to come.  His loved ones had no answers.  They groped in the dark, literally and figuratively.     I thought about this friend far away who has lost her son.  I thought of her sadness and yet through it all, her hope.  She misses this boy but she knows he is with His savior.  She knows she will see him again and through her tears she can say, I don’t like it, yet still I trust.