one thing

Somehow at lunch the other day, we started envisioning the children in their far-off future.

Sugar at 47, we thought, would have my mother's soft smile, my Farmer's silver-streaked walnut hair, be curator of a natural history museum, and dandling her first grandbaby.

Spice, a retired dancer, would run her kennel in cargo pants (or swirly skirts, we couldn't decide) alongside one of her children, and give ballet lessons on the side.

Nice would work as a nurse in labor and delivery, and adopt a child from far away.

Lil' Snip, apprenticed by my Farmer's favorite welder, of course, would build farm equipment and, if his current exhortive style is any indicator, preach.  Or boss serfs, maybe.

< < < - - * - - > > >

I asked my Farmer at supper that night what he thought he'd be like by 60.  He said he hadn't thought about it, but maybe he'd be enjoying his grandchildren.

Grandchildren.  Wow.  But I suppose in 20 years Sugar will have passed 30, and the others will be hard at her heels.  We might well have a lapful of grandbabies.

Who will I be by then??

Only God knows, of course, but somehow it helps a little to think so far ahead of the reality in front of me now, to have something, if not to aim for (since I've pretty well proven my inability to change anything about myself), then to look forward to.  A sort of hint, hint, if you will, to God (who I assume reads this blog even if no one else does).

I'll have traversed this treacherous terrain that I'm currently in, by then, and come out on the other side.  I'll be older, and my hair will likely have traded in chestnut for grey (although I'm hoping for silver, at least, or white, best of all).  My skin, already on its way to crepe-dom, will likely be papery over blue hilly veins:  I am thin-skinned, by both meanings of the word.  My fight for a youthful figure will have been lost for good, I suppose.  I hope I won't still be waging that futile war.  I can see glimpses of my physical destiny in my mother and her sisters, and would love to eventually inherit their cheery perspective as well.  My eyes, I pray, will still be bright with interest in everything around me.

In my musing, I glance at Randy Alcorn's Heaven on the table at my side, and suddenly I know what I want, more than anything else, when I am in the winter of my life:  I want the Spirit of Jesus so filling my heart that my eyes are filled with Heaven.  I want to be so God-love-saturated that joy and peace and compassion sprinkle everyone I'm with.


I want to have chosen the one thing needed, as Mary did.


To get there, I will need to learn to give up many things:  control (or its illusion), busy-ness (which is maybe the same thing, after all), self-preservation.... and perhaps things themselves - physical things, which take up space in our hearts and minds as well as in our shelves and attics.

I will have to learn trust, choose dependence.

Today is as good a day to start as any, I suppose:  Easter, symbolic of new life.


How shall I begin??

homesick

My Farmer taught from 1 Peter this morning in Sunday School.  We are sojourners, aliens, Peter reminds us.  This world is not our home.  We come from Heaven and everything here falls short.

"Write a letter home," my Farmer suggested, and handed paper around.  "Have you ever lived in another culture," he asked us, "even for a couple of weeks?  Pretend this, here, is that other culture, and write home to your Daddy about it."

I've lived in other cultures.  A winter in Baltimore, on the wrong side of town.  Eight months in Guatemala City.  Several semesters in a southern college town.  A summer in Georgia.  Two lonely years in Japan.

But lately I've been feeling more homesick than ever before in my life.  I don't have a death-wish, exactly, but I yearn for heaven, for a closeness to my Father that is unimpeded by earthly distractions and my own sin.  To be with him, to enjoy him, to know for the first time in my life the true depth of his love for me.  To be done with tired, and with tears.  That's what I'm made for; that's what my Home is like - joy, peace, authentic worship, unfettered communion with the Lover of my soul.

So unlike life here.

It was easy to write my letter.

Dear Daddy,
   I want to go home.  The people here don't know how to love.  They judge, take offense, are selfish and fearful and arrogant.  No one smiles very much, not like you.  No one seems to notice all the beauty you've made for them.
   It's all rubbing off on me.  I miss you - but I'm distracted with trying to fit in here - trying to belong. I find myself competing, wanting to be like them instead of like you.  I forget what you're like, sometimes.  I know you said I could call anytime, and I haven't lately.  I don't write very often, either, and although I read your letters when they come (thank you!), when I put them away, I usually forget what you wrote.
   I don't want to become like them.  I'm tired and confused and forgetful of my mission.
   Can you help me?

I went down to the service a little more raw than usual.  "Soon we will be coming home", we sang, and I couldn't keep back the longing tears.  The pastor spoke of Jesus' agony in Gethsemane and I cried again, to know that he, too, wanted out.  Yes, he chose obedience, but he so intensely desired to avoid it that he cried aloud and sweated drops of blood.  My God was human, too.


I am here on assignment, like Jesus was.  My assignment might look easy to you, but I am so weak that it seems hard to me.  I want to choose obedience, like Jesus did, but I long, some days, to give up, to be able to go back home to my Daddy where all is right again.

A lady at the grocery store this week struck up a conversation with me.  She mentioned working with music and I asked what she does.  "I sing for the dying," she said.  I could not imagine more beautiful work to do.  I told her about the time my daughters sang for me, and we both got goosebumps.

I would love to be sung right into heaven, into my Daddy's waiting arms, to hear him say, "There, there - it's all over now, you're home again.  You did good; I'm proud of you."  (that last I can hardly type; it feels like heresy to claim that for myself.)

But for now, I'm still here.  So are you.  Maybe you're homesick, too.


Sugar asked me one time - or was it Spice? - why God put us on earth in the first place.  Not why he made us, but why he didn't just make us and plop us in heaven, where we belonged.  Why subject us to life on earth, first?  I told her I didn't know (and I still don't) but that maybe it was because we appreciate something so much more when we've felt its lack, longed for it, and worked hard for it.

Maybe we can help each other, while we wait ... and maybe in the helping, we'll see that that's why we're here.

When we arrive at eternity's shore,
Where death is just a memory and tears are no more,
We'll enter in as the wedding bells ring -
Your bride will come together and we'll sing ... You're beautiful!
           [by Phil Wickham]

foggy day

I drove to moms' group this morning through fog.  I love fog.  It's exciting to me:  feels like adventure around the corner, mysteries about to be unveiled, impossibilities becoming possible (all good, of course).  "Grownup" that I am, I almost expect to find fairyland come to life when I'm in the fog.

I know some people hate fog; they preach its danger for drivers and dub it fearful.  I do slow down, use low beams, everything my father taught me.  But I still like fog.

I remember one of those so-called psychological tests popular in high school (and beyond, for some of us) where you ask questions and take note of answers and then reveal the key to the test-taker's inner truth in the symbolism of the questions.  This one asked what you feel in the fog.

I said "anticipation".

In the answers, fog symbolized the afterlife.

If that "test" is as bogus as all good pseudo-psychology is, then I probably like the fog because one of my favorite childhood books was about a city that only existed in the fog.

But if there's any truth to the symbolism, my answer would still be the same.  When I think of life after death, I feel delighted anticipation.  As much as I enjoy life and find it unthinkably awful to leave my family brokenhearted behind me, I confess that I am eager to run into the arms of my Savior (Luke 15:20), to have him present me "without fault and with great joy" to the Father (Jude 24), to have finished, finally, the race set before me and to receive that which was unattainable to me here on earth:  a crown of righteousness (2 Timothy 4:6-8).

To know fully my Maker, as I am fully known (I Corinthians 13:12), to worship unfettered by fears and distractions, to receive a new name (Isaiah 62:2-5; Revelation 2:17), to be done with weariness, to have every tear wiped away, to no longer know pain or crying (Revelation 21:4), to drink from the crystal river and to live in the Light of the Lamb ... surely this is worthy of anticipation.

So I'll drive carefully in the fog.  But I'll always be looking around the corner, too, for Life Eternal.