Going Home

God has said few things to me. I can count them on a hand or two.

We have walked closely I think, except for those years in high school and all the days I just can’t be bothered. But overall I have known Him and He has been near since before I can even remember. I was one of those grow up in a Christian home, pray the sinner’s prayer a thousand times types of kids.

So I’m not saying we don’t commune… This writing is a pouring out of prayer, until recently every run was sacred holy communion time. But as far as speaking a sentence, a certain promise, those moments are few and far between. And they are always accompanied by great pain.

Do you mind if I list them here for you? So I don’t forget…

1. After we sprinkled Joshua’s ashes in the sea, and the sun shot out a beam from behind the clouds. After a feeling of heavenly laughter, joy, and welcome overwhelmed me. After I cried out, standing holding my post-partum belly in ankle deep water, cried out to hold a healthy babe. God said “I will send him to you.” So simple and sure I thought it must be wishful thinking. I told Him those words were just my own mind playing tricks on me so He overwhelmed every thought until that was all I could hear. “I will send him to you.” For ten more months I hoped the most tentative hope until Jeremiah was in my arms – sent by God.

2. After losing Beacon at sixteen weeks the shower was my place to assail God with grief, rage, and desire as the water rained down and enveloped. “I will give you more,” He said. Night after night, no answers, just “I will give you more.” I asked him if that meant another child? No reply. So I decided to believe Him. To believe that He would give something that would fill my heart whether that meant another baby or other dreams and purposes for my life – or just Himself. After another miscarriage, a failed business, various tangents and a lot of good life God gave me my daughter Elizabeth Joy – so much more.

3. My leg stopped working. My husband was deployed, and even before he left for nine months our marriage was both life-giving and hard. Friends were dealing with all the difficult this life hands out, and the whole world seemed on fire. I told my counselor I felt lost. He said to tell my Heavenly Father what I was angry about, and to listen. So I told God I didn’t like how things were ending up. He said, “I know, but I love you.” And that was enough. My leg still isn’t working, my husband is still over the seas, our marriage is showing signs of redemption but it’s still very human, friends are hurting, the world is still breaking and burning – and those words are enough.

4. Daily doctor appointments, so much driving. I turn the music up and it feels good just to move without crutches, without a wheelchair, without dragging, lurching, stumbling. Feels good to just glide along the highway and be like everyone else racing along in their vehicles too. Still the pain is raw, I tell my husband I feel like one gaping wound trying to hold onto faith. Trying to sit quietly enough to be held and comforted. A child. O Praise the Name comes on, and I see the world slipping past my window, houses full of heartbreak and joy, hills that proclaim Christ’s name and quake when their foundations shift. Suddenly, I feel how the sky will split, how this world will give into His overcoming – how everything will be changed in an instant. “This is not how it ends up,” God whispers clearly. I round a bend and glorious Indiana thunderheads tower in the California sky before me.

5. The first time I go to church in a wheelchair I sit at the end of a row, and I don’t know how to sing. Just like I did after losing Joshua I tell God that no matter what I trust Him, I love Him, none do I have in heaven and on earth but Him. Still I don’t know how to sing so I just sit and let others’ praises and prayers wash over me. Then there is a melody, a song I do not know, maybe the sweetest I have ever heard. The sweetness is palpable, and then I hear it. God speaks, “You are coming home to me.”  I know better than to doubt His voice – it is the same as when I stood wet-footed with an empty urn in my hand. It is as always, a simple and vague promise that is mine to find out what it means. Instantly I feel joy and relief. Because this pray the sinner’s prayer kid knows full well her sins and continuing failures and always fears that grace hasn’t worked for her, maybe her place won’t be with God. But this is as certain of a promise as I have ever heard from my Creator. I am coming home to Him. The next instant I panic because doctors have been talking about and doing tests for all the scary, debilitating, and terminal diseases. Is this God’s way of telling me I won’t just be living with a leg that doesn’t work? Is it His way of preparing me to leave my children and this life? As the song plays on I ask Him if He minds clarifying just when I will be coming home… Silence. I see my choice – joy or fear. And in that moment I decide to choose the joy of a God who made a way and will welcome me home. A Loving Father who promises me eternal life. Because even if the doctors do all the tests they can give me no guarantees. None of us ever have any guarantees. The journey home may be short or long. Even if it is long, it is short. So I ask God for many more days on this path, and I think how different each morning might be if I wake to think of it as just one more step towards home.

Friends we are going home. Going home.

I want to be here to see my children grow, I want to hold them when they cry, laugh, and dream. I want to watch them walk aisles, I want to hold grand babies. Whenever the day comes that there is a diagnosis, an accident, or a gradual slipping away – I will be afraid, I will grieve, but I will be going home. This I don’t deserve, but I am grateful beyond words. This is only ever because of Jesus.

I know this because God has not said much to me, but that He has promised me. I heard him.