On this day I am "writing scared" because my heart holds thoughts that can no longer be hidden. I found this quote in my twitter account today and it sparked the desire to actually write some of what my heart is thinking. Maybe someday I'll actually write it all.
"Sometimes writing scared is the best kind of writing." ~Lisa Jo Baker
The door is open as we approach the church. With just a few minutes to spare, we all pile out of the car with anticipation of the day. It's the 115th Anniversary of Riverview Christian Church and my husband's family are direct descendants of the founders. We can't help but be proud as we attend on this celebration day. We are a legacy of people who loved and served, cared and gave, created and persevered, until a church was made.
Isn't that how we should be with all the tasks set before us? Shouldn't we love and serve, care and give, create and persevere until it comes to fruition?
We are welcomed in. The wooden pews cradle us as we sit only after we've been cradled in arms of warm hugs. Stained glass, sunlight shadows, piano's song, we are welcomed in. Scripture and hymns, we are welcomed in.
My thoughts wander to my grandmother who now sits in her hospital bed and waits to return home after surgery. She was the one who sat beside me when I was little and I peered over her hands to see the hymnal. I loved to sit beside her at Girard Baptist Church, her soprano voice signing "What a Friend We Have in Jesus". All the while she waits to leave her hospital bed, she knows that someday she will be 'welcomed in' to fellowship with the Lord. She's received a cancer diagnosis of "Stage 3C Colon Cancer" and the future is uncertain.While she is not with us in the sanctuary, her heart is in sanctuary with Christ.
My grandmother was born in 1920 in New Brunswick, Canada. She was the sixth of seven children and she was born at home. She lost her mother at the young age of about two and she speaks often of how she misses her. She told me this week that she misses her now more than ever. It is in times of trial and uncertainty that we miss our mothers. At the age of 91, she misses her mother.
This week I miss my own mother. She is not fully alive because of anger. She has allowed hurts and offenses to steal her heart. I can not bridge the gap. My mother is facing the terminal illness of her mother and her husband in the same year. Just this past February her husband was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis and now her mother is diagnosed with cancer. She is struggling to accept the reality of today.
I have told her that I'm here to bless and honor her. I am here to help if needed. I have voiced the truth that this is her time to be a blessing to her own mother.
It is my deep prayer that God will use all these things to make us a sanctuary. How I long for our hearts to be open to His will. How I long for His love to shine into our eyes as the windows of His sanctuary.
We are to be living sanctuaries of serving, caring, giving, creating and persevering for His glory.
I feel fragile standing in the midst of the voices singing hymns on this Sunday morning. I feel unable to breathe as I think about her in the hospital bed...alone. My heart cries out to the living God to restore and repair what has been broken in my mother. I know I must take a step back and allow her to have the opportunity to care for my grandmother. How I long to fix the problem but I must surrender!
My heart cries out to be a sanctuary with open doors, welcoming what God would bring into my life.
Psalm 139:1 Oh Lord you have searched me and known me
Today as I waited to hear from my family, I read from a book called The Hole in Our Gospel, by Richard Stearns. His testimony of two young boys in Africa touched my soul:
"Two crude piles of stones just outside the door mark the graves of Richard's parents. It disturbs me that he must walk past them every day. He and his brothers must have watched first their father and then their mother die slow and horrible deaths. I wondered if the boys were the ones who fed them and bathed them in their last days."
Love, Serve, Care, Give...
It is my surrendered heart that is obedient today and trusts that allowing my mother to be in control of my grandmother is the right choice. I long to take care of her. I surrender.
