Sing praises to the Lord, oh you, His saints, and give thanks to His holy name. For His anger is but for a moment and His favor for a lifetime. Weeping may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning. (vs. 4-5)
One of the first things that dawned on me when I became an adult (that fact still disputed by some!) is that life is not a straight line. I know growing up I could not wait to get through college and then get married, become the greatest high school English teacher who ever lived, have the most amazing children (that actually happened) on the face of the earth, pay off a mortgage, retire and travel all over the world. Couldn't see what could possibly get in the way of that idea of life.
I did finish college the year after I got married. Took a little zigzag into California from Texas before I finished. Taught high school then had two daughters. Moved back to California. Moved back to Texas. Had a surprise son. Best surprise of my life. Things were rocking along pretty much as planned. Then: the train wreck.
Mother had been battling colon cancer for several years. As she was recovering from what was to be a final surgery, I traveled the eighty miles or so to her house to fix her hair and make bread. On one of these visits, my father called from jail to tell her he had been arrested for molesting a young man from their church. Nothing in my life, or hers, up to that point prepared us for this veering suddenly off course. It felt like a bomb had gone off in her house, leaving shards of debris in our chests. We picked him up from jail and listened as he wailed his love for the kid.
Weeping. Weeping until there are no more tears, then weeping again. For hours, days, weeks and months. Mother giving up her fight to live because she could not even figure out why she had been born. How she could have married such a man. Deceived and broken. She quit eating and drifted away from us.
More weeping. This time without tears. Too deep for that. Left with the shadow of a former father still alive. Looking like the man we knew on the outside, acting like someone else altogether. Double loss.
My train had jumped the tracks and was toppled, car on car, into a ditch that ran alongside the road. Smoke and ashes drifted up from the steaming wreck as it lay there idle and ruined. How to get up and get back on the tracks. A very, very long night - season - of mourning.
I see much of my journey in the rearview mirror now, though. I see where I have been. My life no longer has more ahead of it than behind it. And here is what I see. The injured little train managed, with God's help, to slowly, slowly, one car at a time, return to the track. Wobbly and unsure, it started out in the wrong direction at first. The train had lost its bearings, forgot which direction it was going. Was afraid to venture forward, so inched backward....into another ditch.
"Get up! Get up!" The little train who thought she couldn't heard this in her engine. "Get up! Get up! I've come to drive you! But first I'll clean you up!"
Gently at first He washed away the dirt and grime from the engine of my train. It took awhile because so much detritus had collected there. Clean again. I felt brand new. Yet there was still work to do. Get each car back on the track. Aim it in the right direction. And with faltering, uncertain lurching forward follow Him Who towed me.
A lifetime now to reconsider how the journey ebbs and flows. I turn to look from a mountain high to see the whole of it. And what I see, and what I know, is that in all the stumbling, faltering and halting of my way, I have never been left alone to die. Watching over through it all - my lifetime thus far - is the Master Engineer, ready to come at any moment to pull me from some ditch, to lead me from my weeping into new life again. Though in the midst of my greatest pain I have thought my life a hopeless mess, my God embraced my darkest night and waited with me through it. Ready then when morning came, He wiped away my tears.
One of the first things that dawned on me when I became an adult (that fact still disputed by some!) is that life is not a straight line. I know growing up I could not wait to get through college and then get married, become the greatest high school English teacher who ever lived, have the most amazing children (that actually happened) on the face of the earth, pay off a mortgage, retire and travel all over the world. Couldn't see what could possibly get in the way of that idea of life.
I did finish college the year after I got married. Took a little zigzag into California from Texas before I finished. Taught high school then had two daughters. Moved back to California. Moved back to Texas. Had a surprise son. Best surprise of my life. Things were rocking along pretty much as planned. Then: the train wreck.
Mother had been battling colon cancer for several years. As she was recovering from what was to be a final surgery, I traveled the eighty miles or so to her house to fix her hair and make bread. On one of these visits, my father called from jail to tell her he had been arrested for molesting a young man from their church. Nothing in my life, or hers, up to that point prepared us for this veering suddenly off course. It felt like a bomb had gone off in her house, leaving shards of debris in our chests. We picked him up from jail and listened as he wailed his love for the kid.
Weeping. Weeping until there are no more tears, then weeping again. For hours, days, weeks and months. Mother giving up her fight to live because she could not even figure out why she had been born. How she could have married such a man. Deceived and broken. She quit eating and drifted away from us.
More weeping. This time without tears. Too deep for that. Left with the shadow of a former father still alive. Looking like the man we knew on the outside, acting like someone else altogether. Double loss.
My train had jumped the tracks and was toppled, car on car, into a ditch that ran alongside the road. Smoke and ashes drifted up from the steaming wreck as it lay there idle and ruined. How to get up and get back on the tracks. A very, very long night - season - of mourning.
I see much of my journey in the rearview mirror now, though. I see where I have been. My life no longer has more ahead of it than behind it. And here is what I see. The injured little train managed, with God's help, to slowly, slowly, one car at a time, return to the track. Wobbly and unsure, it started out in the wrong direction at first. The train had lost its bearings, forgot which direction it was going. Was afraid to venture forward, so inched backward....into another ditch.
"Get up! Get up!" The little train who thought she couldn't heard this in her engine. "Get up! Get up! I've come to drive you! But first I'll clean you up!"
Gently at first He washed away the dirt and grime from the engine of my train. It took awhile because so much detritus had collected there. Clean again. I felt brand new. Yet there was still work to do. Get each car back on the track. Aim it in the right direction. And with faltering, uncertain lurching forward follow Him Who towed me.
A lifetime now to reconsider how the journey ebbs and flows. I turn to look from a mountain high to see the whole of it. And what I see, and what I know, is that in all the stumbling, faltering and halting of my way, I have never been left alone to die. Watching over through it all - my lifetime thus far - is the Master Engineer, ready to come at any moment to pull me from some ditch, to lead me from my weeping into new life again. Though in the midst of my greatest pain I have thought my life a hopeless mess, my God embraced my darkest night and waited with me through it. Ready then when morning came, He wiped away my tears.
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