Sunday, June 4, 2017

A letter to my seventy-year old self


Dear Me,

Time is a funny thing.  I feel as if twenty years will go as a whisper, when I hope they will come as a roar.

I want to remember this particular time in all its detail, hoping the pen will sear my memory.

I don’t plan to lose my memory, nor do I plan to get sick, and certainly I do not plan to become a burden to my husband or my children.  But there is something eloquently perfect in the returning of one’s self to need;  I am seeing it over and over again.  I am convinced of two things.  One, I will someday see heaven.  And two, if the heavenly Father authored it, it is for my greater good.

Four weeks ago, I saw my father pass into glory.  Fourteen years ago, I saw my mom.  Both were painful,  the latter shockingly short, the former, agonizingly long.

I remember the rules and boundaries I set for both.  I broke them all.  Like the mother that lays awake with her child through long nights, the child lays awake with their parent for long days.

The interdependence is beautiful.   Like the baby nursing from her mother, a bond is formed.  The bond formed by feeding or bathing the parent, the bond seals us until we meet again in glory.

The home is disrupted.  The schedule is destroyed.  Meal planning and Pinterest looking stops like a freight train derailed.  But the holiness, the holiness of love, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons displace all the fullness of time.

Bedside moments and cemetery seconds pierce.

I want to remember...
 
I don’t want to be too proud to accept help. I don’t want to be too busy to see decline. I don’t want to forget that time as family even in need, is the most sacred time of all.

I want to see glory, but I don’t want to miss the glimpses this side of heaven. I want to point people until my dying breath to the Savior because I have seen His grace in ways I could not have ever imagined, in joy, but particularly in sorrow.

I want my parents to know that as much as I miss them;  I firmly believe they are not missing me.  I think they are having a wonderful time, a glorious time and the second I arrive, it will be just that, a second from the time they left. 

I want my children to know that the only thing that matters is loving Jesus and serving Him.  I want them to understand that the key to Joy is Jesus, happiness is just a side effect.  I want them to see the very best in people, because that is what He sees in us.  I want them to understand no matter how badly we may be treated or hurt, we have not worn our brother’s shoes, nor drank his cup of tea, nor captured life or loss or love through his lens. 

I want my husband to know that we married forever.  So, on this side, and the other side, we walk and talk and dance always.  When it feels like we are missing out with a mess of kids in our middle, we are their glance at everlasting love.  The one the Father gives and the one they will aspire too when they look for Jesus. 

I pray I find this letter.  I pray at 70 I will write another to myself at 90.  I pray everything that is stored up in my heart is shared.  I pray I reach heaven having spilled out everything He has given me.

And I pray I remember to thank Him every single day until I can say thank you to his face for this holy place where I can look back and look forward.


Until we meet again,


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