Give Thanks, With a Grateful Heart

It's been awhile since I've posted (relatively speaking). One of the ways I deal with difficult emotional situations is by withdrawing. I appear distracted and distant. Seems also that I don't feel like posting anything.

Mom is probably a few days from joining our Lord. My dad thought she was gone when he woke up this morning. She hadn't changed position and he couldn't see her breathing. It took him awhile to work up the courage to check, and when he did he discovered she was still breathing, but just barely. He held her hand for awhile, and, I'm sure, contemplated life without her.

My mother is simply the best there is. I have never doubted her love, never sensed a lack of support or faith in me. When she worked outside the home, it was as a nurse, making other's lives better. When she was home, she had almost limitless patience with her kids, and when she didn't, when we had taken her past her limit, we just had to smile and say sorry and the tempest blew past.

She has a quick sense of humor, inserting wry comments into our lives, and laughing at our feeblest jokes.

My heart skips a beat every time the phone rings, knowing that one of those times will be my father or sister in tears.

And yet I know a few things.

I know when she closes her eyes for the final times, she will be opening them to a guardian who has watched over her at the behest of God since she was conceived. That guardian will spirit her away to awaiting family and friends who have already met our Savior face to face. She will be in full health and whole body better than the one she had in her youth. She will delight in her new realm. And as she beams at her mother and father, and holds for the first time the daughter she never knew on Earth, the crowd of familiar people will part and the most familiar person -- the being she came to know at the age of 15, and in whom she has grown for 63 years -- will make His Presence known. And even as He welcomes her into her eternal home, He will also be comforting us who grieve her passing... even those of us who don't yet know Him.

And so this Thanksgiving I will give thanks for that which I dread, for it will be the best of beginning for the woman I hold so dear.

Happy Thanksgiving, my friends. May you be truly grateful for those whom God has put in your life, as I am thankful for you.