Going Home

This week Cindy and I traveled south to visit an elderly aunt of mine that lives near the coast in Florida’s panhandle.  To get there, we had to pass through my old home town.  Things have really changed in the forty plus years since I left.

Throughout the trip I felt like God was trying to tell me something.  I would see things and feel like there was a message in what I was seeing and that I needed to pass it along.  For example, while traveling through my old hometown, I noted that time and change had covered over if not erased the homes and landmarks of my youth.

My mother’s family had lived near each other a ways outside of town, but those homes were gone without a trace of the human lives that had been lived out within them.  I felt like God was reminding me that man is not permanent.  Everything we do in this world is only temporary and will be erased in only a few years or generations.  The marks you make in your community or even within your family are lost and quickly covered over by time.  There is only one eternal being.

It is He.  It is God.  He is both the Alpha and the Omega.

He is the only one for whom time has no meaning and will be remembered for life everlasting.  Everything we do is seen and noted by Him.  The life that we live and present to him upon our death is the only thing that we can do or give that will last.  We should remember that.

But that wasn’t the only thing God was trying to tell me.  The other things involved my beloved Aunt Macille.  At eighty four her body is being destroyed from within by Scoliosis and a whole host of other issues that come along with the disease’s progression.  Nearly bent double she continues to maintain her faith in the Lord and quietly worships and prays constantly.

Day by day, she prepares for the inevitable.  Not just the day of her death, but the day that she will no longer be able to take care of herself.  The day she falls, or the day she is no longer able to accomplish those simple but required tasks in our daily lives.  Fighting fiercely to maintain her independence she meticulously plans and executes the things she does every day.  She maintiains a notebook detailing who should receive every item that she has gathered over the years of her life.  She continues to work in her yard, maintaining her potted plants.  Attempting to bend and move about even though her body fights her every step of the way.  Knowing her memory goes bad from time to time, she has made paper tags to place over the deadbolt to let her know that she has locked that door.  If she uses the stove or oven she makes a note to herself to recheck it, or she will make it a point to walk back through the kitchen several times to make sure she has turned it off.  She unplugs the coffee maker as an additional prevention against fire in case she leaves it on.  Throughout this she maintains both a cheerful and kind spirit.  She does not let this disease beat her.

She is ‘fighting the good fight.’

She constantly asked us if we were ashamed to be seen with her.  We kept telling her “No!  We are proud to be with her!”  What is happening to her is no fault of hers.  I think maybe it is God making her an example to other people on what a ‘Good’ spirit really is.

She told me the last morning we were together over a cup of coffee that she had never joined a Church, but had while attending one heard they were going to have baptisms that weekend in the Gulf of Mexico and she had asked, “Do you have to be a member of the church to be baptized?”  She was told no, anyone could be baptized so she asked to be placed on the list.  And a few days later she was baptized there in the warm aqua colored waters.  Ever since she has held God in her heart and prays constantly.

She is in constant pain.  With every movement you can hear the sharp short intakes of breath that comes from her tormented frame as it moves.  But she smiles though it.  I do not know if I could sustain that level of pain and still be a rational person.

Her husband passed away in 1997.  They were never able to conceive and have their own children.  So she was relegated to being the wonderful aunt that I grew up knowing.  But then life took me and my sisters away for years and years and only now are we beginning to circle back to renew those old relationships.  I almost missed this one.  Which is yet another reminder that time wipes away the people, places and things that comprise our life and memories.  Like an eraser on a blackboard the initial pass wipes away the most of it, but each successive pass dims it step by step until it is completely wiped away.

We also shared memories of times with my mother, or times in her own life.  Many things, mostly the bad, she doesn’t remember that clearly anymore.  She remembers the good things though.  Those are the ones she dwells on.

We shared favorite Bible verses this morning.

She told me hers was the 23^rd Psalm and began to recite as much as she could of it.  After a couple of verses her voice faded away, so I told her mine were in Philipians 4 and then recited the ten fingered prayer; ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.’  I also read to her the preceding verses which convey Paul’s final instructions to the Philipians.  Beauty, truth, purity, honor, hope and love.  Those are the things that we should dwell on.  Not the bad things in our life, but the good things.

So do you understand the things God was telling me?

I believe that God’s message to me wasn’t complete until this morning when we left her standing at the door waving goodbye.

He told me that time is fleeting, but he is there always and that his love is a permanent one.  He says that in all things there will be pain and suffering but we should do our best and fight the good fight.  And finally, like Paul said we should dwell on those good things and in them will we find the God of Peace.

God is the only one in whom we need to make that lasting impression.