Sunset.

 

It’s Sunday afternoon and we’re in a bus headed southeast to a town in central Mexico.  Our town. To our casita. 

I can’t help but thinking,  “We would have taken off by now.  Probably already flying over the gulf.”  I think of the second plane in five months that my babe and I have not been on thanks to a little thing called paperwork. 

Emotions are confusing, to say the least.  I’m disappointed but grateful that we’re not on that plane, but together still as a family of three.  Anytime I make planes to go, the excitement is always mixed with a bit of sadness at the thought of leaving.  Whenever I’m here in la casita with my handsome man and his look-alike son, I think of Georgia and wish to be there.  But whenever I’m there, my heart is counting the days till I’m home again.  Where is home, anyways?  They say, “Home is where your heart is” so how can my home be any one place if my heart is spread across the North American continent?

A phone ringing in the back of the bus makes me snap back to the here and now.   The rest of the bus is so quite, I can’t help but hear the man’s voice break through the silence a few rows back.

“What? Dead? Already?!  At what time?!?”  his voice breaks. 

A bit of silence then- “Okay.  I’m on my way.  I shouldn’t be there till after midnight.” 

I hear the phone click shut and the man begins to sob.  “Dad, oh, Dad!”   

With the midst of a million other thoughts I think, “How selfish I am!  I’m having a pity party for myself while the world around me is hurting and going through a whole lot more!  Thank you Lord for your goodness!”  I think of the pain the man is going through and the hours of travel ahead of him before reaching his destination.  I’m thankful it’s not me. 

“But it will be you.”  The thought comes out of nowhere.  I let it sink in.  Three sets of living grandparents. My mom, dad, stepmom. A slew of uncles, aunts and cousins. Five siblings and currently two siblings-in-law.  A husband and a child of our own.My in-laws.  And all the members that will be added to the family over the years. How many times will I be on this exact same bus route, praying the hours by, only to receive the same phone call?  “They’re already gone.”

I’m shaken and dry to think of something nicer, to somehow make everything magically better.  But I can’t.  I look at the future and see pain.  And lots of ache. Sin, death, and all the consequences they carry are all too real. We take lovely pictures and load them to instagram, write status updates about our wonderful lives, and post blogs to put it all in chronological order.  We ice brownies made out of poop to make them look nice, but the reality is the same.  It may look lovely, but it’s really poop. 

This world is going to die.  And everyone in it will pass into eternity.  That’s reality. But the story doesn’t end there.

“And you were dead in your trespasses and sin…..but God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in heavenly places, in Christ Jesus…” {Ephesians 2:1, 4-6}

I’m pretty sure that one day, in the near or far future, I will be racing against time to make it to Georgia or wherever before one of grandparents, parents, siblings or other family member passes away.  It will be painful and heartbreaking. I feel my stomach creeping up into my throat just thinking about it.  But it won’t be the end.  Not for those who have true live in Christ.  I may not be there to say goodbye, but in Him, there are no real goodbyes.  It’s a “I’ll see you later.”  Once we have breathed our last breath here, is when our true live will begin. 

And that, my friends,  thrills my heart. 

“…I {Jesus} came that they might have life, and might have it abundantly.” {John 10:10}

And home?  I’ve never been there…yet.