Shut out ? June 2005

Shut out. You thought you were going to play with a friend. Instead of a welcome you get a cold shoulder or worse yet a locked door. The rope hangs down from the tree house but when it's your turn to climb up, the rope is no longer there.

Years have passed. Instead of a child trying to fit in, I am an adult who has lost a loved one, my mother-in-law, Elizabeth Doe. Although I may still struggle to fit in at times, I know I'm an integral part of my immediate family as well as my extended family. The day of her viewing had arrived. Her dress is lovely. Her hair properly coiffed would have pleased her as well as her manicured nails. Friends, and family members quietly arrived and went to the casket to pay their respects just like they might have done at any family gathering when she had been able to greet them. They then formed impromptu clusters as they chatted, often sharing memories of Mom, Grandmom, Aunt Libby, and just plain Libby. Three generations of the Doe family gathered from many points across the United States. When was the last time Mom had seen them? Although she often felt the need to take a break if the house got too full with people, she yearned for family reunions and any excuse to have the family she loved so much together. I listened to the laughter as the family remembered the past and tried to catch up on the present. I glanced back at the casket. Her lovely dress, gray hair carefully curled, recently manicured nails and a bevy of family and friends made it seem terribly unfair that she could not add her stories to the multitude being told that night. She seemed shut out. She could not kiss babies, play peek-a-boo, exchange recipes, or hug grands that now towered over her. We were the ones who could enjoy these moments together.

True as these thoughts were, where was the true reality? She was "absent from the body and present with the Lord". Wasn't Libby Doe where the fullness of truth is revealed in the presence of Jesus himself? Who was really shut out? She was enjoying a bigger family reunion than we could imagine. Not memories uniting her to them but the glory of the ever present Lord. We were the ones still walking in the shadows. We must rejoice in her joy and wait for the day when shadows are no more.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Before Your Eyes and in Front of Your Nose

Recently I read a blog by a man named Jason Helopoulos. He said that many times after church we find ourselves talking to someone who was not on our list. Instead of devoting ourselves to the person in front of us we're looking elsewhere while we are bemoaning missed ministry opportunities on the other side of the room or at the other end of a ringing phone. We often fail to realize that the one in front of our eyes is our ministry opportunity. His blog jogged my memory. One year when we lived in Vermont I did a paper on understanding how God wants us to minister within the church. I called what God would have us do an ifoyn (in front of your nose) ministry. I remembered my friend Mom Walker. She had a son who was college age and he would often invite other students home with him. This ministry came to her. She did not have to agonize about what should she find to do. On Sunday morning as she would greet visitors, she would listen for information that would link this person to so...
Read more

Anticipating a New Arrival, Remembering Old Lessons

I've been a grandmother for a little over 5 years and in April we will be welcoming our fifth grandchild. I wish I had paid a lot more attention to the details of being a mother of small children while I was going through it. I started journals for each of my 4 but I wrote very little. I guess I was too busy living it to write that much. It seems like all  I can remember are inconsequential things like "Very few of your toys made any noise." or embarrassing things like "When you were nursing, you used to always----"  Then I am reminded that because of God's grace there are lessons I remember. Often when a young woman gets married she is told by someone in her world, “ This wedding is all about you.” To be in control , to be able to make as many of her desires happen as possible,  wouldn’t every bride want this? Usually the new couple doesn’t get past the honeymoon before the bride has to drop the “it’s all about me” attitude. If the couple wants the marri...
Read more

A Tale of Two Chairs and a Rug

My mother became a resident of heaven two years ago on March 14. Slowly, initially one by one, pieces of furniture left the family home. I took home a small desk which had been given as a wedding present in the last of the 19th century. Later my brother loaded a piece that had belonged to my grandmother. It was called a pie safe made from a golden colored wood. The front was covered with tin panels punched with a design. The original use was to keep pies safe as they cooled and to keep them protected from impatient family members. For many years I remembered it as the place to find card games. As time went on furniture began to leave at at a more rapid rate. One of the pieces was a recliner that I had asked for. It was a smaller recliner than ours with a greater firmness.  Mom had this recliner for years. For about 2 years of her life she would take naps daily. She would call those naps " toes up", a term used by one of her favorite novelists. Since I have fallen in love wi...
Read more