Recognition
Everyone likes to think that their parent/grandparent likes them best, but I do have a sneaking suspicion that my brother and I are favorite grandchildren. Maybe it’s because we grew up so far away, or because her heart broke for us when our parents divorced. Who knows. But this means by extension that my grandmother has a little love affair with Michael. (Though really – who can blame her? He is a heart snatcher.)
On Saturday night – once Micheal and his parents had left and we’d all eaten dinner – my mother and I went over to MeMe’s house to spend a little time with her while she watched the Gaithers. My mom could tell she was feeling down and asked her what was wrong.
"i just know he recognized me," MeMe said. "He knows who I am." She got very quiet and her eyes filled and she said, "I just wish I could see him grow up."
This is a sentiment she has expressed before, but it guts me anew each time I hear it. Life is not long enough and it is never short on people to love. Especially when there are people like her. Babies like him.
Sometime on Sunday night or Monday morning, my grandmother had a minor stroke. Perhaps it happened as my mother was driving me to the airport to fly 500 miles away. Perhaps it happened in her dreams. She told my mom that she felt her mother (my great-grandmother) holding her hand, pulling her along. "I felt my mother’s hand," she emphatically replied when her daughters suggested perhaps it was a dream or simply the sensation of her brain misfiring, malfunctioning.
Time doesn’t stop. Life circles on and on and on. Don’t forget to remember that it’s cycling right past you too.
(Re)new
Dell finally did the right thing and sent me a new laptop to replace the (brand new) one that went kaput more than 365 days ago. (Thanks Dell! You stink.)
So shiny new laptop (yay), which means I can update my iPod for the first time in forever. Searching through podcasts, I discovered that Dr. John Piper’s home church, Bethlehem Baptist in Minneapolis, puts his weekly sermons online for downloading at no charge. After hearing Piper at Passion ‘07 I’ve become a regular reader of his Desiring God site and really enjoy his “brainy” style and to-the-point teachings.
Having access to my iTunes account also means I was able to finally purchase the available-only-on-iTunes bundles of Passion ‘07 songs and messages. Melissa chose two of those songs – “Oh, the Glory of It All” by David Crowder Band and “You are God” by Charlie Hall – as her wedding processional music, and it was incredible. (As if I wasn’t emotional enough hearing them again and being swept back to that dark, God-filled arena three months ago, now I’ll always remember walking down the aisle and seeing Adam’s face as he watched Melissa walking toward him!)
Seeing her get married was more than just watching my friend embark on a new road. I witnessed a miracle. I saw the proof of God’s grace and majesty. God changes life. He restores. He refines. He reclaims. He renews. It is the cry of my heart to praise Him forever because of it.
Wed
Melissa is married. She was one of the most beautiful brides I’ve ever seen, and the ceremony was unique and totally them. (Not to mention intense and a total sob-a-thon.)
It’s a new chapter, another page. When I told my mom how Mo and I talked about the fact that we won’t be going to Siesta Key just the girls anymore, my mom said, “Oh you might. In 25 years or so – when your kids are grown and off to school – you’ll take girls’ trips again.” I sputtered, “Twenty-five years?!” But then I think, the past nine have sped by and they say the older you get the faster life flies, so perhaps we’ll be back on the beach working on our old wrinkly 55-year-old tan selves before I know it.
Baby Bellies Everywhere
Tonight I went to a large Junior League event, and it seemed like every where I looked there was another pregnant woman, including the woman I manned a booth with for two hours. There were pregnant women pushing strollers, pregnant women with toddlers draped across them, pregnant women about to give birth any day, and even a teeny, tiny pregnant woman who told us she was only 14 weeks along.
I guess I’m just at that stage of life where most women in my age bracket are pregnant, either for the first time or the third or fourth. It’s not so unusual, I guess. After all women have been pregnant since the creation of mankind, but when it’s your generation – your friends – it seems both miraculous and crazy.
On Saturday night A and I had dinner with C, Teri and Adam and Adam is suddenly this whole person you can have conversations with. It’s amazing, but also strange. A good friend gave birth to her first son last month, and two of my close friends are prenant right this moment – one about to give birth any dayand the other in her second trimester with twins (twins!), and it’s all so exciting and grown up. When did all this happen?
Revolution Cry
“In a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” George Orwell
When we were in Romania, the pastor’s wife, Rodica, took us on a tour of Timisoara and told us the Revolution Story and her part in it. We stood on the street corner where a man of God refused to denounce his faith and where a crowd of people refused to step aside and ignore the fact that he was being taken Away. A revolution was sparked. It was 1989 and there was no color in Romania; no smiles; no light. Gelu told us that they had a terrible time trying to hide American Christians who came to Romania to witness during Communism, because they SMILED too much. “You could just spot them,” he said.
The Revolution Cry swelled in Timisoara during that week in December, and when we stood on the steps of the Metropolitan Cathedral and looked into the now-named Victory Square, it was hard to imagine the entire square filled with people who refused to move. People who refused to step back into their homes and close their doors to freedom. In her quiet manner, Rodica told us of being jammed in with thousands of other Romanians when they heard a woman whisper, “We should shout that there is God.” Rodica said she and Gelu looked at each other, silently agreeing to verbally, publicly pronounce the thing they knew to be Truth, and then they said it, shouted it, “there is GOD” and the cry captured the crowd and thousands of Romanians publicly and verbally put words to the Truth in their hearts.
No dictator could crush the Glory of God. No human man ever could or ever will. Seventeen years ago a bloody square was washed white with snow the very day a dictator was put to death for crimes against his people. Every day someone stands up and speaks Truth. The only question that remains is, Will you listen?
“Feel it rising up
Cry of Revolution
Feel it rising up
Feel it rising up
The glory of the Lord
Feel it rising up
Cry of Revolution
As we lift high the name
Every Revolution needs a Revolutionary and His name is Jesus”
Revolution Cry – Passion Band
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Compassion
