The Long Road of Life

Another week. Another stretch of activity and lists and meetings. Another week of unknown.

The other day I told my husband, Dan, that our life feels kind of surreal at the moment. Something seems "off" with everything and yet, I cannot quite put my finger on it. And this carries over into my dreams. Most nights, my dreams tend to center around ministry and the church. Last night was different.

I woke up this morning from a dream where we were visiting my mother-in-law and she was in a locked hospital ward. She was in bed and crying in pain. My husband laid his hands on her and prayed. In my dream, she arched her back, sat up, stood up, grabbed me by the arms and started jumping up and down. She looked directly at me with cognition and said, "Look, Terri, I'm healed!" 

Her reality is quite different. While she is out of the rehab center and in the assisted living facility with my father-in-law, she is in pain. Most of the time, there is mental fogginess and you can tell she's not quite sure who we are. She knows we are family, but can't always remember our names. She will only eat a few bites, and is in a constant emotional cycle of tears and she wants to know why my father-in-law put her there and says she wants to go home. And that gets him worked up and difficult to deal with.

Some day she will be home. She will be in her permanent heavenly home. She will be whole and healed and living in glory. She will be where there are no more tears, no more pain, no more discouragement and sadness. She will walk with the Lord. And that will be true for all of us who follow Christ. 

But in the meantime, life is a struggle, and all we can do is get up each day and follow where the Lord leads. We don't always know what will happen along the way. My prayer is that I will handle things with grace when they come. I know that some of that comes by staying connected to Jesus as I follow. If my faith is shallow and weak, it's going to be harder to deal with things when the hard times come.

The road of life is difficult, but when I keep the Lord at the center of my life then I have something to hold on to when I hit a rough patch.

I'm headed out to visit my in-laws today. My prayer is that I can bring a sense of the peace and balm of Christ to them while I spend time with them. I have noticed that when I read scripture to them that they both calm down tremendously. May we all find peace as we spend time in His presence.

2 Corinthians 5:1-5 ~

For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. 2 Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, 3 because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. 4 For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5 Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.