May He bring You HOME Rejoicing....

 

2022 moves toward the final hours.  Though this photo was taken in August 2019 here at Beacon Hall by my gifted friend, Rachel Chaney, it is the photo I am thinking of tonight.  Often we would eat lunch outside and my Mom, Anne, would enjoy sweeping our patio before going in to take her afternoon nap from 1-3pm.  Our border collie, Lacy, was always in the mix and she also loved afternoon napping with Grannie.  I miss them both.  During 2022 in the month of July, both of these precious ones finished their race, only 2 weeks apart.  It still is so surreal to take it in.

On Sunday afternoons during the past 2 + years since my Mom was not attending in person church services, Damon and I would lead a service for her in our home.  Each week we went through the liturgy together from Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals and we would take turns reading Scripture aloud and singing hymns as Damon played the guitar.  We would always close with these words:

"May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you: wherever he may send you; may he guide you through the wilderness: protect you through the storm; may he bring you home rejoicing: at the wonders He has shown you; may he bring you home rejoicing: once again into our doors."

I can still hear the sound of her voice saying it aloud with me.  A blessing.  

As I close the calendar year and step into 2023, the first year of my existence without her present in this life, I think of her smile and ponder her bold proclamation from her place in Heaven; her true HOME.  She is now a part of that cloud of witnesses and I think of her saying "May He bring you HOME rejoicing...."  I don't know how many more years I will live, but I know that the legacy she leaves me and the encouragement of a finished race trusting Jesus and calling out to him is so rich.  I believe she will be there when I come HOME.

Thank you, again, to all of you who supported and prayed and loved our family so well as we journeyed with her.  Here's to the peace of Christ going with each of us as we turn the page into a new year and a new chapter.  To God be the Glory!

"What a day of rejoicing that will be!"

 Many days over the last three years, Mom would burst into the chorus "When we all get to Heaven WHAT A DAY OF REJOICING THAT WILL BE!"  On Sunday, July 24, 2022, that yearning became a reality.  Then three weeks later on Sunday, August 14, 2022, I took this photo of the GLORIOUS sunrise on her FIRST BIRTHDAY IN HEAVEN!  She transitioned from finishing the race as an almost 83 year old to brand new eternal in glory!  Truly Incredible!

Today 8/24/22 at our home, Beacon Hall, I am taking in the weight of the last month since she entered her true home and her eternal Sabbath rest.  It has been so beautiful and so hard.  We are so sad and so relieved. We have experienced deep laughter and long sobs and groans. 

Over the last month I have been slowly gazing at and pondering a spectacular gift of grace that the Father, Son and Spirit gave to our family on the day of July 28, 2022, on the morning of Mom's burial service in Conyers, Georgia.  I want to share it today as a testimony to who He is as the Lord of ALL time and the Ancient of Days and the Eternal King of Glory.

My Father, James Edward Johnson, died on April 22, 1985.  Because it was not a financial priority for our Mom, who had just become a single parent of a 17 year old and an 11 year old, she waited to pay for the joint gravestone for many years.  She saved and paid a little at a time and when it was finally paid off she asked for it to be installed at Green Meadow Cemetery in Conyers, GA.  Because there had not been a gravestone all those years it was difficult to find the plot in the cemetery and it was not a place that our family really went to remember.  As a result my Kelly family of 5 had never been there together to visit the Cemetery.  In July of 2014, Damon was released from his position as High School Pastor and our family prayerfully decided to take some time away to pray and process together.  The five of us and Mom went to St. Simon's Island together for a week.  During that week away Mom found out that the Gravestone was ready and had been installed at Green Meadow.  Mom asked Damon and me if we would please take her by the Cemetery on our drive home to Knoxville, TN,  through Georgia. On Sunday we decided to first drive over from St. Simon's Island to Tallahassee to have our last visit with our dear friend and pastor, Ed Hague, and see he and his family for a few hours.  As we left there our van broke down and we had to unexpectedly spend the night in the Macon area for our van to be repaired.  This meant that we were not headed through the Conyers area until Monday.  It felt like an "interruptive" stop off, honestly, in what was already a very heavy time for our family.  But we wanted Mom to get to see the gravestone and all of us to visit the spot together.  Because we had never visited my Father's gravesite together we took a few of photos that morning in a brief stop.  Here are two of them:

This was the ONLY time that the 6 of us visited this gravesite.  Mom was really thankful we went.

Fast forward 7 years.

Over the 8 weeks that Mom was bedridden I was recalling many things from our lives together and as May passed into June and then into July, I was remembering that July of 2014 when we were all together during a really difficult time that impacted all 6 of us.  But it was not until after Mom passed away on Sunday, July 24, and I began interacting with the logistics regarding her burial in Conyers that I started to recall the visit of 2014.  I had placed it in the back of my mind until over the night following her beautiful Funeral service on Wednesday, July 27, I was prompted in the night by the Holy Spirit, to find the above photos when I awoke.  Early in the morning after waking, I immediately got out of bed and went to my computer and when I opened my photo storage program and went to July 2014 I was in complete shock when I saw the date stamp of the two above photos.  They were taken on Monday, JULY 28, 2014 and it was the EXACT date 7 YEARS LATER THAT VERY DAY AT 11:30AM that she would be buried in that exact place right next to our Father!!!  I shared with Damon and just sat in complete shock and astonishment.  How could it be the exact day?  (I later realized upon more close examination that evening that the time stamp showed they were taken at 11:13am and 11:20am - so we were literally there at the EXACT time she would be buried!)

The family and friends who were there with us on July 28, 2022, were used by God to anchor us to the truth reminding us that HE IS LORD OF ALL TIME AND ALL LIFE AND DEATH!  We are SO thankful for all who were praying for us and all who were present with us.  Seen and unseen body enfolding us as we were grieving! (Thank you, Rachel Chaney for being present with a heart of love and using your gifts as a photo-storyteller on this important day in our family HIStory!) 

I am only at the very, very beginning of processing in my own heart how this story impacts me SOOOO DEEPLY.  I believe it is because the 57 days while Mom was bedridden were for me the constant tension of watching her and wondering from moment to moment if she would be living or dying. In those days my brain and heart were barraged with questions of "when" that I kept taking to the Lord and longing to be held by His tender heart in the WAITING.  The grace of this 7/28 TIMING has been such an intimate reminder to me of who He has been to Aurelia Anne Johnson as her husband for 37 years (He promises to be a husband to the widow) and how compassionately He carried her and saw her in every single detail of her need from April 22, 1985 when Jimmy was buried there to the moment when she was buried by his side on July 28, 2022.  An unseen covering of seamless and unfailing nearness and love from Father, Son and Spirit.  He saw to it.  Jehovah Jireh.  He saw her. El Roi.  His heart for her knew every hair on her head and every breath she would take.  Sovereign King, Rule and Reign.  Fill us with increased AWE and worship of you at the intricacies of your heart for us.  "He crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies...." Psalm 103:4

So today on this day one month after her last breath on earth, I recall how recently on the early morning of August 14, 2022, we CELEBRATED her first HEAVENLY BIRTHday and we continue to rehearse the truth of our Better Hope that she is living and experiencing this very moment!

"And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God, the Almighty and the Lamb.  And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.  By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the Earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day and there will be no night there.  They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations." - Revelation 21:22-26

 Anne was in the sixth grade when this photo was snapped.  She wrote on the back of this photo that I found today  "My teacher was Mrs. Lyman. She was ok". LOL. Here's what I love about this photo that I don't ever remember seeing before....so often in the first 65 years of her life Mom had a strong BURST of Laughter just on the edge waiting to ERUPT.  This look captures something that was so familiar to me about her beautiful face. ERUPTIONS OF LAUGHTER.

When the Heavenly Father answered our prayers and she quietly and peacefully took her last breath at 3:50am on the Sabbath morning of July 24, one of my first clear imaginations was that of her filling the vastness of Heaven with ERUPTIONS OF LAUGHTER.  

For the last decade her laughter was stolen by dementia.  BUT NOT ANYMORE.  Anne is NEVER, EVER AGAIN going to be stifling her joy - it will be FULL AND FREE as she DELIGHTS in Jesus and the Kingdom of His Father.  

I am speechless, really, about it all.

But this week as we cry and cry and cry and laugh and remember, I just fix my gaze on the faithfulness of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; To Mom and to me and to Damon and to Nikki and to DeMarcus and to Taylor and to Ashley and to Trent and to Meg and to Trey and to Emma and to Abby and to more men and women and children who were impacted by Anne in a variety of beautiful and hard ways: Holy Hilarity!

Her story, her legacy ripples on because it is a story of the JOY of our REDEEMER.

"My Redeemer is faithful and true,

every thing He has said He will do,

and every morning His mercies are new.

My Redeemer is faithful and true." - Steven Curtis Chapman

Thank you for laughing and crying with us.  We are so upheld by the Love of God and the care of HIS body!

HE is my defense!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=hIEVJxbUSOs 

I listened to this song over and over and over during Advent 2021.  It is from Psalm 62.  

I am speechless as I sit and watch my Mom breathing after 8 weeks and in the last 48 hours no water at all and prior to that less than 7 ounces of water for 27 days in a row.  

So as I wrestle in the weight of the wait, I just rehearse this truth.

PLEASE CONTINUE TO PRAY FOR EACH OF US.

She is peaceful and in no physical pain, but the endurance required is full of tension between life and death with every breath.

Comfort

 In the spring of 1985 I was a 17 year old Senior in High School and I drove a black PACER.  Though mine was not quite as new looking as this photo, it looked similar.  It had a cassette tape player in it and as a newer driver I enjoyed rolling down the windows and putting in a cassette and playing it loud.  

I didn't fully realize at that time how close my 49 year old Father, Jimmy, was to dying of lymphoma cancer, but I knew he was very sick since we had a hospital bed where our kitchen table had been previously.  I saw how my Mom was caring for him every day and how nurses were called in to assist her.

I would get in my car after a day of school at Rockdale County High and put in a blue sparrow cassette by a newer artist named Twila Paris.  That spring I found myself rolling down the window and driving down the big hill just beyond my high school and singing these lyrics at the top of my lungs with tears pouring down my face.

Sometimes my little heart can't understand
What's in Your will, what's in Your plan.
So many times I'm tempted to ask You why,
But I can never forget it for long.
Lord, what You do could not be wrong.
So I believe You, even when I must cry.

Do I trust You, Lord?
Does the river flow?
Do I trust You, Lord?
Does the north wind blow?
You can see my heart,
You can read my mind,
And You got to know
That I would rather die
Than to lose my faith
In the One I love.
Do I trust You, Lord?
Do I trust You?

I know the answers, I've given them all.
But suddenly now, I feel so small.
Shaken down to the cavity in my soul.
I know the doctrine and theology,
But right now they don't mean much to me.
This time there's only one thing I've got to know.

Do I trust You, Lord?
Does the robin sing?
Do I trust You, Lord?
Does it rain in spring?
You can see my heart,
You can read my mind,
And You got to know
That I would rather die
Than to lose my faith
In the One I love.
Do I trust You, Lord?
Do I trust You?

I will trust You, Lord, when I don't know why.
I will trust You, Lord, till the day I die.
I will trust You, Lord, when I'm blind with pain!
You were God before, and You'll never change.
I will trust You.
I will trust You.
I will trust You, Lord
I will trust You

I will trust You.
I will trust You.
I will trust You
I will trust You.
I will trust You, Lord.

This morning I am 37 years older but as the Holy Spirit reminded me of this song today.  I listened to it afresh here in our home, Beacon Hall, and I rewound to that 17 year old me and she reminded me "He was God before and He'll never change" as I sang in worship to the Lord.

What a battle of trusting God my Mom must have felt as she tended her dying husband.  What a time of uncertainty on God's timing for her now as her body deteriorates at a shockingly gradual pace.  BUT He is with her now as He was with her then.  He is WITH me now and He was with me then.  

"This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life." Psalm 119:50

We continue to TRUST THE PROMISE KEEPER who is GOD WITH US even as we wrestle in lament and questions.   Thank you for your prayers and words of comfort as we wait on Him.

Run your RACE!

Fourteen years ago our family adopted a Border Collie and we named her Lacy.  

Three months after we welcomed her into our home, we also welcomed my Mom into our home as we awaited the transformation of our garage into an apartment for her. (see the beginning of this blog in 2008 for the story of God's provision of that process!)

Lacy is such a beautiful display of God's creativity.

On Saturday, July 9, 2022, Lacy finished her race as we had her put to sleep.  Earlier in the week we found out that she had multiple tumors and was in pain.

It was a prayerful and excruciating decision.

It is difficult to articulate what her absence means to our family. We have cried SO many tears and miss her so much here at Beacon Hall.

She was a gift of grace from the Lord and served and loved us well, including Mom, for 

fourteen years.

These two have been FAITHFUL friends, literally at my side, as a caregiver.

I love this image of the two of them in the golden light at Story Cottage.

Gentle friends designed by God to shepherd others.

I will miss seeing the two of them together.

I do not know how long my caregiving season with my Mom will last, but I will be forever grateful that Lacy was with me in the mundane and crush of it all.

I will be constantly in speechless awe of Damon's kindness to me and to my Mom over these fourteen years with her in our home.  

I praise the Lord for this man who has prayed for me and served alongside me and shown me the love of Jesus as we love and serve my widowed mother.

In the summer of 2017 my Mom, Damon and I had the fun honor of setting up a 5k race for a special group of friends from all over the country (A Year In The Making).  Damon and Anne were at the Finish Line marking it off for all the runners.  I had the joy of running alongside my friend, leader and teacher, Karen, who had come to know more about the story of my mother and I and the journey of caregiving for a parent with NPH and dementia.  I remember running and pondering what it would be like to have my Mom, who cannot run and even walks with a "magnetic gait" because of NPH, waiting to cheer me across the finish line.  This week this photo has been a precious image for me as I ponder "finishing the race".  Lacy is now finished and at rest and no longer in pain.  Anne is still pressing on.  What a wild and unexpected timing that God has allowed in the lives of Anne and Lacy.

Early in the last 47 days, while my Mom and I were praying together she pleaded with the Lord to allow her to "finish her race".  We too have been pleading with the Father that He would release my Mom from her diseased body and bring her into His glory at her "finish line".  I picture all the men and women and children who are bearing burdens with us through prayer and cheering my Mom on toward God's intimate timing for HER finish.  She is so peaceful and not in pain, and yet she "runs" with longing for heaven.  Thank you for joining us in asking the Father to welcome her across that line SOON.  And thank you for praying that Damon and me will be faithful and steadfast as we run alongside her in these moments of unknowing.

 

Light and Dark

 

40 days.

We have been watching, wondering, waiting, wrestling, and loving.

We continue Asking the Trinity what He is unfolding in these days of the end of Anne's 82nd year.  She is extraordinary and He is showing His power in her weakness as she lives on with only water.

This morning the Holy Spirit prompted me to reread a chapter in a beloved book by Edith Schaeffer called Affliction.  What a comfort her words are today which were written back in 1978 when I was only 11 years old.  

"True hope changes sorrow, but does not obliterate it.  Death is not to be taken as a 'normal, beautiful release' but as an enemy which separates body from spirit and human beings from each other.  It spoils the beautiful Creation of God.  It is so basically an enemy that God says that He will pay a great price, a ransom, to deliver us from death's power: (See Hosea 13:14). 

A solution begins to unfold in the verse of Gensis where God speaks to Eve and Adam of His promise to send someone who will bruise the head of Satan.  It is not that there is no solution, but that since the solution to death involves the great price of death for the Second Person of the Trinity - death's existence is basically an ugly enemy .  We, as believers, do not need to pretend that it is 'lovely' to feel the harshness of being out of communication with a loved one, of having our hand suddenly without a responsive squeeze from a loved one, or another's eyes no longer speaking to our eyes.  We can be angry at Satan, who tempted Eve to fall into his trap and therefore succeeded in spoiling so much for each of us.  We can be angry at sin and Satan without being angry at God.  We can weep, and God can comfort us in our weeping, but we do not need to pretend that it is an all ennobling experience.  Satan would attempt to fool people...that death is better than life.  It is also his lie.  (See Hebrews 2:14-16)

It is conclusive that death is a terrible enemy, since it could not be put out of the way, except by the coming of the Second Person of the Trinity as truly man - so that He could 'taste death' in our place.  Death is something which cost Jesus Christ Himself the awful separation from the rest of the Trinity.  When He took our sins upon Himself, so that He could give us His righteousness in exchange, He experienced death in order to abolish its sting. (See 2 Timothy 1:10). To ignore the reality of death as an enemy is also to diminish the wonder of the available victory over sin and the permanent results of death.  One day the victory over death and Satan will be complete and everlasting!"

I appreciate this "older sister" who is encouraging me from her place in Heaven today through her writing.  She also said this:

"We are to bow to the truth which God has given us, with the amount of explanation He has given us.  We need to be willing to let God be God, and to stay in our own place as human beings."

Such a good word.  So excruciating to keep repeating this heavy practice day by day. We believe that before the foundations of the universe, our loving Father knew Aurelia Anne and saw all the days of her life before one of them had come to be yet.

Isaiah 25:8-9 also tell us "He will swallow up death FOREVER; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the Earth, for the Lord has spoken.  It will be said on that day, 'BEHOLD, this is our God; we have waited for Him, that He might save us.  This is the Lord; we have waited for Him; let us be glad and rejoice in His salvation."

So we rage against the enemy of death and the darkness of it all and we fix our gaze on the LIGHT of a resurrection promise with great VICTORY.

Thank you for praying that we will wait on our Lord minute by minute in the turmoil of uncertainty and the peace that He is giving Mom breath by breath.  God is near and He is able!