Neither Here Nor There…

Often in my past life as a pastor, I would mention the great understatements found in God’s Holy written Word. For example a casual reading of Genesis 22 reads like an average everyday occurrence. But plug in the known emotions surrounding Abraham as he dutifully obeyed God when he instructed him to take his only son Isaac to Mt Moriah and offer him up as a burnt sacrifice. The words are like a story…but you have to infuse the overwhelming confusion, and fear, and pain and sadness that would have crippled any one of us. As he was about to plunge the knife into his son The text tells us God called out Abraham’s name…twice! Abraham answered, “here I am Lord!” Genuine understatement.

Or how about Matthew 27:17, where we read about the murderous prisoner named Barabbas whom Pilate released when the crowd wanted to crucify Jesus the Christ instead of Barabbas? The understatement here is that we never learn anything more about Barabbas whom was quite literally the first person saved by Jesus Christ’s sacrifice. I want to know more about Barabbas!!!

Scripture records many incidents of human creation coming face-to-face with magnificent angelic beings serving at the pleasure of Almighty God on mankind’s behalf. I’ve always felt rather incredulous as I read about these angel confrontations as they are described in the Word of God. Understatements like, “the angels appeared before them, and they were greatly afraid.” Or, “sorely afraid,” or “greatly terrified.”

I’m pretty sure the description of my reaction to an angel appearing before me would be loud and magnificent included adjectives would be necessary.

Talk about being ” in the moment.”

I find myself in a sudden moment of time that the emotive reality is and will be understated in my writing compared to my living it.

I have come to the bedside of my dying mother who finds herself neither here nor there in her present state of transitioning between life and that moment we call death. I’ve tried to be intimately empathic with mom in order to get some sense as to how it feels to be in this moment of captured time. Time between when a person really lives, vibrant, involved…empassioned in the very act of breathing and interacting among the living saints this side of Heaven. To that instant when God’s holy and terrifyingly majestic angels take a dead ones soul to the feet of the very one whom was sacrificed once for all, including Barabbas as a sort of firstfruit.

In clarity…my mom is somewhere in between, in transit if you will…caught unwillingly without the strength or will to live nor the capacity to hasten her aching heart toward an expedient delivery to her promised estate. I watch her lying helpless and afraid and sure and confident in that state of being no one is aware of until they live it at death.

It is both at once a terrible time in waiting for a magnificent moment of release. I ponder the reasons for delay. My reasons? I want to hang onto the woman I’ve only this year come to an understanding about who she really is. Her wit and candor…her resilient beliefs and faith in her destined outcome. Her ability to laugh and cry in the same moment of thought. I’ve come to see her strength which had been cleverly disguised by my dad’s long shadow. I’ve pondered who she must have been as that girl of 13 with the dreams and aspirations all young ladies most certainly have.

As I lay on her bed with my arms around this frail shell of my mom…does she feel the safe comfort that I felt as she drew me to herself when I was afraid as a child? Does she sense my fear of living without her or is her hesitancy to leave those she loves the reason she hangs on.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll tell her I’ll be ok without her…that it’s ok to let go of this life…perhaps. Or I will just tell her in this moment of transition that I’m at her side until the angels bid me farewell. I don’t know. I’ve never been here in this moment…present.

I know this: it is an incredulous understatement to calmly state that death is a process. It is terrifying and amazing! It is wonderful and uncertain! It is most assuredly grace and anxiety, sadness and peace.

Watching mom walk her final pathway to this certain end to start her beautiful eternity makes me cry, laugh, and sing and pray with unprecedented passion for life and death and in-the-moment in-between. Mom…I will cherish your final lesson to me of how to live while dying. P.S. Tell dad I really miss him.