A GRACE SUSTAINED

The Scriptures are full of verses that tell us that our lives here are like a vapor.

As if someone breathes in and then out. That short, that transient.

That understanding seems like reality today. Today, May 8, 2008, six months since the accident that took Christian from Elizabeth, his family, his friends. Six months since Christian is gone from this visible, tangible world. But not from life.

They were in Italy six months ago.

And it seems impossible that Elizabeth, and those of the rest of us who orbited his sphere, have continued on for six months. Six months is a long time, isn't it? It is almost two seasons, winter and spring. But we have continued on, and I don't know how.

How is it possible that we have laughed at all, we've played games, we've read books, we've spoken on the phone, we've given and attended parties, we've sung songs, we've been to church, gone to work, we've taken trips and gone on vacations, we've planned futures?

I can not think how she has done that. Continued on through the penetrating and paralyzing lonliness.

November 8th is indelibly engraven on my heart. The transatlanic phone call at 7:00am, tearing me violently out of a tender long sleep. I was asleep, and unaware of something going terribly wrong to those I cherish so far away. The prayer, the calling out to the One we know, the intercession, the arrival of our church family, my husband home from surgery in the morning, the waiting, the unwanted, unimaginable phone call, the packing, the flight to Paris then Venice, the running up the path to the house, the flinging into each others arms, the crying, the sadness, the grief, the loss.

And yet we seem surrounded by grace, and strength. From Him and from each other.

Our lives come to us moment by moment. We take time for granted; we've had a past, we are in our present and we plan for our future. That is how we understand this thing called time, moment by moment, and our experience of it. But life is a gift, a treasure, a fragile delight.

It seems as if Elizabeth has lost all her tomorrows with Christian, but God has not. He is always in the present. I AM. And all His days are now. I know that He will never for one instant forget her or the rest of us, the pain experienced, the seperation endured, the future unknown as yet.

So we mark this day. We think and we cry a bit. It is not a beginning or a middle or an ending, but a road marker. We stop and seek His face and more of His sustaining grace. We continue to need it, we hunger and thirst after it. We can not go on without it.

And we know that Light has shined in the darkness and the darkness could not put it out.