I don’t know why I feel compelled to write this today but I do.  I sense there is someone in my small sphere of connection who needs to hear the affirming words that ‘someone they love will be alright.’

You see, I was 36 years old and at the professional pinnacle that I had pursued at the sacrifice of all that mattered, standing beside the bed of my mother begging God to heal her as she lay dying.  My rock.  My comfort.  My source of unconditional love.  My first and lifetime love lay dying.  My mother, my sister’s mother, my father’s wife, my aunt’s best friend, the “singing bus driver” who lovingly drove the children of Centerville City Schools for decades lay in front of me.  And there I stood, her little boy wrapped in the veil of a “successful man,” who was actually just her little boy.  Insecure and wracked with doubt, guilt, addiction and systematic failure in all that mattered.

As I prayed and petitioned the God of all Creation that I had been running from for 20 years, I knew He would answer my prayers.  I knew that the benevolent God would heal my mother.  I knew that my negotiation skills honed over years of working significant and meaningless deals would work as I stood beside the bed of the one who mattered to me more than anything in this World.  Who, by the way loved me despite, not because.  

So that night as I stood beside my mom’s bed and begged for her to be healed, a voice audibly said to me “your mother will be alright”. Yes.  Mom is going to be alright.  Yes, God.  Thank you.  Yes, God.  I knew you would hear my plea, accept my offer of living a better life.  Yes, God, I knew my bartering skills honed over years of disingenuous love and calculated care would rescue my mother.  My, my, my.  How sad.

A few days later, my mother was miraculously ‘alright.’  She was in Heaven.  She was the best, the greatest, the happiest, the freest, wrapped in inconceivable love, joy, celebration, welcome and connection that she had or would ever, forever be.  She was home.  At 61 years of age, she was all right.  She was greeted with “well done good and faithful servant,” (Matthew 25:23) and wrapped in the loving arms of her Father and holding the hands of Jesus, while feeling the scars on his beautiful hands that bore the remnants of those holes created by the nails that held him to that horridly beautiful cross.  For the first time she was all right.  I had prayed for the wrong alright and God had blessed her with the perfect all right.

I was so angry at God for taking my mom.  My emotional maturity, or lack thereof, was exposed.  My conditional faith laid bare as no faith at all.  Anger swept over me.  Bitterness invaded my life in ways that I had never surrendered to before.  I had been double crossed by the very God who makes all things new.  (Revelation 21:5). ‘God, the God, benevolent God, you double crossed me;’ I thought as I walked in misery, loneliness, abandonment.  Ironically and assuredly, I was not walking alone.  The Rescuer of my mother, was walking alongside me.  Yea though I waked through the deepest  of valleys…He was with me.  (Psalm 23)

Then on that profoundly sad Thursday evening as I sat in my empty house, abandoned by all that I had in fact driven out, i intended to leave this World through self inflicted death.  The fact is this death walk had begun decades earlier, culminating in this moment.  I yelled out in anger, “God, if this is all there is, I want out.”  And those life saving words came.  “Son, this is not the plan that I have for your life.”  This from the same Voice who had told me that my mother would be alright.  As always, his words were truth.  His words were steadfast.  His non-negotiable covenant with me saved me.  The same voice who entered into covenant with the Israelites as they entered the Promised Land, spoke to me.

Can I share with you the incredible joy that came 5 years after my mother died when I understood that my plea for her to be alright was answered with eternal all right.  The bitterness of losing her was surrendered to the beautiful recognition that she was eternally all right.  That my request for her to be temporarily alright was answered by the omnipotent Creator with the gift of her eternal all right.  All was right for my mother.  Her son is walking toward all right and the seeds she sewed through a life well lived and a son so well loved by her example, continues in the generations that follow.  (Deuteronomy 7:9)

I will leave this with this thought.  God, who cannot be measured, calculated, fully understood or limited, can be trusted.  That faith in Him is the eternal assurance that allows all things to be reconciled.  That right now whatever you are going through, has a purpose so much greater that you can possibly see or understand.  He will reveal the perfect reasons for his moment in the season to come.  That you are okay to find joy and optimism in the face of uncertainty and even crushing burden.  Oh how He loves you.  He knows your heart and He knows your capacity for impact.  He holds you in the storm and He frees you when you trust.  My prayer for you is this:  Through the tears of this season, look at the horizon with anticipation of what He has beautifully planned for you.  These moments of difficulty are the fuel that will propel you into ‘what he has planned for you.’  Prepare.  The bridegroom is coming for you.  (Matthew 25). 

You matter and you are needed.  Trust.