LETTING GO

I open my hand. Etched into my nerves there are all those I love. No, love is too generic a word – more precisely, those I carry under my skin, inside my soul. When they hurt, my stomach knots into a fist. When they laugh, sunshine floods through me.

If I could design my own world, we would all freely flourish in our callings and passions in wide open spaces – and then meet over candlelit kinfolk dinner every night. Unrushed. Unstressed. In unbroken oneness.

My daughter’s room is empty now. Her vinyls are all back on the wall in her typical whimsical way. Because my chaos-gene lives strongly in her, order was never an achievable ambition for us – till now. Approaching fifty, I’m gradually arriving at some sense of influencing our home environment, and with her gone, the newfound neatness carries over from one day to another.

I miss her.

In the foothills of Southern California, I kissed her goodbye. Both of us composed. None of us knows where the next six months will take her. Vaya con Dios, mi amorsita.

Pastor Saeed hasn’t seen his children for over three years. Unjustly detained and tortured in an Iranian prison, for “crimes against the national security of Iran” (for prior involvement with Christian house churches), still his soul is free. Unconquerable. He wrote to his daughter for her eighth birthday:

“I know that you question why you have prayed so many times for my return and yet I am not home yet. Now there is a big WHY In your mind; you are asking: WHY Jesus isn’t answering your prayers and the prayers of all of the people around the world praying for my release and for me to be home with you and our family.

Jesus allows me to be kept here for His glory. He is doing something inside each of us and also outside in the world. People die and suffer for their Christian faith all over the world and some may wonder why? But you should know the answer of WHY is WHO. It is for Jesus. He is worth the price. And He has a plan to be glorified through our lives.” (http://www.samaritanspurse.org/article/pastor-saeeds-letter-to-his-daughter-rebekka/)

I can’t imagine their anguish of their separation.

My man and I sleep in air-conditioned comfort, and what we give, we give from a base of first-world luxury. This crazy, busy, too-many-balls-in-the-air, too-many-people-to-be-as-faithful-as-we-wish life, this is what we were made for. Still, the toll of the pressures he bears is increasingly visible to me: the deepening bags around his eyes, the heavy sighs, the restless sleep. Though hard seasons have forged more spiritual steel into us, these physical marks on him hint nonetheless at his mortality.

So I savor every moment. Watching him make coffee and putter about in his quiet morning routine, I drink him in. Tomorrow together is not guaranteed.

He cannot not slow down. He’s a man on a mission, and he answers to a higher authority than a worried wife. He is only as free as his conscience is clear, and our hopes are anchored in eternity, not here.

Even in queasiness, her glow announced my darling daughter-in-law’s pregnancy way before their Facebook announcement. My grandchild. Actually, two “grandchildren” will be among the many babies entering this confusing world next year, and I ache to protect them.

I want them free and I want them safe; unpolluted, yet savvy. But underneath these natural desires, drawing from a well much deeper than my mother-heart, splashes from the River of Life awaken a truer prayer for them:

May their WHYs be satisfied in the WHO.

Like sunflowers, may they live erect, stretching in His golden purpose towards their Sun, no matter the cost. Pressing down on us us with intensifying madness, the descending darkness is only
temporary. May their vision soar above these shadowlands, to where the sky is free, and may their freedom liberate others. “He is worth the price. And He has a plan to be glorified through our lives.”

This ancient monastic prayer breathing through me, I open my hand and release them:

“Lord, have mercy
You I adore
Into Your hand”

“As for Me,” says the Lord, “this is My covenant with them: My Spirit who is upon you, and My words which I have put in your mouth, shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your descendants, nor from the mouth of your descendants’ descendants,” says the Lord, “from this time and forevermore.” (Isaiah 59:21)