How is it 30 years??

February 11, 1987 – February 11, 2017.  30 years.  How did it get to be 30 years?  Ha!  I sound like an old woman!  But I am not.  It’s just that I was so young, then.  Sometimes, I feel like my brain is frozen, still, in that moment; it's not that I am perpetually 18, but in that second, I aged.  My life was forcibly jerked from one era into another and I have been an old woman for 30 years.

The circumstances around me have danced and blurred and blended into a colorful 30-year swirl.  I blinked, looked up and here I am, again.  My physical body has aged, but only because I’ve given it time to catch up to my ancient 18-year-old self.  I remember sitting in class, numb to the world, scornfully looking upon children who twittered and tweeted (before there was such a thing) about first kisses and prom and grades when I was trying to sort through and pack up my parents’ house and ready it for auction; when I was filling out paperwork at the hospital; when I was walking among caskets and making funeral arrangements.  Now if I mention in conversation that my parents are gone, it’s not surprising.  Back then, it was jarring and unusual and I was an oddity. 

It is funny that it is in this age that I feel comfortable working among 18-year-olds.  I love being at school and helping college freshmen work on papers and sort through readings.  I adore them, even with their young adult dramas.  I am so happy that most of them can be who they are, right now.  30 years ago, walking among them, I thought, “Flashlight tag??  What are you, 12?!  No, I don’t have time for that.  Life is serious!  Get real.”  How I looked at them with disdain.

I used to write in my journals that I didn’t know how I was ever going to graduate high school without my Mom or get married or have children without her…but yet, I did all those things.  As you would imagine, a girl without a mother makes a LOT of mistakes and that is the picture of me!  But God in his perfect grace has woven the mess I made of things into a beautiful life – into four beautiful lives.  My children are my joy, as I was my mother’s.

How did I make it through all those events without parents?  I was never alone.  My Church families were brothers and sisters and Mom and Dad to me.  God gave me surrogate parents until I was ready to re-discover the relationship with my biological father and I was able to seek him out.  My Grandma and my aunts swarmed in to love on me and be family without ever smothering.  My cousins gave me fellowship.  I was never, ever alone.

I don’t talk of it often, but I wasn’t alone, even on that night.  I ran away and pounded and screamed for help on the door of the first house I stumbled upon and nobody came.  I turned and started to run back when something or someone blocked me.  It or he wasn’t exactly invisible, but neither could I see through; my vision seemed blurred.  Then, it was almost as if my shoulders were being turned away and a voice – not exactly audible, but clear inside my brain – said, “You don’t want to go back there,” so I took off running until I saw lights and went to the next house.  They let me in to call the police.

Was it an angel?  Was it Jesus?  Was it my mind playing tricks on me in a moment of panic?  Yes.  Maybe.  I honestly can’t tell you, and I frankly don’t care.  Truthfully, plainly, I don’t.  All I know is there is no way I could have known the killer was still there, reloading, and knew I had run.  If I had gone back, I would be dead.  My sister would be dead.  So I don’t care what or who stopped me, I just know I am grateful.  And I am very aware that we mortals are small.  We live in the presence of greatness, but never acknowledge what is around us.  Some are so arrogant and have convinced themselves there is nothing else, even when a myriad of religions over countless eras have hinted or declared otherwise. 

Now, here I am, walking among these college students, feeling 18 in a 48-year-old body.  I study hard in my courses and feel alive in my exciting and uncertain future.  I have a mortgage and a family and I’m a grandma, but I am finally allowing myself my youth.  I am giving myself permission to be young…which is kind of messed up!  HAHA  But I never was normal.  And it’s all okay.  It. Is. All. Okay.  It always was; I just couldn’t see it.

I think Mom knew before she died that we were all right.  That’s how she could leave this world with a smile on her face.  She stepped into a place where there was no time and she could see it all.  Ginger and I are going to be okay.  We win in the end because that man could take our mother, but he couldn’t take the joy she put inside of us when she taught us about the Lord, Jesus Christ.  It is only through the legacy of the faith she told us about that any of this makes sense.  There is a peace that passes understanding, because trust me – on paper, NONE of this makes sense!  My sister and I should be blabbing idiots, right now, marred by tragedy.  And some days we are!  But mainly, we are at peace.  We win because evil didn’t get the best of us.  Praise God!

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Points to Ponder

Deuteronomy 31:6, “⁶ Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Psalm 91:11-12, “11for he will command his angels to protect you in all your ways.  12With their hands they will lift you up so you will not trip over a stone.”

Hebrews 12:1-2, “1Therefore let us also, seeing we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, 2looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”