Remembering… ten years on…

Music has a way of transporting me to another time… to another place…

I was reading in the Old Testament Book of Psalms earlier this week. Psalm 63. The words jogged my memory, surfacing the summer of 2008…

My mother had sold our family home and was preparing to move permanently to Florida. Daddy had been gone for seven years, and so we three kids were helping with the gargantuan task of emptying the home they had lived in since newlyweds, the home where we had grown up. Over sixty years of “stuff” had accumulated. My parents grew up during the Great Depression, which meant that things were saved “just in case” there might be a need somewhere down the road.

Going through this “stuff” was like walking through a museum. Ration cards from WW II. My mom’s gym uniforms from what had been an all-girls college (now a coed university). I convinced her to send the uniforms (still in great shape!) to the university. Maybe their archives would want them for who-knows-what-reason?! That seemed to make letting go a bit less painful.

Other treasures included countless wooden boxes of glass Coca-Cola bottles. My dad, who grew roses as a hobby, would take flowers — in Coke bottle vases — to our local hospital each week for patients who didn’t have any visitors. My quiet dad. Bringing encouragement to others. I never knew he had done this until after he died. Until we were emptying the shed where they’d been stored.

There were letters and cards — birth announcements for us kids, birthday and Christmas cards. I could reconstruct my life just from all the correspondence! And family journals from our annual camping trips. My mom usually made the daily entries, but later I started writing about our adventures. Hmm… I wonder if that’s where my love of writing began??

As I was reading Psalm 63, I was once again sitting in my bedroom that summer. Sitting in the yellowed upholstered chair that had been my grandparents. Using MomMom’s treadle sewing machine as my coffee table. A floor lamp from my other grandparents shedding light on my Bible.

It was an intense, yet precious time. Exhausting. When I finally returned home (we were living in Romania back then) seven weeks later, my husband thought I must have cancer I looked so bad!

Every morning, before tackling whatever projects loomed before us that day, I would sit in that yellowed chair and listen to a song based on Psalm 63.

Oh, God, my God, I seek Your face
You’ll always be my resting place
My body’s weak and my soul is dry
Your love alone can only satisfy my heart
And fill me with delight
Oh, God, my God, You are my life

I have see You in the quiet times
with no one else around
Your power and Your glory overwhelm me
And no matter what tomorrow holds
my praise will know no bounds
for Your presence will be there again to help me…

“Oh God, My God” sung by Glad

No matter what tomorrow holds…

no matter what TODAY holds…

That song, those sentiments and the truths they reflect are part of what got me through that summer. And they still ring true for me today.

God truly is my resting place. My body often is weak, and sometimes my soul is dry. And yet His love — His love alone — is able to fully satisfy the yearnings of my heart, my soul. His power and His glory overwhelm me at times. And I’m confident that He’ll always be with me, that He’ll never leave or forsake me. Because of that, my praise knows no bounds!

Today marks ten years since we said goodbye here on earth to my mom. I’ll always treasure that time we had together going through our family home, reliving and releasing memories. I’m grateful for how her life impacted mine — and still does. Because of her and because of our heavenly Father I’m able to have joy in the journey of this thing called “Life!”