Make It Home

 

I have a deep heart check every single time I pass a motorcycle on the road. I stop whatever I'm saying or thinking and I take a moment to acknowledge the rider.

I watch them. I look at their bike. I catalogue their protective gear (or lack thereof). I take a moment to take it all in and I make sure that I really see them. And then I pray the same prayer for each and every one of the riders I see.

"God, please let them make it home."

Because one day, a driver didn't see my rider...and he didn't make it home. 

None of them will ever know, the prayers said on their behalf, in memory of the greatest tragedy of my life. But I will always remember the day that my husband stopped living, and I continued on in his absence. And I would never wish that on anyone. So every time...I pray that they make it home.

I remember walking through the halls of my very empty home and wondering where the spirit of life had disappeared to. How could these walls no longer host the world I had built with my husband? How could my home have existed one minute and then been ripped to shreds the second my husband's heart stopped beating?

It took me months to walk in the door of my house and accept John's absence there. I began to heal and I faced the reality that my home had died. And I decided to let go of my past and choose a new life, a new hope, a new future. Home is always what you make of it. My life had been home with someone else at one time...so, I finally took deep breath and decided to make it home...again.

I chose to embrace all the changes and to love the new me. I was brave and fearful all at once. I rebuilt my home from the ground up. Somedays it was all tears and panic attacks but somedays I felt true hope in the ability to be happy and feel safe once again. 

Grief and tragedy change you. As much as you're able to shape grief it still shapes you into someone new and effects all aspects of your life. In order to heal and process through grief, you have to change and grow through it. 

My daughter has experienced her fair share of that in her young life. She came into my world so quickly and shockingly...I cannot even imagine what upheaval she truly experienced during that time.

I remember walking her into her new room, with its bare walls and borrowed bed. I looked at her taking it all in and I said "Don't worry...it might not feel like it yet, but we are gonna make it home".

She's adapted to new homes her entire life. Every couple of years someone couldn't take care of her anymore and she was, once again, faced with the impact of being "given away"..from having home stolen from her. I don't think she even realizes how disbelieving she is that this is her forever home. 

But I will believe it for her, when she cannot bring herself to believe in one more hope...one more dream. Because she is my greatest dream come to life. And I know the great and wondrous ways that the Lord has moved in both of our lives to bring us together. He always knew...He always knew she would make it home.

I sit in the house I thought I'd made a home after tragedy stole mine away. I sip my coffee as I look at my daughter's soccer ball laying in the grass outside from the hour she spent playing out there earlier. I see her imprints on every room in this house and I am realizing that she did it, as much as I did. I thought I'd accomplished it far before she came along but it was her heart that I needed to really make it home.

She was missing from me, and my heart knew it. 

I was always just waiting for her to make it home.

I would never say that it has been easy, or without grief and growing pains. But this life is not meant to be easy or perfect. Oh no, that gift of true and ultimate redemption is reserved for much later. When God calls each of us into glory. Then there will no more tears and no more pain...for the old order of things will have passed away.

What a joyful day that will be. When we finally make it home.