| |
It’s Sunday afternoon. The blizzard outside hasn’t even thought to let up. Grandma Lucy’s been praying so long over me, my mind’s been wandering all over the place. To Chris. Reginald. My perfect little baby on the morning of her delivery.
By the time Grandma Lucy says, “Amen,” I realize I’ve been daydreaming nearly the entire time. I can’t remember a single word of her prayer.
She looks at me. I feel like I’m ten years old and my mom is scrutinizing me to see if my hair is combed nicely enough for picture day at school.
“Your road hasn’t been an easy one.”
I offer a slight half-smile at the understatement.
“But God wants to bring beauty to your pain, reap gladness from the seeds of your hurt.” It’s nice poetry, but I’m not thinking about that right now. I’m thinking about Justin driving over the North Cascades, wondering how bad the snowstorm has gotten over the pass.
Grandma Lucy strokes my hand. “You will find your healing and deliverance. I’m convinced of it.”
I nod, wondering if I used up enough of Mom’s gas that I should refill the tank before I take her car back home. Is there anything in Orchard Grove I’ll miss once I leave?
Grandma Lucy lets out a sigh. I wonder if she’s disappointed in me. It’s like she was expecting something more, but I have no idea what that might be, what it might look like. I came here to say goodbye. She’s so old I may never see her again. And she did a lot for me last year. Praying for me. Calling Reginald to take me to County Hospital.
I try to remember if I actually got this chair wet when my water broke or not. How do you clean a mess like that?
“I wish I could have met your daughter,” she says to me.
The words shoot bitter pangs through my chest. “She was perfect. Is perfect,” I correct myself.
Another heavy sigh. That’s my cue. It’s time for me to go. I’ve got to get ready for Justin. But still I hold back. I realize that there’s something I’ve been wanting to know. Something I need to know before I can have any peace about leaving Orchard Grove. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.” She smiles. So serenely. I wonder if I’ll have anything close to her level of calm when I reach her age.
I fumble over my words. Hate myself for the way my cheeks flush. “Do you think I did the right thing?”
Her eyes soften. Her lips curl into a warm smile. Gentle, like the faintest of breezes on a summer day.
“Father God,” she begins, and at first I wonder why she’s starting to pray when all I asked for was her opinion. “Teach your sweet, precious daughter that you have never taken her out of your sight. Teach her that you are the good Shepherd, that you lay down your life for your sheep, and that nothing can pluck her out of your strong and mighty hand.”
It’s a nice prayer, but it still doesn’t come close to answering my question. Then again, Grandma Lucy always takes a few minutes to warm up.
“Direct her in the steps of your statutes. Guide her in the way everlasting.” Her voice grows in volume. Swells with confidence. “In the shadow of your hand, set her high upon a rock. Keep her safe and sound from the tempest raging about her, from the floodwaters that have risen up to her neck, from the miry pit that’s held her trapped in bondage for so long. For you are her sun and her shield, and you withhold no good thing from her. No good thing.” She repeats the last phrase with special emphasis.
“The locusts have come, Lord,” and I find my mind racing to keep up with her. First it’s shepherds, then its storms and floods and mud pits, and now all of a sudden we’ve moved on to insects. “The locusts have come,” she repeats, “to steal and kill and destroy. The locusts have come and left her devastated, bereft, weeping through her tears and refusing to be comforted.”
It’s too close to the passage she quoted this morning in church. I feel my body stiffen, but thankfully she moves on, like a hummingbird, except instead of flowers she’s flitting from verse to verse, from concept to concept until her spirit lands on the one that grabs her attention.
“You sent your Son, our Messiah and King, to proclaim freedom to the captives, to lead forth the ones in chains, to break the iron bars that hold us prisoner. And so, sweet and merciful Savior, precious Redeemer and Friend, I ask you today to come and fill this room up with the power of the Holy Spirit. We know and proclaim that where your sweet Spirit resides there is freedom, and we know that you’ve promised that those who put their trust in you will never be put to shame.”
It’s when she says that last word, it’s when she mentions shame that something seems to awaken in my spirit. I think she senses it too because even though she doesn’t open her eyes to gauge my reaction, she settles on that motif.
“This sweet and hurting daughter of yours has been a slave to her shame. She has believed all the lies the enemy has thrown at her, lies that the wounds and trials of her life are of her own making, that you’re a vindictive judge who’s withholding good from her because of the sins of her past. She’s been so scarred by life, precious Lord, that she’s blind to the loving grace that you long to lavish upon her. The loving grace that can soothe over all her wounds and calm her aching soul. The loving grace that you purchased for her when you suffered and died on that beautiful, terrible cross. She doesn’t realize, Lord. Doesn’t realize that you’ve already paid the penalty, already taken away the punishment for her sins, that you absorbed all that guilt when you bled there on Calvary’s mountain, that the blood flowing from the wounds to your head, your hands, your feet have washed all her sins away, removed her transgressions from her as far as the east is from the west.
“This is your precious daughter, the one you suffered and bled and died to redeem, but the veil is still over her eyes. The veil that keeps her from seeing the light of your glory, from experiencing the freedom, the forgiveness, the peace that you offer. You tell us in your Word that you came so that we might have life and have it more abundantly, so I speak that abundant life over your child today. I speak abundant life over her baby girl as well. I don’t know what plans you have in store for the two of them, but I believe that they are plans for good. That you will redeem the years the locusts have eaten, that you will restore joy and gladness where once there was only bitterness and sorrow. That this young woman who was living in darkness, blinded by her shame and regret, would be transferred right now, right at this moment into your kingdom of light. That the same voice that spoke the sun and the moon and the stars into existence will whisper to her soul I love you. Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and I chose you before the foundation of the world to walk holy and blameless in my sight.
“So I speak that new life over your daughter today. I speak to the darkness and proclaim to it that she is no longer a slave to her fear. I speak freedom over her, freedom from every chain, freedom from her guilt and shame. For those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned. We believe it to be true. Even so, come, Lord Jesus, come.”
There’s no amen, no indication that she’s finished her prayer other than the lightness and peace that settles around me while I sit in that gaudy flowered chair.
She takes my hands in hers and squeezes them. “Go now in the grace and love of our God and Father and of the Lord Jesus Christ, the only wise God.”
I have no adequate words to return her blessing, but I thank her as sincerely as I can and make my way through the near-blinding snow back to my mother’s car.