The moment I read his words, the tears spilled down my face.
I cried over your sweet babies. I cried over his grieving heart. And I cried over the walk that waited for them all.
I prayed through every step and every curve and every minute they would spend without you. I prayed for mercy and love and grace to meet them at every turn. I prayed over the graduations and the milestones and the first everythings that stood so tenuously in their wake.
And then I face-planted on the floor, “Jesus, please. Let us all who were so present in your suffering not be absent in their grieving. Make it so, Jesus. Make. It. So.”
In that moment, I wondered why my thoughts and heart were not with you. I wondered as I stood staring at my four playing in the driveway, hearing their own little queries about death and illness and dying. I wondered as my love and I sat in bed later that night and my heart ached for the empty space beside your love.
I wondered until today as I drove my more-than-slightly well-loved mini-van, going about the business of my own mundane and then suddenly, I knew…
It was why I had devoured your words with every new diagnosis or failing of my own body. It was why I shied away from them on days when my heart was too mangled in my Daddy-missing grief. It was why I would look at you sitting in Norman or standing with your cane when I had just about thrown my own “assistive device” out the window.
You never failed to give me an eternal perspective.
You knew pain but you poured out beautiful. You knew suffering but you breathed out praise. You knew death was coming but you also knew that in it came life abundant.
You gave everything you were for the sake of Jesus.
And in doing so, you gave me such a beautiful gift, sweet Kara-girl.
You kicked me into my big girl pants, the ones I put on every time more of me is needed for eternity. You did it over and over and over again. So much so that when I read his words, my heart already knew what my mind did not.
You. Are. Home.
You are whole and strong and safe.
No pain. No suffering. No shouldering through.
You are in His arms.
And that, dear girl, is the gift that will continue to be even in your Homegoing.
For all the rest of us who have been asked to walk in physical brokenness for the sake of our Jesus, we can know that if your beautiful hard can be used in such an incredible way, ours can too.
No matter the pain. No matter the suffering. No matter the shouldering through.
And at the end of it all, we will get to come Home and see our Jesus.
To be whole. To be strong. To be safe.
So thank you for letting us all into places that we were not owed and finishing the race so blessedly well, we are all better for it.
Until forever, sweet Kara-girl…
To read more about Kara’s incredible journey Home, go to www.mundanefaithfulness.com.