It's the moment you turn the corner to find a breathtaking view. Her lips moving gently. Her hands holding hers. Her posture of absolute love.
In a glance so brutally beautiful it is hard to see for what it is, the very thing she had been denied in loss before:
The chance to say goodbye.
Part of me shook in anger that her 12-year-old heart had been so often ripped apart. Part of me sobbed in knowing this would change her, age her, grow her up too quickly. And part of me stood wrecked in seeing what I feared the most.
The day she would have to say goodbye to me.
It is the bittersweet of almost-goodbyes.
The knowing that you have been given the most rare and precious gift of tomorrow. The knowing that breath and time beat in the pounding of your heart. The knowing that joy comes morning by morning, mercy by mercy, second by glorious second.
So you put it on the shelf so the weight does not crush you.
But then you find yourself watching someone you love fade into eternity and you're reminded that you are slowly fading too.
So you love this someone with all you have and laugh at her unwavering wit and cry at the days that are hard and find all the beauty there is because you know one thing as you know life itself...
Jesus is there and He will not leave.
Even when we shake in anger. Even when we ugly snot and sob. Even when we stand wrecked to our very soul.
We may think He’s left in all the noise of our suffering. We may find it hard to see His good in all our hard. We may wonder if in the middle of our hurt we will reach out and find nothing.
But I can tell you from the depths of me, the places that are hard-edged and broken, the places that are soft and seeking, the voice that can cuss and scream and doubt, the voice that can be poetic and pretty and lilting, Jesus is there and He will not leave.
In the wanting. In the waiting. In the fading away.
The Cross is more than just a Palm Sunday or a Good Friday or an empty tomb.
It is every time you turn the corner.
So that when you happen to find yourself at the very last one, you breathe in grace, reach out and turn.
Because you know He’ll be there too.