Nightly Gathering

Open Thread Post 145 - A Different Kind of Sign

Hi everybody. I’m almost beyond belief myself that I keep receiving so many signs, and I need to stop fussin’ and believe, REALLY BELIEVE, once and for all that Morgan is with God and it’s all better than we can imagine.

I ask, “Why me? Why do I get to have it ‘so good’ in such a terrible earthly situation?” Is it because God knows how much I want to know Him, so He keeps revealing Himself over and over and over?

I understand more than ever that our every move is a choice that has some kind of otherworldly prompting (for lack of a better word) attached to it somehow. With some decisions that we consider big, we agonize, pray for wisdom, weigh costs and benefits, and go with what we think is the right move. Other much more random things like switching lanes, smiling at a stranger, texting or calling somebody, choosing a particular restaurant to go to, etc.etc. are choices that barely have any thought at all attached. We just do it.

I was loved beyond belief due to the second kind of decision-making in the earliest moments and hours after Morgan’s death. First, the hospital employee who wore the T-shirt that morning with a Bible verse from Isaiah displayed on the back. When he had been up at the bed helping the nurses with her, I noticed and asked him if he was a Christian when he sat back down. That is 100% NOT ME. I WOULD NEVER DO THAT WITH A STRANGER. We chatted about our faith for several minutes but later he became the person who caught me and held me when I got the worst imaginable news. Why that T-shirt that morning?

The second was the phone call by Rock 3 when she called the night of Mo’s death. She called instead of texted. Did she agonize over that decision? Weigh the pros and cons? No way! I needed this woman more than you can imagine in those first few days, and if she had texted and not called, I would not have answered her, and all that she gave, I would not have had.

I’ve mentioned before that I listened to the YouTube reading of “The Problem of Pain” by C.S. Lewis over multiple walks a couple weeks ago and how much I liked it. I began it again last week and listened on a couple of the walks. Yesterday I listened to it, and again today to finish it up for the second time. I enjoy all of it, but today, Chapter 8, it was about heaven.

First, not long after Morgan died, I got out and went for a walk with Rock 4, and one of the things she told me was that our understanding is like a giant tapestry. Up there it is gorgeous as all of the pieces are stitched into place, but from our vantage point, all we see are snipped up threads. It isn’t beautiful to us and we really have no way of seeing the bigger picture until we’re above it, in the realm where you get to see it from that side. I’ve thought a lot about that over these past months and have come across that analogy in reading a couple times since.

C.S. Lewis used a different analogy that I “keyed” into this morning. He uses the analogy of a key. We are all these unique keys that are made for whatever God desired for us to be or do. We have attributes, environments, personality traits, and whatnot that are unique to each of us. We are a key and only we can open a certain lock that He has placed before us.

“The mold in which a key is made would be a strange thing, if you had never seen a key: and the key itself a strange thing if you had never seen a lock. Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the divine substance, or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions.

Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it -- made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

I especially like the reference to the house with many mansions because for some reason, I remember at Morgan’s Confirmation her referencing this verse in a speech she gave:

In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. John 14:2 KJV

I was understanding (AGAIN), that whatever Morgan’s role on Earth was, God called her to a better place. She’d either completed it, or he was saving her from some kind of destruction. Her key, her thread, completed its part of the eternal picture. I was finishing the audio reading just as I was entering the general area where “The Spot” (where some of her ashes are hidden) is. I said to myself, “Well, I’ll listen to music for the rest of the time” and a thought immediately popped into my head, “God, if it is Your Will, if I’m understanding all this right, just let me hear the song “Who Am I?”

This was the first song at her celebration of life. If you’ve never listened to it, here’s the link and lyrics.

"Who Am I"

Who am I, that the Lord of all the earth
Would care to know my name,
Would care to feel my hurt?
Who am I, that the Bright and Morning Star
Would choose to light the way
For my ever wandering heart?

Not because of who I am,
But because of what You've done.
Not because of what I've done,
But because of who You are.

I am a flower quickly fading:
Here today and gone tomorrow.
A wave tossed in the ocean,
A vapor in the wind.
Still You hear me when I'm calling.
Lord, You catch me when I'm falling.
And You've told me who I am.
I am Yours, I am Yours.

Who am I, that the eyes that see my sin
Would look on me with love and watch me rise again?
Who am I, that the voice that calmed the sea
Would call out through the rain
And calm the storm in me?

Not because of who I am,
But because of what You've done.
Not because of what I've done,
But because of who You are.

I am a flower quickly fading:
Here today and gone tomorrow.
A wave tossed in the ocean,
A vapor in the wind.
Still You hear me when I'm calling.
Lord, You catch me when I'm falling.
And You've told me who I am.
I am Yours.

Not because of who I am,
But because of what You've done.
Not because of what I've done,
But because of who You are.

I am a flower quickly fading:
Here today and gone tomorrow.
A wave tossed in the ocean,
A vapor in the wind.
Still You hear me when I'm calling.
Lord, You catch me when I'm falling.
And told me who I am.
I am Yours, I am Yours, I am Yours.

Whom shall I fear?
Whom shall I fear?
'Cause I am Yours, I am Yours.

I opened up the Pandora app and it was set to the Queen station. In the seconds it took me to form the thoughts and change over to the Lauren Daigle station, the thoughts continued, “Well I should switch to the Casting Crowns Station because it’s probably not going to be on the Lauren Daigle station” and I looked down and there it was BEGINNING TO PLAY! My mouth literally dropped open.

I had to screenshot it for memorializing this moment.

I give in. I miss her terribly and that’s not going to change. But how many times does it take for me to internalize that she’s right where she’s supposed to be? Stop fussin’ Joanie! Live your life! I miss her because I love her so much, but we are just a vapor in the wind here on Earth. Make the best of it. I know I’ve written that I understood this previously, and I did. I do. But now it is underlined with exclamation points!

You know? I really enjoy The Message translation of the Bible. I always have. Maybe I’m simple, but to me it feels the truest to the way I talk. If you haven’t been a Bible reader because it seems stiff to you, give that translation a try and see what you think. Here’s a taste.

Don’t love the world’s ways. Don’t love the world’s goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically everything that goes on in the world—wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important—has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him. The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out—but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity.

1 John 2:15‭-‬17 MSG