That We Would Meet Here

Our paths had never crossed.

I've been good with that.

And when I ask him to come, come see the kids in a play Easter morning, not at the church but at the arena, neutral territory, and Dad asks if his step-daughter, my age, her children, his step-grandchildren, ages of my children, might come too, his family that I’ve never met though he’s been remarried seven years now – years I’ve found too painful, this tearing away of one life, patching on a new one, somehow better -- my chin trembles while I nod, find a smile, say the words and mean them, “Yes, of course.”

I hadn’t imagined what that morning might look like… feel like.

They come. Walk in and to this place where I’m sitting. I hadn’t considered that. The possibility of that moment. I would have paused longer in front of the closet, selected with more thought. I would have stayed longer at the prayer bench, implored more fervently. Life comes unannounced. I had dressed. I had prayed. It would have to be enough, what was.

What was were these children, dark and lovely, fair and good, who called him Grandpa.

What was was a woman my height, my age, with eyes that sparkled, who had woke up this morning in Dad’s guest room, room of my childhood, my window offering her day.

What was was Dad’s wife, coifed and scarfed, whispering in his ear while the choir assembled and my Mama, his first wife, the one of twenty-five years, working with the ladies committee -- I can see her from where I sit -- laying out the hot-cross buns, platters of cheese for the refreshments.

No one else seemed to notice the earth’s tremors.

I reached for something. Them.

I shook their hands, our flesh touching, held by the other for a moment, and looked directly into their eyes. Lingered, while I said our names. I smiled and willed my eyes to say things my mouth couldn’t.

Know it’s not you, it’s only me. Me who takes nearly a decade to pick up the shards of a shattered family.

Know I like you, but not this. This thing that’s razed my past, twisted my future, gored my heart. God hates divorce and I do too… but not you, no, not you.

Know I’ve tasted grace and I’m finished with rationing it out, meting it here and there. I’m finally ready to dump it all, for all of us; and I’ll need every last drop He’ll give, balm for the bleeding. It too wipes tears.

And they fall.

The choir sings, “Crown Him with Many Crowns” and while heads turn that way, the earth keeps quaking below me, spilling the grief.

I close my eyes. Sing the words from memory. Memories too that too long I’ve been muddling in sadness, trying through a fog of tears to piece together who we were, only to cut myself on glass… when I should have just swept it all up, been done with it. But who throws away a family?

Now, yes finally, now I’ve just picked up the shards of us, one-by-one tucked them in a I-remember-those-days envelope, sharp edges to finger now and then, of then and what isn’t now. A long ago fine china, fragile and dropped.

Souls need cupping. I catch my step-sister's eye (yes, she is that, mine), catch her eye, there in the third stanza. Can she translate this heart-language spoken with eyes?

The choir swells and we ride the crest,

“who every grief hath known
that wrings the human breast,
and takes and bears them for His own,
that all in him may rest.”

This wringing out on Easter Sunday morning, wringing of my brother in the choir, my sister and husband, their four sweet little girls, sitting somewhere behind me, my mama working in the kitchen, and my Dad and his family sitting all together here beside me. He takes it, bears it, breaks the strangling tightness of it with the iron spike.

And when they crescendo, “Celebrate! Jesus Christ is risen from the dead!” I raise my hand, my voice, and the joy falls wet.

What is ripped apart, what is soiled and tattered, what is dead, will one day rise, the gashes healed.

There where wood and wounds intersect.





Lord, that in the hurt we would meet people where the beams cross, the crux of Grace.



Photo: Wooden cross on Easter morning, in the clearing behind our country church