Good morning…

Two weeks ago today, I felt nudged by God to open my home from 11:30 am to 1:00 pm. The Spirit urged me to invite early for lunch three of the women in my 1:00 pm Tuesday class. I wanted to support these friends with a private time to talk and to pray together as they supported up close their personal friend, who was grieving the sudden loss of her son the week before. I felt called to open my home for the ninety minutes before class, with no agenda or preconceived notions, trusting the Holy Spirit to minister to our most pressing needs.

One woman asked if she could invite her grieving friend, and I said, “Sure,” though I had never met this mom and I doubted she would come to a stranger’s living room, especially four days after laying to rest her teenage son. It could only have been God sparking in this brave woman a “Yes, I will come, and can I invite the mothers of my son’s closest friends?”

As promised, I opened my home at 11:30 am, and about twelve women arrived at my doorstep. Two I knew. The others I had never met before. My two friends graciously brought lunch, and we ate a bit before opening our time of prayer and reflection. As I prayed, I invited the Holy Spirit to take over our time and to fill the space between us, to join our hearts and to help us to say the words we needed to share. Gently and freely, women shared stories from the life of this young man, the positive impact he has had on so many in our community, the way he was so very present and connected to his friends and family, making whoever he was with feel loved and appreciated. As I listened to story after story about the loving influence of this young man, I was spurred by the Spirit to say to his mom, “It sounds like your son learned to love so beautifully. The apple must not fall far from the tree. You have created a home filled with deep, deep love. I can sense God saying, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.'”

We talked and listened to one another for several more minutes then, before we ended our time with a final prayer, I felt prompted to share a quote from Brene Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfections, the book we have been studying in my Monday, Wednesday, and Friday classes. I flipped to the quote and began to read words I was not expecting to see on the page. “The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself. – Anna Quindlen” (p. 55). I was expecting to read a different quote when I opened the book, but, through this surprise quote, God spurred me to say, “We all need to give up the thought that there is a perfect way to grieve. The only way for each of us to grieve well is by doing the really amazing, really hard work of being authentic, moment by moment, day after day.”

Then God allowed me to read the book quote initially chosen. “She could never go back and make some of the details pretty. All she could do was move forward and make the whole beautiful. – Terri St. Cloud” (p. 63). I heard myself say, “Never can we go back. Some of these details will never be pretty. Our only hope is to move forward, trusting God to make the whole beautiful.”

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end, Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NIV),

Sue