Returning Home

Part 1:
I took the eight to see the Grandma recently admitted to the hospital. She, with the name of Grace but the sometimes gruff exterior that threatened to belie it. The last of my parents' parents - with the doleful predictions from the doctors. The heart that had enabled her to live and love so fiercely was nearing the number of beats allotted to it. She beamed at us and gave her signature greeting, "How are my babies?" - referring to those fitting the description and to those of us many (many!) years from babyhood. The sunshine streamed in to light up her grey-white hair and her face that it had weathered so thoroughly. 

She turned to the youngest of us, her favorite of the twins, "Grandma is going on a long trip. She's going to Joshua Tree to be with Grandad and the dogs." I instantly cringed at her unorthodox ideas about the end of life and opened my mouth to reassure her of the place she would have with her Heavenly Father, but the words would not come. After she ushered us out with injunctions to "be good now and think only happy thoughts," I pondered her words. Joshua Tree was more than just the physical site where her bodily remains would be laid to rest; it was the location of the home she had built from nothing with the man of her life (he whom she lost to the cancer so many years ago.) To Grandma, the homestead in the desert was Paradise - she could imagine no better. But in our Good Father's promises of future "beyond what we could ask or think," won't there be an element of the paradises here on earth that He has graced our lives with? 

The sister-in-law that doubles as dearest-friend comes for early morning coffee and shares her lesson from the Word where she seeks her daily bread. She reads Psalm 23. I know it. She knows it. Don't we all? But she finds something new [ever the way of the Living Word], "There is a footnote on verse 6. The verse on the page reads, '...and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.' The footnote changes it, '...and I will return to the House of the Lord.'" We sit and consider the significance. Heaven, the afterlife, the hope for believers - will it truly be all new? Or will there be an element of the past? Of a returning? We have known the Father and His goodness. And His love, greater than that of the husband and the beloved pets, will welcome us into His House forever - back home. 

Part 2:
And in those last words of the Grandma is another lesson for me - the lesson of heaven on earth. For the place of her fondest memories was a desert. A desert, not a paradise. The house of her dreams was no mansion - a one-level, two bedroom house with no architectural interest. The floors that weren't unfinished concrete were dusty carpet - reclaimed and the color of pea soup. The smell of Grandma's house was unmistakable - the smell of the favored canines, overweight and aging, who roamed the house freely [except on her side of the kitchen!]. Grandad and Grandma built the garage first, then spent the rest of the budget on the house. Not everything was able to be completed. The bathroom walls were bare drywall  - requiring that the grandkids engage in absolutely NO splashing during bath time (an impossibility if there ever was one). There was a tremendous cholla cactus in the yard - the needle-spiked chunks that were so painful to remove from bare soles. Paradise? Really, Grandma? But it was... 

And I think I see the lesson. The lesson that we don't give our time to what we love, we love what we give our time to. They cleared the land, built the structures, planted the trees, watered the flowers (with the water reclaimed from kitchen, bathroom, and gutters), and nurtured the dogs and the kittens and the tortoise and the grandkids. It was close to their beloved lake and home-built houseboat. It was her paradise because she poured love into it and into all life that walked (or crawled) into the chain-link fence. And as I look back, I realize it was heaven on earth for me as well. My child-eyes saw no flaws in that place. It was Grandma's house where we worked and played and napped (while Grandma "rested her eyes"). The memories flood back of the days there with the pomegranates and the shelves of food she preserved and the garage attic and the doll trunk and Grandad's recliner and the grapefruit and the saltine crackers and the vats of mashed potatoes and too-salty gravy. 

What about now? For me, as Grandma has left here and claimed her true Paradise? Where is my spot of heaven on earth? Am I creating it here with the help of God and the man I walk beside? Do I love my place in life? With all its faults? Because it is mine and they are mine and His grace is mine.

Grandma, we loved you so much, and we will miss your enveloping hugs and honest words, and I promise to think those happy thoughts of you and to practice the lesson you taught me to bloom where I am planted and create something here that's worth coloring my visions of Paradise.