Whatever,
Whenever
With sweaty
palms and shaky knees I fumbled my way to the front of the room with a fraction
of the grace I wish I had. My tongue was
a wad of cotton and my voice was flimsy and transparent. As I cleared my throat, this thought collided
with me: the story I was about to tell could have turned out so much
differently. Jesus had scripted it with
such detail and care that it didn’t even feel like it was my story to
tell. My part could be summed up in three
words.
I followed Jesus.
“Write.”
Jesus spoke
it over and over to my heart and, for an entire month, I sat there holding it
not sure what to do with it. Maybe I was
stuck because I had been repeating myself for just as long, except my loop tape
was a question- the kind that is exhausting to haul around day in and day out.
“What do I
do?”
I had asked
it at least five thousand times and “write” had nothing to do with my question.
Nothing. At.
All.
Whatever, I
thought.
But I started. I picked up a pen and notepad and it spilled
out of me like a broken dam. I had no
idea why Jesus would ask me to do this and I told Him so frequently. But in the
end I chose to trust Him even if it seemed like some crazy distraction to get
me to stop asking Him that question.
Months passed
and then He handed me the second part. I wanted to hand it right back. With
furrowed brows I asked, “Are you sure?” I was just getting used to the idea
that Jesus had asked me to do something,
but now He was asking me to go
someplace and I struggled with this more than the first part. I didn’t get
it. But when you follow Jesus, He asks
you to do things that don’t always make sense and He takes you to the most
unexpected places.
And you follow Him. Wherever.
Jesus could
have asked me to go to a million other places, but He chose the home of one
woman. Just one. He chose her. She had lived at Crest View
Court for just a few months. She moved there
with her husband after an injury left her wheelchair bound. She was a small,
petite thing with snow-white hair and eyes as blue as the ocean. Her face wore
evidence of a painful past and her restless hands told me change had not been
welcomed, and really, when is change ever a welcomed guest?
I remember
the evergreen wreath that hung on the door next to the gold name plate with DAVID AND JOSEPHINE VAN ALLEN engraved in
tiny capital letters. The poinsettias
mixed with holly berries reminded me that it was Christmas Eve, because the
temperature in that tiny room felt like a hot and sticky summer day. Her husband sat where he always sat; he
nodded as I entered. He never remembered
me from visit to visit, but he was content in knowing that whoever I was, I was
there to see Jo.
I sat on the
edge of her bed so I could hear her better.
She cried most of the times I visited, and I came to expect it. I had no idea how to hand her what I had come
to deliver that day. But her tears made
it easy for me because my purse held a manila folder stuffed with eighteen
doubled-spaced pages that told the story of my tears. Tears that splattered on the floor when
change was my enemy. Tears that filled
buckets as I asked God why. Tears
that left me undone and unhinged.
For the first time in months, I
finally knew how to respond to her tears; I handed her the story of mine.
And in that
tiny room filled with fear and doubt and pain and questions, I watched Jesus
love on that woman in the most tender and beautiful way. I returned about once
a month with a new chapter. Though I had no idea how it would end, I found
myself thinking about that less and less.
She started to open up to me. I
learned how similar our stories really were.
When her
husband died it seemed like her grief stirred something that had sat quiet and
undisturbed for years. It turned out that those tears went way back- sixty years back- yet she spoke about
them as if she could still feel each one roll down her cheek. And just like
that Jesus wove together the stories of a thirty-something-year-old girl who
had questions a mile long and a ninety-something-year-old woman who had held on
tightly to the poor hand she’d been dealt.
And in those visits, I saw Jesus and I saw how much He loved her.
I saw how He did all of this… just for
her.
A year later I
started the last chapter. Healing, forgiveness, freedom and truth covered the
pages that now overflowed out of that brown manila folder I had dug out of my
purse on Christmas Eve. But before my story was complete, this frail widow
spoke words to me one day over tea, and Jesus used them to change my life.
After watching Jesus love on her for the past year, I finally understood that
He used this story and this woman in this place to show me just how much he
loved me.
Asking me to do this and go there was His
way of loving on me, too.
What if I had
said no? What if I had chickened out because it was awkward and didn’t make
sense? This- all this- I would have
missed. I wouldn’t have watched Him love the lonely, the widow, the poor, the
hungry. I wouldn’t have known that I was
lonely, poor, and hungry too.
So when I
stood in front of family and friends and gave my grandmother’s eulogy last
week, I realized that Jesus did all this for her and He did all this for me. He asked me to tell my story to
my ninety-two year old grandma because He knew she had a story I needed to
hear. Jesus knew she was the only one
who could tell it. He might have named
me long before anyone else knew I existed, but He let her find my name in a
bathroom all those years ago when she cleaned toilets for a living. And the details of that story were only known by her and Jesus. I needed to hear her
tell me that story so I could see myself the way Jesus sees me.
When Jesus says
“Follow Me,” His only motive is love. He knows the good He has planned, even
when we can’t see it or it doesn’t look so good. Jesus asks us to follow Him
because He knows it will be worth it in the end.
“Follow Me” means you do whatever and you go wherever.
King David’s
men respond to him the way I think Jesus longs for us to respond to Him. “The king’s officials
answered him, ‘Your servants are ready to do whatever our lord the king chooses.’” (2 Samuel 15:15) Another one
of David’s men said, “As surely as the Lord lives, and
as my lord the king lives, wherever
my lord the king may be, whether it means life or death, there will your
servant be.” (2 Samuel 15:21)
Do whatever. Go wherever. Whether it means life or death.
King
David was just an ordinary king. Jesus is
the only King who conquered death. He died on the cross to make a way for all
of our broken hearts to be mended. He
rose three days later and now sits on His throne at the right hand of God. I
know I’ll see Grandma again. She is
smiling and dancing in the love of her King right now. And her tears have all been wiped away… forever.
Let
Jesus love on you through whatever He
brings your way and wherever He leads
you today. It will be so worth it in the end.
And, who knows… it just might change your life.
If you enjoyed Kelly's writing and her walk with Jesus, join her over at
Shalom Y'all.
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