A few nights ago my dream was so vivid that I awoke in a sweat. I had slid to the edge of a rock precipice with a third of my body over the edge. There is no love of heights in my history and the view was Grand Canyon-like. Self-talk kicked in while my body tensed and froze. Ever so slowly, using my fingers to grasp the tiny indentations, I inched my way back onto the smooth of the rock. As the last bit of my foot pulled in from dangling in mid air, I exhaled and lay back, feeling the strength of the rock and the sun on my face - but my heart was left pounding outside of my chest….so close.
The next morning I found myself asking Jesus where He was in my dream. Remember, He promised to never leave me - never.
The first thought that entered my mind was that He was The Rock. Without leaning back into Him, I would be over the cliff and completely crushed. For me, looking down includes: “whys”, self-pity, blame, jealousy, guilt, bitterness, unforgiveness and emptiness. While all of these are understandable, none are desirable and so aren’t really options. Frequently Kim and I will comment to each other that without Jesus we don’t know if our marriage would have survived the last year. We don’t know if we’d be sane. When we look back, the objective insanity of those last weeks in Canuck House was horrific. And yet He was and is our Peace, our Joy, our Hope - Jordan’s and ours.
This afternoon, Kim and I finally put up the rest of the decorations on our tree. Matt was napping and Joel hadn’t arrived yet - his plane was delayed 34 hours - we’re picking him up at the airport tonight at midnight. We so long to just be together. Gifts are not as high on the the priority list as they once were...food gets bumped down as well. But there is one laugh that we won’t get to hear and one hug we won’t get to experience and Jordan’s absence has made us all the more aware of how precious we all are to each other. Many of our tree decorations have five names on them...Jordan is all over our tree with us. But the only reason we have the courage to move forward, dream, risk, laugh and cry with hope is because of Jesus.
