A Touchstone of Remembrance

A Touchstone of Remembrance

(“Suddenly, God, your light floods my path, God drives out the darkness.” 2 Samuel 22:29 [The Message])

The lonesome daughter, with her parents halfway across the country,
drives to the home where she grew up, sits on the vacant patio and feels
closer than before.

The troubled father, with his career now over, wanders the sidewalk in search
of connections in a suburb of strangers. His nightmares are full of failures.

He ponders that on his journey home he will visit the town of his birth,
the tiny west Texas town where his own father killed a rattlesnake outside the
church where he was pastor.

He researches the church, hopes to remember the pews and the baptistry,
(the one he shouted about going swimming in with his dad), but discovers
it is no longer on the map. Yet, he still makes plans to stay a day on his return.

The placid mother, in a new career, winds her way through themes and students,
questions and computers, becoming fluent in the language learned on the
steepest curve of her life.

She plans to visit her brother, matching comp time with 3-day weekends,
so he knows she was there, remembers she was there. She will bring a cheeseburger
so he knows she was there.

She will spend a day with the lonesome daughter, hug her, laugh and stick their
toes in the sand or have their toes painted, or paint the town with root beers and tacos.

She will tell her daughter to go to the old house anytime she is lonesome, and before
she flies home, leaves a new pot of shasta daisies hanging from the vacant patio roof.

We all want home, acceptance, a touchstone of remembrance. We want to taste
the bread that mother made in the mornings, the sun tea steeping on sunny afternoons.

We want to visit the home, the church, the school, the old building with broken windows
where people we loved once filled us with undeniable existence.

And Master, that is why, now and truly, it is amazing that You have visited me.