It was around 11pm, so I walked outside to the lake’s edge, looked up, and wasn’t too impressed with the Aurora Borealis. I recalled, however, that to really see it, you needed to look through the lens of your camera. Something about ions, soft particular lights the human eye doesn’t pick up.. Once I flicked on my iPhone, there it was indeed. Something out of an alien movie. The familiar night sky, transformed into an array of color that my tired brain struggled to make sense of.
It was beautiful, but it was strange.
Coming home to Canada to spend a week with my mom. My mom is familiar, but life has shifted off-kilter for her as well. Cancer, throughout her aging body, her mind adjusting to a new reality, one riddled with medications, side effects, hair loss. A reality that we all push aside, and dare not peer too closely at lest we lose our footing.
It was a surreal and rooting week. Home, for the first time in 30 yrs without my wife, and not a kid in sight. I was the kid, walking on the dirt that raised me, driving the roads that are littered with childhood memories. We spent mornings talking, pondering, crying, and embracing the fragility and beauty of the present. Each word, a gift, time increases in value when we consider the hour glass. For the week, I was a son again. Not a husband, nor a father, not a missionary and thankfully not even a foreigner. A son, that familiar place and yet, like looking up at the Northern Lights, things have shifted, altered. Like the camera lens, we’re growing into new appreciation, new embrace, new unfolding realities.
This temporal, it gives way to the eternal. This mortality, the scriptures say, gives way to the immortal, swallowed up by the resurrection of the God who became flesh. If Christ rose, we will rise, this is our hope, and it tweaks the fabric of our physical existence, our perception and our capacity to discern what is authentic and true.
I’m thankful for the week with my mom. She’s doing well, her mind is sharp and she isn’t experiencing any pain. She’s just tired, and learning how to prioritize her own health more than she’s used to.
We returned to PA for a few days, Noah passed his learner’s test, Brent got a job, we hugged Clark a few times. The poor dude has been working 5 weeks consecutively with overtime (required) on his first industrial job.. trial by fire. Tucker, Clark and Brent are all at our house in PA, thank you Jesus for leading us to buy a place, without ever seeing it in person just 2 months before Russia invaded Ukraine. This is mercy for our family. We saw Bronner & Logan for a hot minute, quick lunch, hug, bye again!
We are back in Romania. We’re now back chasing visa options, we have 90 days. We’re now needing to see this Lighthouse project launch – who will God send us, how will this all come together? For now, it’s jetlag time, that all too familiar week of dragging through the days and nights, adjusting our tired bodies as they wonder what has happened.
Praying about transition, about the many remaining pieces, friends, ministry and resources we need to see cared for in Ukraine, now in Romania, and the US. We are ready for stability, for a measure of permanence, of routine.
