Bees in My Bonnet

 These are the days I walk around seeing life with new and different eyes. They are eyes bathed in the furnace of suffering, with understanding unobtained before now.  Those dreaded words landed like a thud: "They discovered cancer." My Mom has been diagnosed with Small Cell Lung Cancer, typically a cancer only seen in smokers or their partners. It feels heavy and dark, and menacing and cruel, and so many other things that words don't seem to describe.  (Taking Mom to the hospital in Arkansas with my sister) It is one thing to hear about it. And to feel sad. To think on it. To learn of it. To wonder where this goes - typically nowhere good, except, I suppose, heaven. Heaven is good. I'm okay with the heaven part. It's the process of getting there that somehow unnerves me. I've had little fear of death in my life. God gives us these years, some more, some less, and we must reckon with the undeniable reality that 100% of people die. The statistic stares us blank...

The Laugh-ers of heaven They are the laugh-ers Who populate the halls of heaven I only can picture in my Grief-tainted Remembrance Their laughter: Heads thrown back Eyes leaking tears of Hilarity Joke-cracking Wild, unrestrained Overflow I feel the echoing joyful blast - Peals of delight Crash into memory Like waves erasing lines on Sandy shores Smoothing churned up grooves and hastily constructed Palaces complete with Moats and barrier walls To be alive To breathe is to Laugh And I hear them from afar These laugh-ers of heaven: Dad, Kimberly, Ben - so many "I'm alive, more alive than you know or feel. My laughter only grows, It bellows Unleashes Resounds. Life is breath Breath is laughter" Whispers float disrupting Ponderings Sorrows Losses Sadness hangs heavy But the laugh-ers of heaven have the last word... Or the last laugh

...then, Lord, what will I do? I mean, if this earth, this body, this microcosm is all I have - I have nothing. You have my heart. You, and only You accept me in pure, divine, un-contaminated, holy love. I am a fool to look to this world to satisfy. My heart must be anchored to You in Your dwelling - which is my true home. Let me not think that this world has anything to offer. Let me be dissatisfied with it's trinkets and lures - and long even more for my true home with You. It isn't heaven so much that I long for - though heaven sounds grand - but the God Who has sought, wooed and won my heart that has captured my longings. The very physical presence of God, which I know in some small sense here - because the kingdom of God has taken up residence within me - will be all the more evident. His radiant glory will be seen - and His presence known in ways I cannot fathom. So, Lord, continue to capture my heart. And let me live patiently here - with this sin-sick world and ...

What will I do when I get there? When I leave the shadows of this earthly sphere, And arrive at the place reserved for me there - What will be my occupation - How will I serve My God, my Maker? Will He give me talents unknown here, To magnify His glories in verse and song? Will I paint His beauties with skill untold, Or simply worship Him - will it never grow old? Will my tongue be unleashed with His fathomless grace, Will I be struck dumb to behold His face? He hasn't shown me how great it will be, But still - I imagine the splendour to see - And wonder with wandering thoughts of that place - How I'll spend all eternity praising His name.