Hope through generations

I had no vision for what I was going to do. In one sitting it just happened. And by the end of it, it meant the world to me.

This is a digital art piece from my drawing class this semester that I did the week after training camp, a couple weeks after my grandma passed away pretty suddenly.

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I didn’t cry at my grandmas funeral.

Proud, I thought I had dealt with my emotions when I had cried in private in the presence of the living God. 

The Word had spoken over me and guarded me on a plane ride home from a wedding when I found out that my Grandma probably only had a week or so left to live, like seriously I was held in scripture. The Gospel is my life, and it carried new weight in those moments faced with mortality.

Yet, a couple months ago, I sat in Tequilas restaurant with my family and friends and uncontrollably cried. 

I was incredibly weak in front an entire table of witnesses, breaking down unable to stop.

It was hitting me the overwhelming season of life I’m in, the people in my life who don’t know the Christ that I call life, and just then the waitress walks up.

She walks up with shots to give us, in her own uncontrollable tears, she gives a toast to my grandma. You see, that waitress grew to love my grandma not only as a regular at the restaurant, but as her dear friend. We hadn’t even thought of inviting her to the funeral, yet my grandma has made a significant impact on her life.

Being in that restaurant without Grandma and with the tears of this waitress, it hit me.

She is actually gone. 

And I actually was going to training camp in a couple of days, missing a week of school, coming back to graduate college, coming home to celebrate Christmas, and leaving for a year to do the boldest thing I’ve ever done on two new continents.

I went home that night, even though my friends were visiting me from out of state, went outside alone, and tried to find a way out of what I was feeling. 

All I could muster to God was “I am weak.” 

And with that I went inside to a person who I felt I could be broken in front of and who understood how the Cross is my life and how I need to express it as so. 

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I am writing this at 1:00AM in the morning, after, for the first time since, I went to Tequilas again.

This time catching up with high school friends, sharing ourselves after new imprints of experience from our respective walks. 

We sat at the exact same table where I had that breakdown months before. And, boy, what my Lord Jesus has done since the last time I sat at that table.

The casting out of depression prayers answered the next morning, countless divine appointments and conversations with friends or individuals who needed a friend or who the Lord is pursuing, reconciliation with others, convicting me and renewing my mind and soul, loosening my attachments and idols, professors blowing my mind: one surprising me at church to pray for me and taking my friend and I to coffee to talk about God and one giving me $500 and a book about her grandparents who were missionaries in Africa that is literally blessing and calling me beyond words towards what I am about to go do.

“I look at the Cross and suddenly everything changes. Lord I can’t do anything without you right now; shine in me even through my weakness.” : days after my Grandma had passed (10/7).

“In such a time as this only thing that can help me is making space for God and by His love. So God still plan my day” 

p.s. the Spirit of the Living God knows everything and every part of us and everything that could help us, and thus walking by the Spirit and not the flesh (Romans 8) is a well of living water that can’t run dry

“God is my best friend.”

“The constant presence of God to become familiar.”

“I have tasted and seen and lived in Heaven for years now, and when He walks in the room, He changes everything.”

“I tell you now my life is better than it has ever been.” : beginning of November 

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Grandma was the sweetest, hard-working lady of honor who loved and treasured us fully. She had to be clothed in strength going through things I cannot even imagine from a very young age.

It’s crazy how much you learn about a person from their belongings and from others after they pass. 

When I found this paper at her house days after she passed, it moved me to my core. 

It reads:

“Testimonies” of Mother Gordon

…

We are housing a series of meetings in our hometown and hope that there will be others who will accept the Third Angel’s Message and join with us. ‘Let us not grow weary in well doing, for in due time we shall reap if we faint not’

I am trying to live faithful and looking…Jesus who will soon…the Prophecies

…

When I moved to Nebraska, about twenty-nine years ago…was sent to the Conference church. I am the only Adventist around here. I do not go to attend Sabbath school very often as it is fifty miles to North Platte. 

That is the closest place.

Pray for me that I may be faithful to the end

-Sarah J Gordon 

 

We think it was my Great Grandmother’s handwriting qouting some Sarah Gordon in the family that went before her.

We think the burned paper was saved from a devastating fire to my Grandma’s house as a child. 

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“Testimony” is the title of my piece that hung in the Buckley Art Show at my school. Every aspect that I cropped or colored in added more and more meaning…

the excerpts I included from that burnt artifact, and the black and white photos I found in my Grandma’s memorabilia

How many prayers did my ancestors like Sarah Gordon pray, in a time when they too felt weak, that I am reaping the reward of today?  

the picture of Grandma and Grandpa, who eventually separated, holding two of their kids as the focal point 

And what about my grandparents? Everything they went through, childhoods and trials that I can’t imagine. But they persevered, worked hard, did the best they could.

the mountains of one of my favorite spots in my hometown as the backdrop

In their parents doing that, my parents had the opportunity to go to college where they would meet and decide to raise a close family with unrelenting love in the mountains. 

the base of the colorful grass cropped in from lighting at training camp and the Cross evading light everywhere 

And it was there in my parents loving arms that I got the freedom that led to Christ in me the hope of glory. 

And it is the hardest moment this semester, the moment I was most ashamed of, that I am now writing about to say – there is hope through everything you are battling.

 

Testimony

“God, that He would make babies laugh” I wrote while watching a baby giggle on one of the like 8+ plane rides I took this semester.

Today, lol I guess now yesterday, Grandma’s great grandchild came over, and in him we played with beauty and new life. 

Even when you don’t understand, even when it hurts (Hillsong), it is worth it. Your life. Everything your working towards. The routine. We are forming people’s lives, working for something better and bigger.

 

 Stay faithful to the last.

 The Cross always has the final word.

 Hope through generations