Dawn

     As I struggled through introspection all week, I realized at the end that I had not done or planned anything sacred for this week. So, I began praying and the sunrise soon came to mind. I asked Mike what place nearby we might see it from best. His mind went straight to the Parkway so this morning we woke up long before the alarms and began our ride to the mountains.
      We drove past the house we rented when we moved to North Carolina in dire circumstances, unknowing that it was the beginning of being set apart from the world's systems and traditions. Then, we passed near the camp where the kids summer after summer learned so much of God's Word and how to test their limits of work. We rolled up the Blue Ridge Parkway, the road I used to be so scared of, Mike had "Dead Man Walking" playing, something very different than what he would have then. As we approached the hill called "The Lump" that I used to put McKala in a backpack and hike and that Mike used to take our Jeep Wagoneer to in the snow to escort the kids back up after they slid all the way down, I saw that Megan and Jeremiah were already there along with 4 or 5 other people scattered around. We began the ascent, and I thought of how easy my walk is compared to what Jesus' was.
      We went to sit with them right there in the grass. Although the sun was shielded by cloud cover, the rising was a brilliant color, Dawn, my middle name and something I never saw much of until I determined to read God's Word through and through.
      It was so quiet, just the wind blowing gently. I thought of how quiet the world was and how we're sent home from our many ways, including pagan traditions, something the Lord warned me of back then in those mountains. There would be no real Easter egg hunts today, no mixing of holy with the unholy, worshipping the created with the Creator, "; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and went after the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom the Lord  had charged them, that they should not do like them" (2 Kings 17:25).
      I thought of the women approaching the tomb in a similar setting. I didn't know that Mike would ask me to read, but I did have a Bible in my coat pocket. But when I began to read Luke 24, "Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, …" I couldn't even make it through that. I regained my composure and started over. Again, I couldn't. And that's when Megan asked me to hand it to her. That allowed me to video the scene and our firstborn's reading of God's Word.
     When we left, we drove by the little Blue Ridge Baptist Church (whose pastor baptized both Megan and me in the river) which is right down the road from where we lived, but not before we stopped at a pasture that decades ago was Mike's great grandfather's. There was a fresh calf, no more than a day or two old, so happy to be alive, clumsily running around, face white as snow. We stopped later at a couple of other overlooks and stayed at one for a good while, leaving the radio up and worshipping, Mike more than any of us.
      We came down the mountain by the church we called home for five years where four of the children were graciously baptized all in the same baptismal at the same time. Macklynn then Madalynn were baptized there, too. We came home to eat a little something and watch Franklin Graham preach from Central Park. Now that Melody has been given the green light to GO as a medical technician, it's of particular interest! She was afraid none of us would want her to GO. Turns out everyone did! How can I ask her not to GO, when I've told her the words of Jesus to GO her whole life? As much as I love home, a willingness to GO is what defines who we really are and not going where it's easy but going where it's scary and with a skill the sick, poor, and oppressed need.
      She's out of work right now and out of school. What better time? Meanwhile, everyone else is working having virtually no debt, with some money stored up. They all love the outdoors and know how to utilize it, know how to cook and to cut hair, at the very least trim. They all can change their own oil and rotate their tires and are basically self sufficient. This is all well and good but nothing without the Lord. To see that they are observing Him today and trusting in His teaching is what this mother longs for and blesses her most.
     A new day is dawning for our family. The thing about the low, dark places is that they make the high places seem all the higher. And I have to write about them! I have literally nothing from my ancestors other than some light-hearted correspondences. Well, I do have The Ideal Life that was Mike's great-grandmother's, but it's such a large, imposing book that it's been left mostly unread in my pursuit of studying the Bible.
    This journey, this moving around from place to place, church to church; I think people might feel sorry for me, especially people who know the details. What they may or may not know though is that Jesus has been working on me, making me like Him, working things out of me, working in the whole family's favor including Mike's ...so, these things were necessary.
     I don't why I just NOW realized that we have as many as 5 weddings left to have, 7 high school and college graduations, and 6 more families with babies. This really is just the beginning! I feel like I'm coming out of a tunnel and everything looks big and new and good and bright. I'm truly happy, rather than just putting one foot in front of the other, for the first time in a good, long while.