Home: by Daktari wife

So tired that my eyes were lined with red, my attitude similar. Tugging a few sleeping bags and some children along with me we made our way back home. Everyone a more than a little frayed with fatigue.

When I was in 3rd or 4th grade I remember a similar event. After a slumber party with catty little neighborhood girls, up all night, I had to walk ½ mile home with my sleeping bag in tow and the incessantly bright early morning sun shining through my squinted eyelids. Now that I’m all grown up, I use a sleeping mask on those occasions that I need to keep the morning mist and clouds and block out the light and hold on to my precious right to be tired. And cranky.

We spent the night at the church building last night.

Not for a slumber party youth event, but for overnight hosting with a local ministry our church participates in to give homeless families a shelter for a week. The families sleep in Sunday School class rooms for one week and move early on Sunday morning to another church building to spend another week trying to stay together as families without homes.

And I am so ornery with my children after just one night of it. Home. These children need to stay at home, not in the lobby of a church building with cots and pallets on the floor. Eating junk food and running amok late at night? Not my children! I used to use them as my excuse to not sign up for things like this. But the whole point of the ministry is that it is keeping families together through tough times. One of the guest families had a 6 month old and 2 year old and they are still kind and gracious to one another in the midst of homelessness. Mother Teresa once said to me rather incriminatingly: “Moodiness is nothing but the fruit of pride”.

But home is something we are made for, longing for it is the most natural and godly desire of our heart. It all began when we lost the Garden. The second part of the book of Isaiah is laden with the poetry of hearts longing for Home and the comfort, comfort my people, that it will come.

Buechner said “we are all homesick for the Kingdom of God” that is what we are missing. We seek to fill that homesickness with a beautiful house, backsplashes and bathrooms, these private places that we build for ourselves to feel most comforted in our “home” like we deserve this. But the American “dream” and the American market collapse have been built around the myth of home ownership that rival our Edenic loss and desire to get back in. And there was an angel set there to guard the gate with a flaming sword for a reason. We can’t get back. Not by our own means anyways. You must go in at the Gate.

Well it’s always easier to speak of the sins of our neighbors and our society at large than it is to acknowledge my own sin written all over my weary face. We come home from church and take naps. Blessed Sabbath naps. My head on the pillow.: Home. But not quite. There’s a burning in my soul that is wanting more. Something is calling me out to spend this quiet time reading Isaiah. But I’m too weak. I sleep for a one sweet hour. Even then God still keeps the children at bay in their beds long enough for me to get into the Word too. I go Home into the scriptures. This is where I belong. Like Israel in Exile, we too must learn to live outside the geographic boundaries and into bigger dimensions of Home. God Himself is now our home. Nothing less will fill this need. Not my flight into busy, nor my quest for control over my children, neither my flight into bed nor coffee cup. I am quite simply sinning in this pursuit.

Now hear the Good News:

“I have swept away your offenses like a cloud,
your sins like the morning mist.
Return to me,
For I have redeemed you” Isaiah 44:22

Time to start packing up house, Katie. We are moving out in 4 weeks (or less)!

So I slough away some dusty belongings, then on Monday I attempt to bake bread, and watch Power Rangers with my boy. Happy together on our couch. I have been redeemed again.

Still, I am Homesick and haven’t even left for Africa yet.

Big Daddy in Memoriam

Last Sunday my grandfather passed away.  His name was “Big Daddy.” He was so named, not because of his ample girth (though he had the usual southern-fried extra around the middle, from eating my grandmother’s cooking for 63 years).  No, his name was Big Daddy because that was his personality.  His personality was huge, and left just such an impression everywhere he went.

One of his greatest loves in life was to make people laugh.  Any kind of person and any kind of laugh would do; from the smiles of the church lady at Cartwright Baptist, to the stately chuckles of the officials and politicos during his time as County Commissioner;  and the guffaws and belly laughs of the truckers at Wagner Freight and farmers of the Sequatchie Valley Co-op.  And there was no area of humor that he did not master: practical jokes were probably his favorite (including, maybe especially, the one where he ended up in jail), but the outrageous were probably his second favorite (ask his grandchildren about his toilet bowl guitar).  There were no topics that were off-limits: politics, race, family, religion all played into his jokes, and I will never forget the twinkle in his eyes just before he got to the punch line.

And another thing that everyone who knew Big Daddy appreciated about him was his generosity.  He gave so much, in so many ways.  He never met a stranger, and gave away his extraordinary personality to everyone he met.  One of my strongest memories of spending time with him was rising early in the morning on Saturday at the farm, driving in his old beat up Datsun pickup, which smelled like chewing tobacco and his dog (who accompanied him everywhere). We’d drive to Hardees, where they knew to expect him, and he would buy a bag of biscuits and drive through the valley, visiting neighbors, especially the homebound or poor, sitting with them and sharing breakfast.  I have no idea how much of his wealth he has given to charitable causes.  He never spoke of it to me.  But I am certain it is an astounding amount, because that’s the kind of person he was.

We always spent holidays at the farm.  And ever so occasionally, he would sit us (his grandchildren) down after a holiday meal for one of his fireside chats.  He rarely gave us advice, but when he did, it was best to listen closely.  His favorite topics were hard work, integrity, and family values.  He came to hear me speak several times, a message to our church, a valedictory speech, and a mission presentation, and he would give me pointers; most notably to always speak up and stand tall, and I always remember this in that second after I walk to a podium and before I open my mouth.

He is, and always will be, with me.  In the moments after his death, as I try to gather every memory and store it away for safekeeping, these are the first things that I recall.  They are by no means the only things, and everyone who has known him has a story.  That is legacy in its own right, and to be remembered in stories is to be remembered forever.  Thank you Big Daddy.