It's dark as I drive past the dimly lit street. The street where my home use to be. But not anymore. I get off the nightshift, and the moon is still illuminating the house with moonbeams radiating through the clouds. It's a cool night as the breeze blows against my skin. I stand there looking at the front steps. I kill the motor to my truck as I'm frozen in the driveway. My mind drifting back to a memory when we first brought our children home from the hospital. We were so excited to be parents. The child we held in our arms each time was our flesh. Our love for each other formed that life.
My heart drifts to another memory of holding her after we lost two children to miscarriages. To come home from work and to find her sitting in the living room with the lights out. She had the curtains drawn and wanted the world to go away. Our love made these two children but no life came to them. And we sat in sorrow, crying, sobbing, holding each other. Shielding each other from a world that seemed to not understand.
I close my eyes and now I see us carving our names into the concrete walkway that had just been poured. We write each one's name...mine, my wife's, my daughter's and my son's. We go and play in the backyard on the trampoline while it dries. Jumping and screaming like fools to the delight of the children. Tossing and rolling around in the air. Living in a moment that never should have ended.
Now I get the news to jump up. Startled from my sleep I stumble to get my pants and shirt on to get out the door. Come quick....and go with us is all I can focus on. "It's your brother...he's at the hospital."
" What's wrong? What happened?" I cry as we drive as fast as we can go. Noone answers me. Just an uneasy silence. I burst into the emergency room and make my way to the back past everyone before they can stop me. I push the doors open to the operating room as the doctor and nurses are just walking out. In that moment, I see him. My only true friend in this life, the one who stood by me, frozen. His mouth open and his eyes set. He was gone...my brother left me without saying goodbye. I went home to my room and shut the door. Falling to the floor of my home, my tears rolled from my cheek to the floor. In that moment, I pushed everyone away.
Drifting back as the wind blows my hair, as if to try to relax from that memory...it reminds me of the time of joy. The day we stepped foot into a house that now became a home again with newlyweds to greet it. We were so poor and broke. But it was our place. Our place to make memories. A place for love to grow.
Now reality sets in. My eyes flashed to the moment where I tossed the picture of our family over the fence and it shattered in a hundred pieces. Coldness had come to our home and now it was just a house once again. No longer was it our home but was now sold and no one dwelt there now. No family, no love, no one. The only thing that dwelt there now was memories, memories of a life once lived there together that had now become shattered just like that picture frame. Shattered like broken promises and broken hearts.
And....as my soul searching leads me here...searching ...searching through what? Searching through painful memories?
I look toward the sky for an answer. My heart feels like its dying. And in that moment I want too. I drop to my knees one last time there. And water that ground with my tears that mixed there with former tears of joy and sorrow. As I weep so hard I feel like I can barely breathe, the wind picks up. And brushes my tears from my eyes and blows them away as if wiping them.
And a voice comes back as it always does with an answer. "Your searching through memories of home..for what all men want...your searching for Hope."
by
Lance Gargus
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 15:13
Posts
