free // five minute friday

Five Minute Friday (#FMFparty) gives writers a word prompt. We are encouraged to write whatever comes to mind about that word in just five minutes.  No editing, no perfection, only writing from the heart.  To find out more, visit http://katemotaung.com/five-minute-friday/.  This week's word is "FREE".

Today, a meeting unexpectedly cancelled and I found myself with a babysitter and free time. After I dropped by work to finish up some things, I found myself driving by the cemetery where we had my grandma’s funeral a month ago. I haven’t been back to her grave site since the day we buried her.

I get to her spot but am so lost. I wander aimlessly looking for my grandma among the names. I know the area where she was buried, but nothing was there—no flowers, no head stone, no nothing to ever prove that she was buried there. There was a shoddy, unkempt mound but surely that wasn’t her because nothing about her was ever unkempt. The caretaker was delivering flowers to a nearby grave and asked me who I was looking for and I told him in a mildly panicked voice, “My grandma” (now that was really helpful…). Once I told him the name, he pointed to the unkempt patch on the ground…the one I looked at but, nah, that couldn’t be her!  No!!! You don't just leave someone you love in the ground like that without a name and not even acknowledge their existence without some kind of marker of life (to be fair, it's all in the works and the caretaker reassured me of that). My heart was not prepared for the nothingness, for the unkempt mound of grass, for the brown and black dead flowers that once held color, tears, and memories as we placed them upon her casket.

I plopped down next to my grandma’s grave and wept in the silence and stillness of the cemetery. How I miss her! How I long to hear her voice, get an email from her, and hear her take on life (esp. in light of these prophetic current events). As those large, love-filled, sad yet healing kind of tears flowed and as I poured out my cries to God, a cacophony of tweeting arose above me like I have never heard before that beckoned me to lift my head.

As I raised my head, I began to notice what was around me…how suddenly, out of silence, came an orchestra of freedom--birds soaring freely overhead and tweeting non-stop praises, colorful butterflies flitting from flower to flower, puffy white clouds gliding carefree in the sky and then my eyes glance back downward to the reality of death before me. I feel a war going on within me to simply believe in the concept of freedom as the birds keep singing, the butterflies keep flying, both oblivious to the lifeless bodies that lay in the ground below them.

My grandma is buried on a hillside where there stands a little shade tree just feet from her grave that makes for a perfect respite on this hot, sunny day. The coolness of the shade and the light breezes beckon me to sit here a little longer and truly see what is before me. Down the hillside, there is a tree grove that borders the cemetery and neighboring subdivision where the birds are loudly singing and soaring. And then I hear God’s quiet whisper in my heart, “My child, see that the grove is eerie, thick, dark, tall, endless, yet the birds are still singing through it. They are still soaring. They are free even in the darkness and heaviness. Your grandma is free with Me. You are free in Me.”

And then my mind wanders back to the song our choir is learning where the lyrics say:

“This is how Love wins, every single time, climbing high upon a tree where someone else should die. This is how Love heals, the deepest part of you, letting Himself bleed into the middle of your wounds. This is what Love says, standing at the door, you don’t have to be who you’ve been before. Silenced by His voice, death can’t speak again. This is how Love wins.”

My gma would laugh if she saw me!

As I run back to my van to grab my laptop (which I just happened to have because I planned to do some writing at Starbucks) to journal this moment before I forgot it, a yellow butterfly swirls all around me in Disney-like fashion (crazy, I know!). I stand there in pure wonder. Freedom is all around me! Death cannot contain life when it’s lived in Christ!

As I walked back to the tree, my eyes were drawn to the verse on the crypt which said:

“For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God.” Romans 8:38-39

Because of His blood, I am free and I am loved!

Moments later, an airplane flies freely above me preparing to land at a nearby airport.  Not five minutes later, I burst out in laughter as I had another “Only God” moment as a train coasted by next to the cemetery.

Life goes on. I can choose to remain in death whether it’s being bound by the past, by wounds, by life or I can choose to be free and to soar with praises on my tongue even in the heaviness of life. God comforts me today at my grandma’s grave by showing me He truly desires my freedom. He is calling me to see that the wholeness and freedom that my grandma is experiencing with Him in heaven today is right here for me, too. Freedom is His way of life…only if I choose to see. 

As I wrap this up (way after the Five Minute Friday time limit), another train treks on by. My grandma’s body still lays lifeless in the ground. Nothing has changed in the 1½ hours that I’ve been sitting under this tree except that I am given another round of the healing, deep-cleansing kind of tears as God captures my attention and comforts me with His always-outstretched hands that wait to be grasped so that He can pull me up off this ground and guide me as I learn to walk in freedom with Him.