We were sitting together at the bereavement meal after the funeral. It was Caroline’s sister-in-law who had passed this time—another one from that group of people we’ve named, “The Greatest Generation.”
Lori and I had joined Caroline and her family at their table, reminiscing her husband’s life, while at the same time mourning the loved one whose funeral I had just officiated.
It had only been a couple of years since I had presided at the funeral for David, Caroline’s husband. As we chatted, I fondly shared memories of him, whom I had gently teased as, “the best dressed farmer in Marion County.”
“It was difficult moving from Marion County to Louisville, after he died, Dr. David,” Caroline said, lowering her voice, leaning in towards me. “But I know now, it was the right thing to do.”
I nodded my head, giving her the okay to keep talking.
“So, my first night there,” she said, looking directly at Lori and me, making sure she included us both, “I remembered that story you told my David, that story you told about moving here.”
“I guess I don’t remember,” I said.
“Well, you told about how you were driving down the hill from Campbellsville and how, all at once, you saw Lebanon, below, in front of you, and you told your Dave, in the car with you, you said, ‘Look son, this is home,’ and you drove on into town. And I thought of that, because you told that story to my David, and then on that first night after I moved from here to Louisville after he died, I felt so lost, but then I remembered that story. And it helped me.”
For a brief second, I was back there, coming down Muldraugh Hill, with my son, Dave, by my side, in the F-150, with Mary-Liz and Katri in the van behind us. And then, it appeared: that view of the verdant valley below us.
Dave couldn’t have known the quiver in my heart, the doubts in my mind, or the fears that threatened to overwhelm me in that moment. To quell them, I spoke the words, “Look Dave, there it is: home.”
I was grasping for hope more than I was declaring my certainty.
But I lived to tell that story, and Caroline remembered.
The aroma of fried chicken and mashed potatoes, and the clatter of voices around us at the table jarred me back, almost like a movie when for a moment everything is paused, and then, suddenly, the action starts again.
The truth is, it’s when we are following, not always knowing exactly where we are going, only that we are moving—it’s in that moment—that time suspended in space, that moment when we are desperate for the One who has promised to lead us onward and upward, into wherever or whatever it is He has for us, that moment when we can’t help but speak those words, words that identify for us that for which we yearn, words that subdue, if only for that moment, the fears that would douse the hope if the words were disregarded, for that would mean home didn’t matter.
It’s only later, looking back, when we realize all we really saw was the backside of the One we were following, and it’s later still before we come to realize that our feeble, stumbling steps, somehow cut a path, not just for us, but for someone else, who on their own very different journey, whether up the hill or down the valley, was lifted in some way by the words we spoke in our desperation.
If it all seems foreign to you, it’s okay, for it may only mean you have yet to launch out into the mystery of the deep, that sea of unknowing.
Upon remembering what led us to this place we call home, we are all the more grateful, though we still hope for home, the one that’s still lies in the distance, beyond the trees and the valley below.
“I’d almost forgotten that story,” I think I mumbled.
And picking up my used paper plate, I headed to the church’s kitchen, with thoughts full of home.