Homesick

  Five years ago, I boarded a plane in Nashville to go back to Portland for Thanksgiving.  I wasn’t alone as a Fellowship was traveling together; my family and my brother’s family comprised a Biblical number of 12 for a perfect traveling company.  My father had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and had been given a couple of months to live.  Our trip was intended to say goodbye, not knowing if he’d live to see Christmas.     

Brought on by a teenage sickness of jaundice, hepatitis B, and mono, dad was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver in 1994.  In 1997 he received a liver transplant.  His quality of life significantly improved; his spiritual life soared as Eastside church of Christ asked him to serve as one of their Elders.  However, at summer’s end in 2003, his body began to wear down.  By Thanksgiving, the anti-rejection medicine used to sustain his life would be the source for his life coming to an end.   

Thanksgiving came and went, almost uneventfully.  We posed for a family portrait.  We harassed my oldest brother, Steve, after he clogged the sink drain from potatoes peelings.  Mom and Dad went home early because Dad was feeling weak.  The next night, Steve’s singing group preformed for the family, and any friends who wanted to attend.  During the concert, they sang Dad’s favorite song. Verse 1 > There’s a light in the window, And the table’s set in splendor; Someone’s standing by the open door, I can see a crystal riverOh I must be near ForeverAnd I’ve Never Been This Homesick Before.

Verse 2 > I can see the family gather

Sweet faces, they’re all familiar

But no one’s old or feeble any more

Oh this lonesome heart is cryin’

Think I’ll spread my wings for flyin’

Lord, I’ve Never Been This Homesick Before.

 Chorus > See the bright Light shine; It’s just about Hometime

I can see my Father standing at the door.

This world has been a wilderness; I’m headed for deliverance.

Lord, I’ve Never Been This Homesick Before!

As Steve sang the song, I fought back the tears wondering how he could “get the words out.”  Somehow, Dotti Rambo’s message captured Dad as if the song had been written with him in mind.  Curious to know if my feelings were flying solo or in tandem, I scanned the family to discover that the dams had broken for everyone, everyone but one.  Dad wasn’t crying, he was beaming, glowing.  He looked angelic, as if God was allowing him a glance into heaven.   

I witnessed Joy thriving in the midst of sorrow; liberating freedom while suffering surged; the eternal swallowing up by temporal; and where spiritual strength prevailed against a physical weakness claiming victory.  My father determined that his sickness would not have the final say, nor destroy the Spirit residing within him.  What I gleaned from Thanksgiving 2003, can be found within the words of Paul, so profoundly applicable to my father.  

 “Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come” (2 Cor. 5:1-5). 

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