Glory, Glory.

I held her.

The Thursday morning after, I held her in my heart. 8,605 miles away and I held her tenderly.

She had sent a message weeks earlier – her mom was on decline after years of battling brain cancer. She was going to receive home hospice care. They gave her weeks to live. Her little brother was weeks away to graduate college; her sister about to graduate high school. And the ever-looming question, “would mom be there?”

I cried for her that morning. And I sang a gentle melody:

Glory

Glory

I see You on the throne

And I've seen the grass wither

I've seen the flower fade

But Your word, it stands forever

Through all of my days

And I've tried hard now to find You

Through the fire and the quake

Just to hear of a whisper

Oh, to taste of Your grace

Glory

Oh, glory

I see You on the throne

Glory

Hallelujah

Your love will overcome

Holy Spirit, bring Your healing

I receive it, Lord, I let it in

My Father, oh, how I love You

Be my first love, there's none before You

Holy Spirit, bring Your healing

I receive it, Lord, I let it in

My Father, oh, how I love You

Oh, be my first love, Lord, there's none before You

Years earlier I had wept to a harmony sung by her: Maplewood Lullaby. Her words holding me gently as I embraced the new and unknown:

Most times you sing a lully

When you're drifting off to sleep

Saying goodbye to your loved ones

As night succumbs to deep

But this song is for those loved ones

Who will wake into their dreams

Where goodbyes become more hellos

To the world's discoveries

Goodbye home

Goodbye home

.

.

.

But those who go out weeping

With teary seeds to sow

Will return with songs rejoicing

To everyone we know

And our tears which count as raindrops

Will like fountains overflow

To be streams in the mega

Oh all to Him we owe

Goodbye home

She had written that song for her, for her mom, when she moved across the states from Colorado to Massachusetts and longed for her childhood streets, the Rocky Mountains westward, and her mother’s caress. But in the lush greenery and burnt orange roads of a foreign land, the words laminated my heart and eased the aches of home – as if they were written for me.

She held me with grace as I processed the loss, change, and transition of love, of home, of comfort; of all the things I thought I was certain of. She spoke courage over me and encouraged my writing – words, she knew, that would soothe heartache and make sense of a confusing world and shattered dreams to a weary wanderer.

I would visit her the days I would travel to the state that raised me. We would drink tea and eat ice cream from her favorite shop with the dairy free flavors.

The day I met her I had arrived a stranger in a new state, at a new college, with strangers soon to become friends. I was welcomed for the summer by a neatly arranged college dorm room - the little treasures collected over time and time arranged lovingly; the books organized and eclectic, clean sheets on a freshly made twin-sized bed, a quaint bottle of shampoo to borrow in a shared bathroom. Before she ever knew me, she prepared to welcome me, share her space with me, comfort me in newness and change with a steaming cup of tea.

Our grand adventure began when we headed North - sherpas in the Adirondacks in upstate New York. Her gentle fierceness lit the way. She was brave. She was kind. Every word she spoke she spoke with intention and grace. She was a true friend to the core, to all.

We guided together through the maze of steep and rolling mountains of the North; the freshly picked blueberries, the rush of adrenaline scaling sides of cliffs, the equal adrenaline of scaling soul sides: the crevasses of unanswered questions, the pits of guilt, the pangs of worry, the persistent nudges of anxiety, the crippling unforgiveness, the coldness of sorrow. We walked the hills and valleys - 13-day trips with 10 students and 2 sherpas. We walked the wilderness together. Her curl crazed red hair and her oval shaped glasses with kind eyes behind.

Our friendship took time to brew. My heart, guarded and weary; difficult to let others in so close. But she persisted, the excellent communicator she has always been. She fought for me; she fought for friendship.

So it was natural, the times I met her mother, I saw the same persistent love, pursuit of others, grace.

In my first year in Uganda, I wrote a story about a chicken. A roaming chicken who loved our home of nine little children. The chicken would enter, jump on beds, bounce about couches. The children would chase it, snuggle it, fight with it, give in to it. The story made her mom laugh so hard, she insisted she wanted to continue to hear the tales of my Ugandan adventure. We shared stories; we laughed across seas; we wondered of eternal glories.

It was a dreary Wednesday evening as she held her mother's hand as she inhaled, exhaled: the final breath in our lungs, the chorus of our souls: glory, glory. Hallelujah. She had arrived.