Sometimes the things we know come gradually to our hearts and minds. Such happened one day in a conversation and the realization that a line had been drawn in the sand become clear. In the land of grief thinking is not always clear, but that day it was. So to my surprise, because of great loss, a time line had been formed. Once I was a wife of one I loved passionately for almost forty-four years. Once I was the mother of three children on this earth, but now only two are here with me.That was before. Now I live in the after. Each side of the line in the sand is shaped by time and events. C. S. Lewis described life on earth "as the shadowlands." On the side of after in this loss there has been great gain. Who could ever again look at this place as being our home when those who left first are in the new country? Before there was a struggle to always remember this is not our home, but in this place of after there is a lifting of the veil. All that did seem to be life has been exposed as mere things. Now there is the constant reminder that life must be lived and to the fullest and yet heaven as a real land is what my heart yearns for. Now it is as if I am in a far away land visiting and I am homesick. Someone once said it is in the here and now that we put our feet in cement, not that we purpose to do this but this life becomes larger than the one that awaits us. The before will never be, but yet the after has with it a glimmer of what is to be.
Many years ago a young woman by the name of Amy Carmichael left her country to become a missionary in a far away land. As her ship pulled out of the harbor in the darkness and she could no longer see her family on the shore these words would be her life line,
"And only heaven is better than to walk with Christ at midnight over moonless seas"
