Thanks, Horatio

About the same time we moved to Minnesota after our three years overseas, another family moved to the same little town. They had one daughter who was in age, right between our kids. Like us, they were transplants to Minnesota. After they started attending the same church as us, we began to become friends. Like the friends we made when we lived in Singapore, we connected with them in this different "culture" because both our families had lived in completely different parts of the country. They were from the south and we had lived several different places in the Midwest and in Singapore. When you live in a small town, I think you bond more easily with others who also are not from that town.

We did a lot of things with this family. We shared Thanksgiving and Christmas meals. The mom and daughter would pop by our house to get a drink or use the bathroom when they were out on a run. We had lunch together after church on Sundays. We commiserated about sometimes feeling left out in that small town. Our kids even went on a vacation with them to southern California one spring break. Our kids and their daughter felt like siblings. The summer my hubby and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary, the mom, Karen, and the daughter, Rachel, and our kids fixed Hubby and I a fancy meal complete with a tiered chocolate cake and a veil for me to wear.

This family moved to Oklahoma after Rachel graduated from high school. It was a hard good-bye. Rachel was attending the college she always wanted to. Her mom and dad wanted to be near-by. She was their whole world.

When our son, Caleb was in his third year of college, he had a serious crush on a girl named Amanda. He worked for months to get up the nerve to ask her out on a date. A month before he did ask her out, he had a conversation with Rachel. They were talking online about Caleb's crush and Rachel's advice to him was to be "confident in his hotness" and ask Amanda on a date. (That phrase was sooo Rachel, it still makes me smile.)

That was the last conversation they had.

Our daughter reminded me this morning that today is the anniversary of our sweet, sweet friend, Rachel going to eternity. She and a friend were killed in a head-on car accident three years ago today. (I wrote about it here.) She wasn't even quite 20 years old. I sat on the couch this morning and just cried remembering the shock of the news and the grief I hear in her mom's voice whenever I talk to her. It's been hard on all of us and she wasn't even a part of our family by blood.

(I remember the day we heard the news. Our pastor had been trying to get confirmation of the death. I called Caleb who was working at his college newspaper that afternoon. I asked for him to look at Rachel's Facebook page. I will never forget his voice when he barely choked out over the phone, "Oh, Mom. It's true." He told me that he was so upset had to leave the newspaper and went to the only place he could think of. To Amanda's apartment. They had been dating about three weeks at that time. Caleb told me later that Amanda cried with him and prayed with him in his grief that day. That was when I was first endeared to the young woman who was to become my daughter-in-law.) (It was a Sunday afternoon when we heard. Our daughter, Megan, was a senior in high school and a young man named Zach was hanging out at our house that afternoon. It was tough to break the news to Megan. She and Rachel were like sisters. Zach was comforting to Megan that day. Little did we know that Zach would be our son-in-law one day.)

The huge thing, the thing that gives us peace, the thing that gives us hope, is that Rachel was a Christian. She loved Jesus more than anything. When I look at pictures of her, I hear her laugh and imagine her dancing and laughing with Jesus.

This afternoon I was listening to this CD. The hymn that got me deep in my soul? 

It Is Well With My Soul. Written by Horatio Spafford written in 1873. Go here to read the story behind the hymn.

How do I express what it means to me to know that Jesus Christ, The Son of God, died on the cross for pay for my sins? This verse sends me to my knees in graditude every single time I hear it.

My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to His cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

The response I have to that is a desire to live my life for Christ. To glorify Him with my life. To be obedient because of Christ bearing my sin so I don't have to. 

Then one day, my faith shall be sight. With the sound of a trumpet, the sky will be rolled back and Christ will descend to take me and all those who follow Him home with him.

Rachel is there. I can't wait to see her again. And so many family members that are already there.