We caught each other’s eye across a crowded church but we were both young and the moment escaped us, so age 17 came and went and so did we, separate journeys, connecting again briefly but events and other relationships kept us apart. BUT GOD! We met again on a train on a five day journey travelling across Australia. Oh the romance of it, a steam train pulling carriages from the wild west era, wood paneling, narrow passageways and wrought iron railings, it had it all. Leaning over the railings something ignited within us as we delighted in the wonders of a summer’s night in Australia, breeze rushing past our faces, the clipper clatter of the train wheels. That magic has lasted a life time, it has never ended, we still delight to see each other across a crowded mall or just sitting at her bedside holding hands, it is as engaging and wonderful today as it ever was, just deeper. When I walk into our bedroom knowing how ill she and I see her in her pink jamies and a cheeky smile on her face I feel everything is right in my world, at least for a moment. That romantic old train started a life time of travel and excitement from running tours to the valley of Petra in Jordan to enjoying snow falling on the Cortina mountains in northern Italy in late August to tramping through the jungles of the Amazon. She is a girl I never had to carry, always taking on the next challenge. Her excitement energy and ability for life knows no bounds. Life was never dull from living in the inner city of Los Angeles to living in paradise on the Mandurah canals in Western Australia. Life was hard but she married a risk taker and she loved the thrill. I remember telling her at one junction of our life. We feel like we are on a bridge to nowhere, so let’s join hands and jump (changed countries no less) into the raging river below and swim like crazy, we will see what we with the help of God can do. She was up for it and what a ride, we made it and we would do it again if we had one more opportunity. In our many travels Gail always taught our kids to be the pathfinder, whether we were in a crowded airport looking for the baggage claim or climbing Green Mountain on the Olympic Peninsula. (Lest you think we are a family of mountain climbers it’s the kind of hill you climb with 4-8 years olds, but it was always fun). “Tim”, Gail would say, “you are the pathfinder tell us where to go.” Our kids all learned to negotiate the world’s busiest airports, cities and mountains and if they messed up Dad or Mum would be the co-pathfinder. Well today my darling girl we are again on a journey, on a road we have never travelled, participating on a journey we wish with everything within us we could delay, but it appears that someone higher than us has chosen you to be the pathfinder. We know the roadmap we have read it so many times, for God has made it plain. We are in the difficult part of your journey right now where every breath is a struggle, but in a little while you will shake off the limitations of this earth to join the wonders of God’s heaven. We can’t hold you one day longer, for earth is just the training ground for what God has in store and you have work to do, a calling to fulfill that’s beyond the bounds of this old earth. You have a train to catch that’s far more exciting than the one we first took, so my precious pathfinder lead out in front we will not be far behind. We cannot catch up to you ,but you will stand on the other side waiting for us, because that’s what pathfinders do, we have determined we are travelling to the same destination, we didn’t have time to dance the last dance together but we will dance the first dance around the Throne of God.
Posted on: Sat, 31 Aug 2013 15:22:59 +0000
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